All It Takes Is A Little Gratitude To Make A Big Impression

Everyone likes to be acknowledged and complimented when doing something right.

One of the big differences between a good manager and a bad one is that a good manager will often acknowledge, appreciate, and compliment his/her staff when they do something right.

Bad managers mistakenly feel that if they compliment and show gratitude towards their staff that this will have some negative effect on their ability to manage and dominate them. For some reason, bad managers think its better to be detached emotionally from their subordinates than the opposite. Also, even with better managers not complimenting enough or showing enough gratitude for the work they do can make your staff feel under appreciated. This is true at home as well.

In Parenting
We like to be acknowledged and complimented when we do something right. That’s just the way we are. It helps build our self-esteem and gives us the strength to continue to do good things. It’s good for us and it’s great for our kids. Just like us, our kids need to hear frequent compliments and our gratitude for their good behavior and actions.

“Thank you Samantha for sharing.”

“Thanks for helping to clear the table you guys.”

“I am so proud of you for doing your homework right away. Good for you!”

When our kids see that their positive actions don’t go unnoticed they are encouraged to do more good. Our kids want attention. They want us to love them and they want us to recognize when they do the right things. We need to show them gratitude and compliment them often.

In Marriage
In a marriage, frequent and sincere compliments are essential to its growth and survival. We like being complimented and shown gratitude and others like to receive it from us.

Recognition for good starts at home. We often take things for granted especially if they occur on a regular basis. As a result, we make the mistake of not recognizing the good things that are done. If your husband or wife often washes the dishes and changes the baby’s diaper how often do you thank him/her for doing the work? If it’s a daily task, we don’t even think about it anymore. Yet when a spouse does something that he/she doesn’t normally do e.g. make dinner, sweep the floor, buy groceries, the other spouse will often acknowledge it.

We take it for granted when its something that happens everyday, but we shouldn’t. If the husband always changes the baby’s diaper in the morning then the wife should always thank him for doing it and vice versa.

If a Husband walks in the kitchen after giving the kids a bath and putting them to bed and notices that dishes from dinner have been washed and the table cleaned he should walk over to his wife and say, “Hey, thanks for doing the dishes.”

If the wife always does the dishes and the Husband always gives the kids a bath the wife might respond as follows, “I always do the dishes.” The husbands then in turn should say, “I know. I just never thank you for doing it and I should.” Whereas the wife might even respond “Well thank you for the acknowledgment and thanks for giving the kids a bath.”

We should always acknowledge when our spouse has done something nice even if it’s a daily task.

“Hey thanks for giving the kids a bath”

“Thanks for making me a yummy lunch”

“Thanks for doing the dishes”

“Thank you so much for taking the kids out so I could take a nap”

A simple and quick show of gratitude goes a long way. Now go and call your spouse from work and thank them for something they did yesterday.

This post was submitted to the August 27 issue of the Carnival of Family Life hosted at Sandier Pastures.

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