14 My Colleagues Can’t Get My Name Right
by Talisa Lavarry
What do you do if someone mispronounces your name—or worse, gets it wrong entirely? It’s certainly awkward, but it can also be offensive.
HBR received the following note from Horacio (whose name has been disguised to preserve anonymity), asking for advice on this topic. So we asked Talisa Lavarry, author of Confessions From Your Token Black Colleague and president of Yum Yum Morale Workplace D.E.I. Strategies, to respond.
Dear HBR,
How does one politely respond when being called by the wrong name? On many occasions, my boss’s boss has confused me with another colleague. Although we both have unusual names, our names are very different and do not sound similar at all. There was ...
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