Underestimating the power of gratitude

permalink

I recently stumbled over a short article by Christian Jarrett which was titles ”Underestimating the power of gratitude – recipients of thank-you letters are more touched than we expect”. It made me stop and think about how important that actually is for me always. It is not even much of an effort to say thank you in a short email to my attendees, partner and speaker at beyond tellerrand. I am happy that many of those I have written a short note to actually come back to me and thank me for this note then again. Partners (other people also say sponsors) tell me, they are surprised to get such a lovely note with a short wrap-up about my impression of their booth and that I even picked some photos for them. I think that is the way it should be, isn’t it?

[…] our fear of awkwardness can lead us to misjudge what is in our own best interests, such as underestimating how much we will enjoy interacting with strangers.

In the article, I read, that often misjudgement and underestimation of what those short emails can do are the reason for the possible sender not to send those emails.

I can only encourage you to simply start doing this, if you not already do it. It is not much work to quickly write a short thank you in an email, tweet, blog post … whatever. Even a short call, if you think that you should get in touch to say thanks was never easier than these das: pick up your mobile phone and do it. You’ll be surprised how much a positive reaction to your action will give you.