Happy Friday! Here’s your weekly tip on how to be more human at work

Build on the history of every relationship

I’ll start with a story from my dear friend John Wallis from his time at Hyatt. John happened to be observing a guest check in to one of their hotels. The front desk associate asked the guest — in an apparent show of personal interest — “What brings you to our hotel Mr. X?”. The guest responded “I’m here for a funeral.” And the associate responded “Would you like a newspaper delivered to your room in the morning?”

WHAT???

This is an extreme example of a phenomenon I see far too often — people failing to build the present interaction with someone on the foundation of their past interactions. In this example, the past interaction was 3 seconds earlier which is what makes the associate’s response so egregious (along with the fact that there was a funeral involved).

But this same flaw is present in many interactions. And I am frequently guilty of this myself. When we have only sporadic interactions with people, we often meet them each time as if it’s Groundhog’s Day — as if we never met them before and know nothing about them.

My credit card company does this all the time. They send me offers for their credit cards I already have or for cards that they ought to know make no sense for me.

It happens in face to face interactions as well.

I’m not suggesting we all need to have perfect memories. Sometimes we do forget. That’s also human. And there are good ways to deal with that.

Here are some tips:

If someone seems familiar but you can’t remember why…

• “You look very familiar but I’m not so good with faces. Have we met?”
• Or, “I’m pretty sure we met at the innovation conference last year. Does that ring a bell for you?”

If you remember how you know someone but don’t remember much about them…

• Well, first of all, try harder. Take notes when you meet people if possible. Keep a contact database with interesting facts about them.
• But if you didn’t do that, you can just say something like “How have things been since we last met?” That’s a little unkind because now it potentially puts them in exactly the uncomfortable situation you were in just seconds ago. But maybe it can unlock the conversation.

And when you do remember some things about them…

Just check in. For example “Last time we spoke your son was applying to college. How did that go?”

We tend to be much better about this when it comes to business details. When we’re in the process of selling (or buying) something where there’s a long sales cycle, we rarely show up to a meeting and forget where we are in the process. But when it comes to the human relationship, our memories aren’t as good.

Or is it simply that we don’t consider it as important?

Human relationships build on their history. Those are the ones you want to have. They are much stronger and more meaningful.

This message was brought to you by the humans of Rule No. 1.