Present a Strong Team at Your Annual Meeting

One of the more important aspects of an annual meeting are the handovers. A handover is where the speaker hands over the podium to the next speaker. The handover is also where people in the audience get to see just how well your team works together. The passing of the baton is a subtle yet important body language symbol that communicates a ton about how everyone in your firm gets along. Handovers are typically the least rehearsed, least thought through part of the meeting, so any time you invest here will pay huge dividends.

Here are a few guidelines to make your handovers flawless:

Beware of humor. I’ve seen presentations that become painful because each speaker’s handover is a vain attempt to say something funny or cute about the next speaker. The comment is usually inside humor that no one in the audience gets. And sometimes the “humor” gets biting and embarrassing about the next speaker. Stay clear.

Beware of stealing the next speaker’s punch line. Let’s say the next speaker is going to announce that a certain fund she manages made a billion dollars in the past year. Don’t let the handover to that speaker be “now Jane will tell you how her XYZ Fund made a billion dollars last year”. It ruins everything.

You can use the handover to build credentials. If you are an acknowledged genius in a certain area that you are presenting in, you can’t say that about yourself, but the person introducing you can.

The nod handover. Not every person needs to have a lot to say about the speaker up next. Sometimes it’s enough to just nod and the next speaker stands and starts. Another version is to just say the next speaker’s first name. This works better when the speaker has already been introduced earlier in the meeting.

If you are using two podiums as many annual meetings do, it’s a lot easier to just look across and nod, or even just turn to the next speaker and have them start speaking. When done seamlessly this really conveys a tight knit team.

It’s good to have a variety of handovers during the course of the meeting. Some elaborate, some giving credentials, some just a nod.

Problem/solution. Another handover is where Speaker A references a long term problem that the company has been dealing with and how Speaker B will address it.

How do you make your handovers more powerful? Ask the speaker how she would like to be introduced. There might be credentials she wants mentioned or a reference to an issue that she will address and solve, or perhaps no formal handover at all. Talk it through and you’ll see that some great ideas will bubble up.