The power of saying thank you

We are always getting better in our hard skills so we can be a better professional or to be able to contribute more and in a more effective way to the project, but how much time do we invest improving our soft skills to accomplish the same goal?

One very important thing of the job is to feel good with the company’s culture, with how the team socializes with each other every day, with how collaborative everyone is, and we play a key role in making this a success.

Today I just want to encourage you to do a very simple and not time-consuming thing that could create better relationships between everyone in the company: Just say thank you.

Our parents have taught us since we even couldn’t speak to say thank you constantly, but we forgot to do it frequently or simply we find it hard to do and just ignore it.

Thanking another person has the effect of making him/her feel appreciated, feel that what he/she does is important to others. This could increase their desire to keep doing it and in many cases even to improve it.

It is very usual to happen when the relationship is boss -> team member since the regular flow of work is that the boss asks for something and the team member creates a solution for it, so the boss says thanks for the obtained results. Is the same between coworkers, when someone helps another to understand something (for example) and after that he/she says thanks. However, even in those very straightforward situations we sometimes fail to thank the other person for his/her hard work.

In others kind of relationships seems a bit harder to do this, like team member -> boss but I am very sure that most of the time there is always something to be grateful for. Maybe he/she is a good communicator, is very motivator, has a lot of confidence in you, is a good mentor to you, does a lot of things that benefit the team, is very organized, give you autonomy, has a good vision, among other characteristics. Say thank you for that.

I practice this myself and I can tell you it could have a positive impact. Once I found myself thinking about all the great things my boss does every day and how amazing he is, most of those things don’t affect me directly but still those are very important things that improve the company. Out of the blue, I sent him a very short and precise text saying thank you for his hard work, he was surprised to receive this message and told me that at this moment he was dealing with so much and that this makes him feel better and be more enthusiastic about his work.

Of course, this depends on everyone personality. When you do this two things could happen: you see the results immediately or nothing. When nothing happens don’t get discouraged, just keep doing it, you will get to see the results later.

So, just say thank you every now and then, be very honest while doing it and you will perceive how the company’s culture keeps getting better every day.

Let me know anything I didn’t mention here, and also if you have any experience yourself in the topic share it in the comments.

Cheers!