thank you

i appreciate you

I’m being reminded about the importance of gratitude this week. As someone who has had brushes with mental illness here and there, I’ve come to practice many gratitude rituals as a tool to keep myself sane. Given the almost purely selfish motivation for being a more grateful person, it has shown to have far more impact on other people’s lives than mine. (Of course, that forms a feedback loop which makes me feel even better about myself.) I’d like to share three stories from my week where this practice taught me something about myself and others.

1. Our colleagues are not used to receiving thanks (maybe for anything)

I unexpectedly ran a retrospective for a management team this week, so I quickly whipped out a notebook full of previous retro plans and chose one randomly. It happened to include a section where everyone writes down an appreciation for another person or team, and most of those written by this team were for each other. It was lovely to see (and not an unusual occurrence in this particular retro). After two people were appreciated, with no response other than discomfort, I suggested that now would be a good time to say thank you back. It deflects some of the positivity back to the giver and gives the receiver something safe to say.

Everyone receiving the initial appreciation was taken aback and became quite bashful. One even went so far as to say they were unused to and uncomfortable with receiving thanks. Give yourself a moment to think about that statement. These are adults who have families, friends, and colleagues, yet even with all those people in their lives, they aren’t used to receiving genuine displays of gratitude.

2. Appreciation breeds appreciation

Everyone in an office, by nature of the work they do, knows more about their part of the organisation than nearly anyone else. I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of going to someone else (maybe even repeatedly) to ask them to do something for us that we rarely do, and they do quite frequently. I’m also sure that we’ve all said a half-hearted thank you that came more from social custom than it did from genuine appreciation of the time and effort that person gifted us. So how about making an impromptu thank you to that person?

This week I spontaneously thanked a person I’ve probably asked one too many favours of recently and acknowledged that I had done so. The appreciation I received for acknowledging this far outweighed all the thanks I’ve ever given to this person. They thanked me, wished that other people were so appreciative, told me a secret, and said how good it was that I was on the team. So, if you’re feeling a little unloved by your colleagues, I thoroughly recommend showing some appreciation to someone; you might just get the love you’ve been lacking.

3. Gratitude steers people in the right direction

As leaders, we often find ourselves in the position of needing to correct behaviour. Telling people how we don’t want things done and requesting them to be done differently can be a big part of the role. However, we need to watch out that we don’t become people who always appear with a negative attitude. Taking the time to tell individuals and teams that the new behaviours and attitudes you’re seeing are the ones you want to see and how much you appreciate them and their efforts, can make the difference between a team who pays lip service to you and a team who will follow you off a cliff.

This week one of the teams I’m supporting has made a huge push to alter course, and they have successfully come together as a team to understand their current situation and plan how they’re going to get out of it so they can meet their delivery deadlines. It was a tough week to get to that point; they all worked hard and pushed through it. And so I told them this. I let them know that I recognised and appreciated these efforts, that I suspected there was still a lot more work to do to get through the chaos we’re currently in, and that I see a light at the end of the tunnel. My hope (and experience with other teams) is that this small exhibit of gratitude will keep them motivated for the next week of hard work we have ahead. Given the rest of my experiences this week, I suspect they may not have seen much gratitude elsewhere in their work before now.