T’is the season to be thankful. Most people I know are relatively good at expressing gratitude for their own lives, health, families and such. Even those who have had a very difficult year somehow manage to understand their great good fortune in the larger scheme of things.
Most of us, though, aren’t very good at expressing gratitude to others. My clients are usually professional, often male, and frequently members of the Baby Boom generation. These clients run successful law firms, accounting firms, associations, and companies. They shoulder great burden and reap great reward. They share their successes with team members and sometimes inspire people to do better. They’re often masterful writers of emails that thank the firm or groups within the firm.
But when it comes to giving personal, eye-to-eye thanks, they clam up. It’s not in their training or nature to look directly at someone in a quiet moment and express their genuine, heart-felt gratitude to another person. My clients feel it, I am certain; but expressing it is just so difficult for them. There can be no question that this represents a lost opportunity to do better and to feel better.
So, for those of you who carry great appreciation in your minds and hearts, I offer this: risk exposing your emotions for the short time it takes to look one person in the eye, to say thank you, and to tell that great team member how much he or she means to you and to your organization. Don’t worry about how smoothly the words come out or whether you blush. Just do it. Your employees and partners will see you at your very best: opened, maybe a little humbled, and filled with gratitude. And you, in turn, will see them at their best: opened, maybe a little humbled, and filled with gratitude.
I could go on at length about what such an act does for an organization’s culture and profitability, but I think you already know.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. As always, thank you for reading.
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