How to influence people ? Remember the name !
I took the idea for writing this article from one of the chapters from the book “How to Win a Friend and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. The phenomenal book was sold milions of copy, the great thing is that even though this book was written in 1936, the contents of this book are still relevant and can be practiced today.
There are ways to influence other people. It is not very easy to influence other people if you don’t know how. Not many people are able to influence other people because it’s a skill that not many people have and know how to do, even though if we are able to influence other people it will make our work easier and improve our social life. one of the chapters discussed in the book is about the importance of remembering someone’s name.
The importance of remembering people’s names
It seems trivial to remember other people’s names, but that’s just your opinion, the fact is that a person is more interested in his/her own name than the names of other people, if you call his/her name indirectly you have given a smooth.
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But unfortunately, the fast development of technology, massive short videos on social media, makes human behavior change to create impatience that affects our nervous system, making us often forget someone’s name.
In fact, if we want to establish a relationship, the ability to remember names is one of the most important skills, which is precisely because not many people can do it. We often feel happy and honored when our name is mentioned to us by a friend who is not very close and we haven’t seen in a long time. On the other hand, we usually feel bad when we forget our friend’s name. Asking is embarrassing, but not asking is curious.
Do you know what Bill Clinton and IBM CEO Sam Palmisano have in common? Yes, they are both successful, intelligent and wealthy people. But there is one other unique similarity, and that is that both of them are very good at remembering the names and faces of people they just met.
Many stories about Clinton show that he has an amazing ability, both during his campaign, as President of the United States and afterwards. His manner and demeanor when greeting, shaking hands, and holding shoulders while saying names is his unique way of imprinting people’s names and faces in memory.
Palmisano also has the same ability, being able to remember people’s names even if they have only met once and not seen each other for months. As an executive, he is known to have a wide range of contacts, in part because of this unique ability. Perhaps this is a result of his early career as a salesman at IBM and meeting millions of customers over his 30-year career to reach the CEO position.
A little tip to remember other people’s names is to try repeating the name during introductions or you can say the name every time you talk.
Let’s try to practice it, it will definitely affect your social skills.
