On our List of Twelve Aloha Virtues:
Gratitude. There may be no mightier force in our lives than learning to live in thankfulness for all we are and all we have been given. An attitude of gratitude is an attitude of aloha; The breath of life within you is meant to be shared in appreciation, thankfulness, and gratitude.
This past November we had a whole month of writing on Mahalo, the Hawaiian value of appreciation, gratitude, and thankfulness, so even I didn’t expect I’d write on it so soon again! But then we’re all about finding great tools for your management skill-set, and I just read about something gratitude-great in Marshall Goldsmith’s book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. He writes, “One of my clients taught me a wonderful technique for improvement in the area of providing recognition.”
Marshall is a big fan of simply saying “Thank you” as an answer to a plethora of different conversational situations, without tarnishing your answer with additional qualifiers or explanations which can dull the nonjudgmental beauty of just saying “Thank you” and leaving it at that.
In this particular section of his book (page 72 if you have a copy) he connects gratitude with recognition for me, and I underlined this insight, “In depriving people of recognition [of their success], you are depriving them of closure.” Such a good point. His metaphor: “Recognition is all about closure. It’s the beautiful ribbon wrapped around the jewel box that contains the precious gift of success you and your team have created. When you fail to provide that recognition, you are cheapening the gift. You have the success but none of the afterglow.”
This is the technique he learned from one of his clients, determined to give more recognition to those who deserved to hear it from him:
1. He first made a list of all the important groups of people in his life (friends, family, direct reports, customers, etc.)
2. He then wrote down the names of every important person in each group.
3. Twice a week, on Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon, he would review the list of names and ask himself, “Did someone on this page do something that I should recognize?”
4. If the answer was “yes” he gave them some very quick recognition, either by phone, email, voicemail or a note. If the answer was “no” he did nothing. He didn’t want to be a phony.
“Within one year this executive’s reputation for providing positive recognition improved from poor to excellent. He was amazed at how little time this took.”
Think about this simple technique for giving your gratitude to others within that definition I’d pulled for virtue from Wikipedia:
“Virtue is the habitual, well-established, readiness or disposition of man’s powers directing them to some goodness of act. Virtue is the moral excellence of a man or a woman … as applied to humans, a virtue is a good character trait.”
If you are a manager, this technique can be a habit worth keeping, don’t you think? Good for parents too. Good for people, period. Giving recognition is good for all of us.
Postscript: This is a follow-up to The MWA Action Sequence: Reading, Talking, Doing.
From the Managing with Aloha Coaching Archives:
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This month: A new December Tradition: Twelve Aloha Virtues.
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I haven't gotten this far in the book yet Rosa, but this is a powerful reminder for all of us. Thank you for sharing this simple success tip. Awesome stuff!
Posted by: Phil Gerbyshak | December 08, 2007 at 12:43 PM
It's a great book Phil, one I would recommend to everyone who coaches - and that means all managers too!
Posted by: Rosa Say | December 09, 2007 at 10:09 AM