The power of saying "thank you"

by Melcrum

"Thank you" – probably two of the most powerful words no matter what
your language. My grandson is two years old and the other day I watched
the smile that came to a waiter’s eyes when he said, "thank you" after the
waiter brought his food. I then watched as the waiter went back and shared
the story with a co-worker. The magic that occurred in that moment was
quite striking for me.

When we're young, most of our parents insist that we say "please" and
"thank you" on a regular basis. It's interesting that as we grow to be adults
and achieve success in our careers, we sometimes forget the power of those
words.

"Feeling valued and appreciated" has been a driver of employee
engagement on just about every engagement survey I've seen – yet few
companies receive high scores in this area. On a past occasion while
discussing low employee scores in the "feeling valued and appreciated"
category with an executive team, one of them looked at me and said,
"What does that look like?" and I simply said, "Thank you.” It doesn’t
necessarily take cars, trips and monetary gifts to make people feel valued.
It can be accomplished with simple words that let people know you
appreciate them and the work they do.

Here's a simple three-step recognition process:
1] This is what I saw
2] This is the impact it had
3] Thank you

Try using this once or twice a day with colleagues. You'll find it only takes
seconds and probably has a greater return on investment than anything
else you can do in such a short time.

Some other fun and easy methods that companies use to recognize
employees include:
-Writing a thank you note on the back of their business cards
-Giving people an "I got caught" (doing something good) award that's
good for admission to a pizza lunch with an executive
-Giving out magnets that can be attached to a picture frame that the
company gives as a gift

About Melcrum
Melcrum is a research and
training business, expert in all
aspects of internal
communication. Through our
global networks, we connect
more than 18,000 professional
communicators in sharing what
works. We produce
benchmarking research,
periodicals, reports,
membership websites and CDROMs
and run training courses,
conferences and workshops.
www.melcrum.com
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