This blog is inspired by a student who I taught at the Eastern Institute of Technology during 2017. I received a short note from this student a few days ago, in which she expressed her gratitude for the support that I gave her during a particularly challenging/ problematic phase of her studies last year.
Her note got me thinking about various people who I still think fondly of after many years of not having seen them; versus those who I don’t have an urge to see again before my time on this planet is over. Specifically, I reflected on how I “felt” about those people who still live-on in my “favourable memory”.
In my experience, I have a longer memory of how people made me “feel” when I interacted with them, compared to my memory of either any actions that they may have performed for me or what they said to me. And it is these “feelings” that I have when I reflect on my past associations with people that leads me to assign them to my “favourable memory”, versus let them fade from my memory.
Where relationship formation and nurturing is concerned, and as I have coached various directors/ business owners over the years, “how” we say what we have to say is just as important as the content of what we communicate. And if we understand this principle, then we understand the power of “impression formation” when in the company of another person. After we finish interacting with another person, what we said and did in their presence won’t be remembered so acutely as how we made them “feel” at the time.
So if you want to earn respect from people who you hope to influence with your views (e.g. in a leadership role, when selling a product/ service to a prospective customer, etc), think hard about – and put lots of effort into – “how” you engage with others ; for it will be the “manner” in which you engage with them that will be remembered far beyond what you said to them or did for them.