Saying your name

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When you introduce yourself, don’t through your name out a mumbled string of syllables. It is difficult for those whose culture is not the same as yours to catch your first and last name (or others).

Say: My name is (short pause) <firstname> (one second pause) <lastname>.

It will be more memorable for everyone.

I am quite bad at remembering people’s names. A trick to help yourself is to use the name immediately in the first sentence you speak to them after they introduce themselves. “So Francis, what do you think about X?”.

I usually need to get to know a person first and build up some mental image of a person. That helps the person stick in my memory. That will be quite a bit later than when the time of exchanging names. However, I find usually people are not so offended if you say an hour or a day later: “Remind me, what was your name again?” It seems more important that you try.

Resources

Here is the video where I got the “say your name” from:

And two more videos on speaking clearly and slowly:

You can also undermine your communication by having a poor or uncalibrated microphone in telecon (Zoom) sessions. Test it occasionally by connecting both your phone and your laptop to the same session. Use headphones to listen from one device how the microphone picks up your audio. A laggy video, a oversteered or rough audio is similar to poor choice of dressing at the work place – it makes you look like a person who does not care how they appear to others. A crisp sound makes you appear more professional.

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