Microsoft, Starbucks, and your name.

What an excitement! Microsoft has announced a new feature called Meeting Recap. If you are a Teams Premium customer, get ready to change your work habits or at least your meeting habits. The important news for you is that if you missed a meeting because you had to pick up your child from daycare, attend another meeting, or simply had to leave a meeting before it ended – it’s all good, no disaster happened.

The Meeting Recap feature allows you to revisit the conversation transcript, skip between different segments identified in the video recording, review tasks identified during the meeting (consider yourself warned—someone might have assigned you one while you were absent!), and pinpoint important moments for you—when you left the meeting and when someone mentioned your name. You can search the transcript and enjoy a personalized search engine tailored to your needs, along with a daily, stylish, personalized email summarizing all relevant findings. So many goodies! These capabilities, powered by artificial intelligence, are becoming available to the public. How wonderful! I had the privilege of being part of this "enterprise," and I’m definitely excited for the MSAI team in Israel about this announcement. Microsoft tells us this is just the beginning, and there are many new features ahead—we're only scratching the surface.

Why does this story work? Why is this product good for you? This capability addresses our desire to be more productive and effective (Microsoft claims it can shorten a 60-minute meeting to just 5 minutes of recap work) and helps us deal with the fear of missing out (maybe a touch of FOMO in the workplace). Now we have a tool that helps bridge potential gaps, supports our desire to maintain and build working relationships, and quickly catch up on what we've missed—we all want to stay in the loop. But more than that, it’s a personalized feature that connects the topics of conversation to us and links us to the people and events within the conversation itself.

Among all the wonderful features on the list, one stands out in its uniqueness—you can skip to the moments when your name was mentioned during the meeting. This personal feature "plays" directly into your brain activity. It's your opportunity to see and check who mentioned you and how many times. This act of checking may reflect your desire to know how much you were missed, how important you are even when you're not present, and when and in what context others refer to you. It can perhaps be compared to checking the number of likes you've received on your post, but this time it's expressed verbally during a meeting and is connected to you and your contributions. Have you ever wondered how many "followers" you have during a meeting? You can start checking now.

Dale Carnegie, an expert in human behavior, said, "Remember that a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language." If you want to show that you care, whether it's a new friend you're meeting or a future boss who interviewed you, mentioning their name in the middle of the conversation will certainly send a spark of interest from you to that person. We all understand this, and we are all already on our way to check if our names were mentioned in a meeting or, perhaps even more importantly, to mention the names of others!

In a study conducted by Dennis Carmody and Michael Lewis from the University of Medicine in New Jersey using fMRI technology, the patterns of brain activation in response to hearing a person's first name were examined, compared to hearing the names of other people. They demonstrated that there is a unique brain activation that occurs when a person hears their name. Additionally, they showed that the activation patterns when hearing your own name are similar to those reported when people make judgments about themselves and their personal qualities, involving areas of the medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal cortex.

Customer service and sales professionals understand that mentioning the client's name creates a sense of commitment on the other side and automatically shifts them to a different level of attention. Teachers use this technique to capture students' attention. Those who are aware of this phenomenon might start the day with "Good morning, Yoram," rather than just a brief "Good morning." Some may even go further and mention the names of my children and partner—expressing interest in them by using their first names.

Hearing your name triggers a chemical reaction and evokes positive feelings. Hormones such as dopamine and serotonin are released in the brain when your ears register that your name has just been spoken aloud. This surge of excitement delights people and sends unconscious signals like empathy, trust, and compassion to the subconscious mind. Using someone's first name makes them feel valued, respected, and included.

Wait, caution! If you mispronounce someone's name, you might make the listener feel invisible or insignificant. People can feel unheard, hurt, attacked, or unimportant. A mispronunciation can trigger a response of micro-aggressiveness, as the person may feel marginalized, unseen, or unworthy. In a study conducted by Tracy Rank-Christman and her colleagues, they found that in a personalized market (based on customer names), there is increased consumption. Conversely, "misidentifying a name in the market" reduces consumption as a defensive reaction to a perceived threat to personal identity.

Names that appear "foreign" or "unusual" in a particular geographical context (like Chinese names in a Western environment, and vice versa) may often be mispronounced. People might choose to simplify their names, shorten them, or adopt new names just to fit in better. Have you ever invented your Starbucks name? Some do this for privacy reasons, but many simply feel uncomfortable when the barista mispronounces their name.

So the next time you walk into a meeting with a Starbucks cup that has a name that's not really yours, and you mention your partners' names during the discussion (or, conversely, you don't mention their names at all) – remember that there's another layer of products and messages happening beneath the surface. Whether you intend it or not, technology maps your references and creates reinforcement or harm for your colleagues.

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Photo: JTA Illustration by Grace Yagel