Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Winning friends and influencing people with their important dates

Social relationships, particularly at work, require a level of care and detail that may not always come naturally.

This week countdiso shares their tip on keeping track of others’ life details so that you can keep up with birthdays, anniversaries, and everything else you want!

So I’m not a very chatty person, and having a little small talk chat with someone is very tiring for me. I don’t remember details about someone else’s life, so I’ll often seem rude and uninterested.

This became a bit of a problem when I was in charge of 100 people, not just a problem for me, but for anyone to remember the name of 100 employees and their partners and children’s names is going to be tricky.

RTM to the rescue!

We all know we can use RTM for birthday reminders, but I needed to use it for more than that, it had to make me look good.

So, firstly I did some basics, all employee birthdays into RTM. If an employee got married then that went into RTM too as a repeating reminder, suddenly I’m the boss who remembers people’s wedding anniversaries better than they do.

If anyone mentioned it was their child’s birthday, again straight into RTM as a repeating task, with notes of the child’s name, and what they had planned.

“Hey, isn’t it little Steve’s birthday this weekend, what is he now 7, you gonna take him to Diggerland like last year?”

Suddenly I’m the boss who really cares about his employees.

Deaths in the family logged. This might seem cynical, but the loss of a close family member won’t just impact someone at the time. Knowing that it was the anniversary of a parent’s death made a difference, “Debbie is in a right mood today, something needs to be done about her, she can’t talk to me like that”, “Yeah, sorry about that but it is a year today since she lost her mother, she is probably upset”, “Oh God, I didn’t know, I’ll make her a coffee and get some biscuits”

I logged everything, employee moving house, RTM that heck out of that, in a year’s time, how is the new house coming along, must be a year since you’ve moved, everything unpacked now.

Whilst people always respected me for my decision making and work ethic, I was a manager that was viewed as grumpy and unapproachable. By making all these reminders to prompt small talk and help me remember significant (and even insignificant) events in my employee’s lives, I became a manager who was viewed as caring, understanding and very approachable.

Thanks for sharing this tip, countdiso! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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