When filming Star Wars, Harrison Ford was having problems saying some of Han Solo’s lines. He told the director George Lucas, “George, you can type this [stuff], but you sure can’t say it”.

Later that year, George Lucas was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay.

The first time I saw Ryan Giggs play for Manchester United, I was 19. I said to my friend “I doubt a 16 year old boy will be able to influence a match played by men”.

After 20 minutes, United were 3-0 up. Giggs had scored one and set up the other two. He’s gone on to be the most consistently good player in England – maybe Europe – over the past 20 years.

Now, it’s not often I think there are similarities between Harrison Ford and me (surprising, I know), but here’s one. We’ve both learned that …

First impressions aren’t always right

The great thing about this sentence is there are lots of applications for it. Here are ten Tips, all based on this one fact…

First impressions may not always be right, but they can be disproportionately important, so …

1. Practise the start of your communications a lot (when I’m presenting, I spend 20% of my prep time on the first 1% of my talk)
2. When preparing a document, ensure your first sentence contains the benefit of reading it
3. When preparing documents/slides, ensure the cover page/first slide looks impressive. Get it professionally designed, if need be
4. Dress appropriately
5. If you have to stand up to start a presentation, do so with pace. Don’t drag yourself up
6. When speaking, make sure your first few words are a little louder than you usually speak, so you make a clear start.

But, first impressions aren’t always right. So, ensure you are doing the best thing, not the first thing you thought of …

1. On major projects, regularly ask “what’s changed? Is there a better way for us to approach this?”
2. Think of the colleague who impresses you. Ask yourself “what is the worst thing about them?” (not so you start disliking them, but rather to ensure you’re giving appropriate – not too much – weight to what they say)
3. Think of someone who annoys you. Ask yourself if this is because they’re annoying now, or because you’re still annoyed by something they once did early in your working relations… and/or consider whether it’s worth saying to them “I don’t think we started off very well. Let’s try again”
4. When you have a brilliant idea, your first impression might be to throw loads of resource at it. If it’s a brilliant idea today, it will still be brilliant next week. Sleep on it before you start investing lots of time and money into something you shouldn’t

This Tip’s title might have suggested it would all be about Han Solo. It’s actually developed into something very different. These first impressions …

Action point

A good thing about having ten Tips is that you have ten things to choose from.

A bad thing is that you might not be sure where to start. So, you might not start.

It’s probably best to action the 1-2 Tip(s) that are most relevant to you.

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