Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Introduce yourself by name.

I was sitting in a meeting that had started five minutes earlier. The person to my right was presiding over the meeting and was talking without pause. I recognized enough of what he was saying to know that I was in the right meeting, but I didn’t know anyone in the meeting. I had never seen any of them before, and I didn’t know any of their names.

Something spurred me and I said something like, “I don’t know anyone here. Could we go around the table and introduce ourselves? My name is Dwayne Phillips.”

The person presiding raised his eyes towards me, his eyebrows lifted several inches, and he exclaimed, “You’re Dwayne Phillips? I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks, but I couldn’t find you in any of our systems. I need to talk to you!”

Our lives, the person presiding and me, changed in that moment. We worked together for the next ten years on various projects. All because I said,

My name is Dwayne Phillips.

Since that day I have repeated this little practice many times. It changes everything. I am not sure why, but I have seen it work well too many times to forget it.