The Power of Thank You's

Never underestimate the power of thank you's and kind words.

This is something I've learned throughout the course of my life, from my father and mother respectively hounding me to write thank you's to my relatives for Christmas or birthday gifts or checks (once I got older anyway) to the insistence by people in my profession that "Thank you's go a long way towards building positive donor relationships." I've learned it first-hand -- you would not believe how touched people are to get a hand-written thank you card, even if it's just a few sentences long saying "What you did meant a lot, it helped me do this, and for you I'm grateful." I will ALWAYS be a believer in thank yous, even if it's the most mundane thing ever or you have a few hundred of them to write!

Kind words go the same way. There's this book called "The Five Love Languages" and it talks about the five ways in which people feel loved and express love: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Quality Time, Gifts, and Physical Touch. It's primarily meant as a book for couples (particularly married couples) but some of the concepts relate to all relationships. I've learned that I don't particularly need words of affirmation in my friendships and romantic relationships to know I'm loved and cared for -- with them, I often need quality time and thoughtful acts/gestures (combination gift/service). However, at work I desparately need words of affirmation. I'm not as confident in my abilities and I want to please people more, so their words of affirmation are a lot more important. People thanking me for helping with a project or telling me that I did a great job with some event or expressing their gratitude for how personable I am… those are the things I need to hear at work. People don’t nice things for me or giving me things isn’t as necessary, and HELLO we work together so “quality time” is not an issue. It’s the conversations and relationships built that way that mean the most. This is why I go out of my way to say thank you when someone helps me, to express gratitude over someone’s friendship, or to make conversation with those people who have done/said kind things to me. This is just one example of how easy it is to make things better through the simple act of acknowledging others through thanks, kindness, and conversation.