The Art of Appreciation
It’s officially the time of year when digital marketing pros crank out expertly branded emails with subject lines that read something like:
We appreciate your loyalty! Here’s a 20% off coupon to show our thanks!
As a thank you for your patronage, you’re invited to our early Black Friday sale!
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the push for companies to generate sales numbers before the end of the calendar year. And while I love a great deal, this method of marketing and luring in buyers doesn’t make me feel valued or appreciated, rather more aware of what discount code to use when I checkout of a company’s online store.
From the time my three siblings and I were old enough to write a sentence, my mom insisted we learn to write thank you notes. Shortly after unwrapping a gift from anyone other than Santa Claus, out came a note card, envelope, and stamps to mail some words of thanks and appreciation for whomever was kind enough to give us a present. Like most children, my siblings and I dreaded this assignment. As a mom to two girls, I now suspect that part of the reason mom made us write thank you notes was to get us out of her hair for an hour or so while she recovered from the holiday chaos.
Fortunately, completing this task over time became more of a welcome part of holidays and birthdays. I remember my grandmother once telling me that I wrote the best thank you notes (as did she!), and from then on I was hooked. To this day, I’m a sucker for nice stationery and feel a swell of childlike excitement when I put a freshly stamped envelope in the mailbox, ready to make its (still very slow) trek to someone else’s house. The practice of sharing true gratitude for someone taking the time to choose a gift, wrap, and either mail or hand-deliver it brings me as much joy as I felt opening their present.
Throughout my career working with leaders to help them create more engaging cultures I learned that the most successful, inspiring leaders would take the time to write notes of appreciation and thanks to their employees. The best example of this practice: Doug Conant, bestselling author and former CEO of Campbell Soup Company and Chairman of Avon Products. I first met Doug while working at the Partnership for Public Service, where he remains an active board member to this day. Doug is famous for writing more than 30,000 thank you notes over the decade when he led Campbell’s, which at the time only had 20,000 employees (do that math).
Doug’s regular practice of recognizing, and then sharing hand-written notes of appreciation to his people is both legendary and (as he once told me) is something that every leader is capable of doing. He shared that writing notes to his people became a daily habit that was equally as important as his focus on shareholder returns and production numbers. After writing about this practice in his bestselling book Touchpoints, it’s no secret that thanks and gratitude were an essential element to Doug’s success turning Campbell’s business around, as well as cementing his legacy as one of the most influential Fortune 500 CEOs ever.
What would happen if you took a page out of my mom and Doug Conant’s handbook of success and applied it to your leadership practice? I don’t mean getting your marketing team fired up to send out the next “appreciation email” through HubSpot or mass mailing generic holiday cards that you send to everyone. How might your key customers react to you sending a handwritten card of genuine appreciation for their loyalty and business? For your employees, what might be the impact of them receiving a card of thanks for their efforts and the value they create for your organization? Be it your customers, suppliers, community advocates, or your employees, your success depends on the hard work of many. Imagine what a thoughtful note of gratitude for their commitment and contributions might do for your long-term relationship with that person. In a world where anyone can send out a mass email of “thanks,” be one of the few who put pen to stationery and share heartfelt appreciation. And, don’t forget to buy stamps.
