When you ask someone a favor, and they comply. Say thank you for gosh sakes.
Does This Ever Happen To You?
There’s a good chance I’m wrong. I hope I am. He could be offline for days (sick? injured? hiking in the outback?), or maybe my email did not get through to him, or his grateful response did not get through to me. That certainly happens.
Last week “he” left this message on my contact form (I conceal his identity for obvious reasons):
This is an enquiry e-mail via http://www.christopheravery.com/ from: xxxx <xxxx@xxxx.xxx>
Hello Chris, I attended your 3 hr workshop on responsibility at Agile2009. I work as an Agile coach. I’ve been working with a team for about 3 months now, and I’d like to introduce the Responsibility Model to them and help them learn how to take responsibility more.
I have a retrospective with them on Monday, which is 1.5 hours long. That gives me at most 1 hour to work on this topic. I have your worksheet, but still not sure how best to incorporate the information there in that amount of time.
Suggestions?
Thanks,
xxxx
I believe everyone who calls or emails me with a legitimate interest deserves a response. So I made time to reply that very day:
Hi xxxx,
Thanks for your query. I’m honored.
First and foremost I recommend you get The Leadership Gift Toolkit which will get you into our Leadership Gift e-program and community of leaders and coaches who are applying and mastering responsibility. This program will give you bunches of support and ideas about how to introduce the Responsibility Process to groups. And you get at least 4 touch points with me every month to address questions like this one.
I offer preview calls every month if you want to check it out…
All that said, I recommend you (1) propose personal responsibility as a team principle and agreement, and, before discussing it, (2) teach the model by drawing it on a flip chart level by level starting with Lay Blame and progressing to Responsibility. Recall the most important distinctions about the Responsibility Process that you can recall, and teach those. Then, (3) ask for agreement to “Do our best to operate from personal responsibility.”
Let me know how it goes!
All my best,
Christopher
P.S. I looked at your site and appreciate the work you are doing. You make a great addition to the Leadership Gift community. Let me know what it would take to get you involved.
This is 10 days later and there has been no response. How long does it take to hit reply and type t-h-a-n-k-s?
Am I keeping score? No (meaning I am still going to give away lots of value for free and respond as I can to people who ask me for favors). Is there a part of me that will remember who says thanks and who doesn’t? You bet.
Remember to say thanks.
Practice Tip
Every time you ask anyone for anything (“Please pass the salt”) consider that you’ve opened a loop that is closed with an appropriate Thank You when they do as you ask.
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Christopher – you have made a good point. I think people say “Thank you” too seldom. I live in Europe and my US friends have told me that they usually do not write back “thank you” because this is a waste and not important message. Same feedback I got from some of my EU collegues. How much easier and more pleasent the life would be if people say/writie a small simple “thank you”. Doesn’t cost a lot…
Anja, that’s an interesting justification your friends make, that replying with “thank you” is inefficient. I sense it is a common justification though as you say. However, I believe the opposite, that saying “Thanks” is one of the most efficient uses of our relationship time and attention.
Just for fun, I was searching on my morning walk with my family and our dogs for an analogy about efficiency and resources. What I arrived at was the idea that it must be similarly inefficient to prime a pump (what a waste of precious water). Then I realized that the efficiency claim rests on a resource actually being scarce, but a relationship is not a commodity.
Thanks for your spark…