We produce a lot of podcasts at Comsteria. Many of them feature academics and other experts who’ve been invited on to talk about their work.
Our clients often like to begin each podcast with an introduction for each guest. The guest will either lean into the mic and verbally introduce themselves, or, they’ll provide text in advance and the presenter will say it for them, (think Fiona Bruce on BBC Question Time).
It’s the same with conference speeches. Guests will be asked in advance to provide a biography. These are almost always written by the individual guest themselves, written in the 3rd person so it looks like someone else has written it about them.
It’s important you realise the purpose of these introductions. If it’s a podcast or conference aimed at a general audience then it’s not about proving your academic worth. Instead, it’s about the audience and giving them a quick sense of who you are, where you work and the field you operate in. I often encounter academics who provide what feels like their entire CV and then spend 2-3 minutes reading it out. This really isn’t helpful, will end up getting cut from the podcast (or should be) and risks making them look out of touch, needy and self important while wasting the audience’s time.
The key to a good introduction is to prioritise. What information about yourself is it you really want to get across? With podcasts and conferences remember there’s always space for hyperlinks in the podcast description or conference brochure. If someone does want to read your entire background, they’ll be able to. The conference speech or podcast recording will give you plenty of opportunity to discuss the work you’ve done and where you’ve done it – that’s why you’re there. You don’t need to give me it all upfront.
This is all quite different to how academics have been trained. There’s an academic rigour that places great importance on chronological lists of study, achievements, papers and citations. But these are designed to carry value within academia. When you step outside that world, to speak to a more general audience, it’s important you adapt and less is most definitely more.
I think some of the words we use might be partly to blame for this. If you work in the communications department and invite colleagues onto your podcast, are you asking them for a ‘biography’? That word can be triggering for an academic and you really shouldn’t be surprised if you get back more than you anticipated!
‘Please send one or two sentences about yourself so our presenter can introduce you’, might get a better result. You could add, ‘There will be space in the podcast description/conference brochure to link to a full biography or your Linkedin profile’.
It would be even better if you could provide what you consider to be a good example from a previous guest.
And a final word about job titles. Some make sense inside organisations but were never designed to be made public. We’re all being asked to ‘do more, with less’, which means a lot of job titles get longer as our remits increase and what were multiple regions are brought together. Think about whether your job title should be adapted for a podcast or conference appearance. All the audience really needs to know is your name, the field you work in / level of seniority and then who you do that work for. We don’t really need to understand the finer points of how your business is structured.
Put the audience first and they’ll reward you by sticking around long enough to hear more about you.
Thank you for reading.
