What Was Your Name?
October 6, 2009
The president of a software company shows he cares about his employees by remembering their names and specific information from his conversations with them.
Motivating employees is a complicated business. But people will generally work more diligently for a boss who seems to care about them as individuals.
Many years ago, in my first “real job” after college, I was working as a software engineer at a company in Rochester, New York. The company, Sykes Datatronics, was going through some difficult times, and they brought in a new president to try and get things back on track.
His name was Ken Tingley, and one of the first things he did was to meet with all 350 employees in small groups of 8-10 people. Since we were divided between two buildings, about 20 minutes apart, this took him a few weeks to complete.
I’m sure the meeting I was in was typical. He went around the table and asked each of us to introduce ourselves, talk a little about our background, and describe what we felt were the strengths and weaknesses of the company as we saw it.
Since I was relatively new to the company, I didn’t have any breakthrough insights to offer, but I dutifully shared my observations and some personal information when my turn came up. He concluded the meeting by thanking us for our time and describing some of the changes he thought would help us be successful in the future. I shook his hand on the way out and went back to work.
About three weeks later Ken happened to be in our building and approached me from the other end of the hallway. ”Hi, Ron! How are you doing? Are you testing for your black belt soon?” I was simultaneously impressed and panicked.
I was impressed because Ken had met literally hundreds of new people in a relatively short period of time, and he remembered not only my name, but also my karate training and the fact that I was rapidly approaching black belt.
I was panicked because I couldn’t remember his name! ”Uh, hi!” I managed. “Yeah, uh, I’m testing in a few weeks, thanks for asking.” It was only after he disappeared into the elevator, that I said to myself, “Ken! Ken Tingley! That’s his name!”
I’m sure he remembered this kind of information about each of the 350 employees he spoke to, in addition to their names. I, on the other hand, couldn’t even recall the name of our company’s new president!
Whether you are the president, a manager, or an individual contributor, look for ways to make the people you work with feel special. It helps create a great working environment that makes it much easier to focus on your customers.
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