A Best Practice - Showing Gratitude

Do you want to see absolute leaps in performance and relationships in business and life? Build practices where people think and feel they are appreciated and acknowledged.

So, how can we show and share gratitude? Let me give you a few techniques that have worked for me and then perhaps some of you would like to share how you are measuring gratitude.

Write Thank You notes to employees.

One practice I adopted years ago was to acknowledge employees thanks from customers. I would make a copy of the thank you note or write the thank you that a satisfied client shared and then give the original thank you note to the employee and kept a copy for my file. At the end of the year, I often had more than you notes than dings for performance appraisals. Employees enjoyed their performance appraisals because now they had been appreciated and well as supported in their areas for improvement. A much more productive experience for all.

Write Thank You notes to customers.

I once received a wonderful thank you note from a company that provide me with extraordinary service. The note shared how they enjoyed working with me and valued my desire to honor them with my business. I still do business with that same company and still enjoy opening the thank you notes.

Write Thank You notes to family and friends.

This one seems obvious, but honestly, I started this practice last. Often times, I am ashamed to say that I was not as forthcoming in writing Thank You notes to my closest family and friends. I still remember a phone call I received from my mother after I had sent her a thank you note for being there in a particularly tough time. Acknowledging tangible gifts of money, etc. is easy. Saying thank you for the really meaningful gifts of time and thoughtfulness certainly meant a great deal more to her.

Send Thanksgiving Cards.

I had a wonderful executive mentor who always sent Thanksgiving cards, a practice that I have adopted over the past few years. I love sending these cards to family and friends. My list keeps growing. Each year I am receiving more and more Thanksgiving Cards. Warms my heart and certainly helps me to stay in touch with clients, contacts, family and friends that I don’t see often enough.

Do you see any value in building more consistent practices that promote genuine appreciation? Any other suggestions for what and how we might build best gratitude practices? I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

A Business Imperative: Focus On HEALTH as the Essential Element

To succeed today in business factors have to be in play. There is tremendous focus, realistically so most times, but not compulsively so all the time, on the financials, the products, the tangibles. Yes people are always a forerunner but let’s be honest, often times people are mentioned as a focus in terms of production, service, efficiencies, labor costs which include those pesky health benefits. We control, monitor, measure, all in attempts to become leaner and as a result do become meaner. This does not translate into being more effective, more customer/employee/stakeholder friendly.

The business imperative now becomes, how can I optimize the most valuable asset of the organization – the people?

Let’s start by creating a clear definition of health – and no you don’t have to be a doctor or a nurse or therapist - to understand health, but you will need their expertise and advice to help you create a healthier workforce.

Health is elusive to define and ways of thinking about it have evolved over the years. Three leading approaches include the "medical model", the "holistic model", and the "wellness model":

· The medical model emphasizes treating specific physical diseases. Subsequently today a typical definition of health is “the absence of disease and the presence of high levels of function.”

· The holistic model of health is exemplified by the 1947 WHO (World Health Organization) definition, "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".

· The wellness model was developed through the WHO health promotion initiative. The definition that resulted "The extent to which an individual or group is able to realize aspirations and satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living; it is a positive concept, emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities." (Health promotion: a discussion document. Copenhagen, WHO, 1984.)

Becoming a central focus, HEALTH now supports all aspects of life, not the just the physical aspects. As the essential element, Health emphasizes additional aspects social, family, ethics (includes spirituality or religion), mental, career, financial and life’s purpose (consider Viktor Frankl’s classic book, Man’s Search for Meaning). The Business Imperative - treat HEALTH as the Essential Element for individuals, companies and communities to not just survive but thrive.

Laura and Judy