When Brooke Cooper started at the Worcester Red Sox as a merchandise intern in 2015, there were days where she’d go to work in the team store and leave without talking to a single person.
Because of how the team’s stadium, then in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was set up, “the team store was so isolated,” the now 33-year-old general manager of the Triple-A minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox tells CNBC Make It. The store was physically separated from the ticket office and where the operations team sat, so on non-game days, Cooper says there were times where she would vacuum, fold clothes and manage inventory alone.
“Those days got pretty long and lonely,” Cooper says.
To stand out, Cooper says one of the first things she did as an intern was study the team’s program book. She memorized the names and faces of every single person in the front office, so when they did pass by, she could say hi and address them by their name, she says.
While she looks back on the experience “comically,” she says the strategy worked. Leaders in the front office began to know the then 23-year-old pursuing an MBA, with a concentration in marketing. That helped her land a full-time job with the team after the internship, Cooper says.
“When someone calls you by name, you naturally want to learn their name,” Cooper says. “It’s such an open invitation to have a conversation.”
In May 2024, Cooper was tapped to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Worcester Red Sox as the team’s general manager. She is the first female general manager in Red Sox franchise history.
Names are the ‘first and easiest way’ to build relationships
Calling your co-workers by their name may be more important than ever given “the increasing amount of incivility and impersonal nature” of today’s workplace, says Joyce Russell, a professor of management and former dean of the Villanova School of Business.
While it’s a small habit that’s often overlooked, “forming those relationships, starting with their name, starting to get to know something about them as an individual, is really powerful,” Russell says.
The strategy may be backed by science as well. A 2016 study published in neuroscience journal Cerebral Cortex found that our brains tend to react when we hear our names, even when we aren’t paying attention. Hearing your name can be, “a signal for social interaction,” the study said.
Not everyone will have a program book like Cooper used, but a quick search on LinkedIn to connect faces to names can foster connections in the workplace, which is important for collaboration and even personal advancement, Russell adds. That’s because using people’s names, and pronouncing them correctly, can help others feel seen, “as a human being and not just as some transaction,” Russell says.
“People really long to have a human connection with someone,” Russell says. “Using their name is the first and easiest way to have that connection.”
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