As you prepare to return to your school or district after a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend I wanted to share with you ways to show your thanks to your people.
Before I do that let me share a little story with you.
I am the type of person who doesn’t need a lot of ‘atta boys in order to keep going and doing a great job for my people.
This became a problem for me as a leader. Just as a teacher needs to teach using all learning styles, even if his/her favorite is auditory, a leader needs to provide feedback as her people need to hear it.
I wasn’t great at first at showing appreciation and saying thank you. Certainly, I did it when there was a “grand gesture”, a project, or a presentation in a classroom but not on a daily.
I realized that people need affirmation and need to know they are doing a great job….because they ARE.
I believe that in our society we are almost pre-programmed to look only at what is wrong in order to fix it.
The thing is there are WAY more things going right but we accept that as the way things should be anyway.
When we flip the script and start calling out the things that are good and right the more we will see them in our organization, the more people will realize those things are valued and they are appreciated, and the more good we will see happen.
So here is how you do it:
Each day, be sure you use some of these phrases with your school family and home family. The more you do it the more automatic it becomes. Believe me when I tell you it makes a huge difference!
“Thank you for…”
“I appreciate….”
“I am lucky….”
“I noticed…(enter great thing)”
“You are amazing…”
“I was so impressed….”
“Did you know that….(enter accolade)”
That’s it. We don’t need grand gestures, we just need to show people that we appreciate them and that they mean a lot to us as often as we can.
Try it, and tell me how it goes!
In friendship, love and leadership,
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