Executive Search Etiquette: Say My Name, Say My Name

As executive search professionals and recruiters, we often encounter names of candidates that may be common to other cultures but our own. We frequently recruit executives, engineers, and other professionals whose names we are forced to pronounce apologetically because we are likely doing so incorrectly. However, there is a better way, one that will establish greater rapport simply because we have taken a moment pronounce a proper name, well . . . properly.

Before founding my execuive search firm The Good Search, I worked as a television news reporter and anchor. Back then, I made sure a treasured reference book could be found within an arms length of my desk in the news room, a pronunciation guide published for broadcasters. As I prepared for the evening's live newscast, I'd look up intimidating, unrecognizeable words that would have been impossible to enunciate correctly without the guide. Still, I regularly confronted unintelligible proper names in news stories that were breaking during the newscast.  Fortunately, I never was forced to attempt this:

These days, one can simply dial up the website PronounceNames.com on your browser. You enter whatever person's name has you flummoxed, and the website pronounces the name outloud for you the right way. Voice of America has a similar site. And the AP Stylebook is now online now includes a pronunciation guide that speaks.  In the increasingly global world of business, taking the time to show respect by getting it right can make all the difference. That is how one engages luminaries and rock stars.

Which brings to mind something that my husband, a renowned saxophonist, taught me. When a musician plays an incorrect note -- much like mispronouncing a name -- it is referred to as hitting a "clam".  When they play several wrong notes in a row, it becomes a "clam bake."  If, as Dale Carnegie once said, "The sweetest sound in the world is a person's own name", then let us make music, my friends.

Comments

[Jordan 5]

Hello!!It is my horour to see you blog.Iam agree with you,Ithink friendship is very important,so we must have a lot friend,History repeated proof: friend, health than leadership than performance than IQ, eq, holiday greetings than usual, as an important than. Space than the ground is good, to visit friends, no tickets.

[Nike Vandal]

Possibly God desires us to satisfy a couple of mistaken many people just before assembly the fitting 1 in order that once we lastly meet up with the perfect human being, we are going to know the right way to be thankful for that reward.