Do This and Watch Them Soar
A simple thank you goes a long way! Sometimes I think it can be easy to forget how impactful it is to show appreciation to the important people in your life. And in business, how important it is to show appreciation to your team members.
I make it my mission to give gratitude, which is the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful, as much as I can. A key part of my morning ritual is giving gratitude for all the things I am thankful for –
Today I am thankful for:
- My wonderful family and awesome partner in life
- My amazing extended family called Roma Moulding, and all the amazing people who make up this amazing brand we get to represent
- The health that I’m blessed with, and the health of all the people who surround me
- The hard work, dedication and loyalty of each Roma team member
- Our amazing partners who have help us grow and prosper, who believing in us, appreciate us, and who have supported us over the past 31 years
- My amazing little dog
Why do I do this every day? Because it helps program my mind to focus on what is rather than what isn’t. It allows me to remember what I have.
Recently at Roma Moulding we surveyed our team and asked what they would like to see more of. We got a lot of great responses, from more videos, to staff fun days and team building exercises. But the number one answer that resonated the most with our leadership team and myself was that more than anything else, our team valued feeling appreciated, and we could do more of it. We continually make an effort to appreciate our team, every day. For example, every Friday we send a “WOW of the Week”, distributed company-wide, which recognizes a team member who went above and beyond that week. But we could do more. Our team wants a section of acknowledgement and giving thanks – something we’re working on as we speak!
One of the top things we do at Roma is peer-to-peer acknowledgement. At each and every leadership meeting we kick it off with any recent wins, and we end each meeting with a gratitude section. When we first started this three months ago, we wouldn’t leave the table without acknowledging at least three people. And sometimes that was tricky. People were reluctant to put themselves out there and give thanks. But now? Three is easy and in many cases we’re up to seven or eight! We can’t stop it! And I can’t tell you how good I feel when I leave that meeting! When you end on gratitude, it leaves you with this positive energy and it totally changes your perspective.
So at our past All Hands Meeting 16, we really focused on gratitude, and showing our appreciation for all of our hardworking team members. You can view the full clip below.
After the All Hands Meeting, the energy in the building was different. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was more of an appreciative energy. I received so many comments that this was the best all hands meeting, ever. I got private messages and emails from people thanking Roma for acknowledging what they do, and because of that they vowed and promised to go even higher.
The power of thank you, and stopping to give thanks to people for doing the things they do, is free and requires no effort at all. But it is something that you can never, ever do enough of. We took this lesson out of our own All Hands Meeting, and as a company, Roma will be doing more.
Our Social Experiment:
We gave out sticky notes and asked people to write acknowledging notes of gratitude to team members, but not to leave their name on them. By the time I got out of a meeting, the notes were everywhere, all over the office, peppering desks, covering my computer screen, on the mirrors in the washrooms. Finding those was uplifting, and again lifted the spirits of our entire office.
I encourage you to try this experiment yourself! If you are thankful for someone, tell them! The worst thing that will happen is you will make someone feel incredibly awesome.