Successfactors of a Leader – Remembering Names
December 10th, 2008 Gireesh Sharma
Sometimes back I wrote a post ‘What’s in the name? SuccessFactors for HR‘ where I mentioned the special skill of an HR manager who knows every employee by name. While I was reviewing a new feature in the software EmpXtrack, called Employee Hierarchy (similar to an Organization Chart), I recollected a motivating incident.
It was in the beginning of year 2002, I worked with a business process outsourcing organization. One day I was working quite late and trying to finish a training project before leaving for the day. The Managing Director, Mr. Aashish, just passed by and saw me. Five minutes back, he came back to my desk and said ,”Hi Gireesh, why are you working so late today?” The rest was a normal chit chat.
This incident left me highly motivated for many months to come. I was amazed by the fact that my Managing Director knew me by name, while I was merely a grass-root level executive, almost a nobody in the organization which was 2500 big. Sometimes later I discussed this incident with my manager and he revealed that on seeing me working so late, MD has called him just to ask my name.
Later on a friend’s recommendation I read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. In this book Dale Carnegie (Section “Six Ways to Make People Like You”)says, “Remember that a man’s Name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”, which highlights how important it is to remember and call people by name.
Posted in HR Best Practices, HRMS (HRIS), Human Resources | No Comments »
Despite working hard, their performance was going down and impacting organization’s bottom line.
