The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 73 - Thank You Notes

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, listeners. If you like interesting conversations with curious people in safe spaces, we would love for you to join The Long and The Short Of It Facebook group. And Pete knows the URL. So Pete, what's the URL?

Pete: I had a feeling you were going to do that. The URL is facebook.com/groups/thelongandtheshortofit. Or you can just search for The Long and The Short Of It in your Facebook app. And we also thought while we're here, we would take a quick moment to remind you of our Box O' Goodies, which is a weekly email that Jen and I send out, and it contains a bunch of useful and interesting resources relevant to that week's episode. You can subscribe to that at our website: thelongandtheshortpodcast.com. And you can also view the archive of every single Box that we've put together and sent.

Jen: So if you like goodies, go grab those Goodies. And now it's on to this week's episode.

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Today I opened my email inbox-

Pete: Woah.

Jen: -and was so delighted...I know.

Pete: Wait, shocker!

Jen: Well, that's a whole other episode, a whole other episode to come. But I was very delighted to see a thank you email from a client of mine. And as I was reading it, I started thinking about thank you notes, and how they can be really useful for getting to know ourselves better...also, how they can be a bit of a trap.

Pete: Ooh, I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. I mean, any intro where you say "inbox" and "delighted" in the same sentence has me very intrigued. So this must be worth unpacking some more. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Yes, I'm committed to doing an episode about email-

Pete: Okay.

Jen: -in the near future.

Pete: Let's do it.

Jen: Because listeners, you don't know this, but for the last two years, Peter and I have been recording little snippets of Jen's email saga. And it is possible that the saga is coming to an end. We'll see, stay tuned.

Pete: I think we've tried four times, maybe, to record an episode about this. [laughter] And it just ended up in little three minute clips.

Jen: Oh my gosh, it will be a delight when we finally edit those together. But in the meantime...

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: ...today's email was from a client of mine who is experiencing a very successful run of a production that she's starring in right now. And she wanted to tell me all about it, and say thank you. So she went on to share all of these very specific, meaningful ways in which our interactions contributed to the successful performance that she's giving. And then she closed it by attaching a link to a newspaper article that had been written about her, and she said, "All of this is because of you.".

Pete: Wow.

Jen: And then I was like, "Woah, these are the two sides of a thank you note.". So, what I'd love to share is that another friend of mine, about a year ago, told me that he had had a major breakthrough after reading a thank you note. He was writing something, and someone had sent him a thank you note thanking him for something specific that he had previously written in his work. And this little thank you note was so specific that it unlocked in him the thing that was his superpower, and the thing he was writing about that he had lost complete awareness of. So since he told me that, anytime someone sends me a thank you note in email form, I tag it. And I've got, like, a little folder of thank you notes. And when I get a hard copy thank you note, it goes into this special drawer at work.

Pete: Wow.

Jen: And if I'm feeling stuck, I can look at those and remind myself of when things are going really well, what does someone point out? And then I can sort of lean in to that strength.

Pete: Well, let's pause there because this is like a moment where we have the same brain, which happens quite a bit with you and I.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: Because I'm not sure if...I don't know if I've ever told anybody this, but let's do it. So I have a, I have a, like, folder on my phone of screenshots of essentially what you just described: thank you notes, or nice messages, and pieces of feedback that people have sent me that are specific around, "You did this thing," or, "You said this thing," or, "Your particular strength in this way helped me see x, y, and zed.". Like, really juicy bits of feedback that I look at every now and then. Not to, like, pump up my own ego, but to like remind myself of my unique contribution, to remind myself of my unique strengths which, as a human being, we forget sometimes. And that, that aha moment that your client had that you described, of like uncovering a blind spot, or not realizing that you had a particular strength until someone actually called it out for you, that's happened to me multiple times. So, yeah, isn't that wild? So I, yeah, I have, I have a collection of screenshots. And I still take them. Some of them are from you. And every now and then I'll like go back and look at them. So, there you go. We have the same system.

Jen: Well, I love that. So it reminds me a bit of the Why Discovery process, or the Reflected Best Self Exercise that Adam Grant does.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: Where you can look at...if you think of the thank you notes or kind messages as data, you can go back in and look for repeated themes and patterns in the data and actually really learn something about yourself.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So I would encourage our listeners, if you've never gone back and looked at thank you notes someone has sent you, go back and see if you can find a theme in there. Because for me what was, what was enlightening as I looked back over some kind notes from several different people who I had interacted with in totally different scenarios, a theme that came up was standing up for themselves.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: That something that I had said to them made them want to speak up on their own behalf, or stand up for themselves, or draw a line in the sand, or something to that effect. That is not something that would ever have occurred to me as part of my contribution. I think of my contribution (you know, because I'm a, I'm working mostly with creatives), I think maybe I had falsely limited myself to the idea that I'm always making some sort of creative contribution, or helping someone to be more creative. And this felt much more cut and dry, like stand in my power, stand in my integrity. And I was like, "Wow, now that I know that I've helped someone to do that, I definitely want to do more of that.".

Pete: Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So the example that comes to mind for me, like so clearly, is when someone...someone said to me a few, it was only a few years ago, something along the lines of like, "Your presence has the ability to change the energy in a room.". And I was like, "What are you talking about?". [laughter]

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And they went on to describe, like, examples of how that's played out, in a really positive way. And what I got noodling on was like the flip side of that, which is like: now I can be mindful that if I'm flat, or if I'm tired, or if I'm, like, in a bad mood, or something's annoying me, people can really read that. And it can change the emotion or the energy in the room because of how I, I guess, like physically manifest it.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And so, like, now I can be even more self-aware and even more mindful of how I literally show up on Zoom, or in a like meeting room, or in a boardroom, or like just with friends. That for whatever reason...I guess because I'm quite extroverted, and I move around a lot, and use my hands lot, my, one of my characteristics is that I can alter the energy in a room in a way. Which feels weird to say that out loud, but it's an example because, I think, for both reasons. One is: oh, that's a unique strength. So like, stepping into that when it's the right time, and leading a room, or facilitating, which is what you and I do a lot of. But like, also being self-aware enough to recognize the flip side of that, which is like: if you're flat you could, you could potentially, like, flatten a room. So, just be aware of that.

Jen: When something is true, the opposite is also true.

Pete: Exactly. Right. And, but...it's just so, it's so fascinating how unaware we are of our strengths. I've riffed and ranted about this before. And Adam Grant, I think, is a great example of when he talks about this. Which is, he talks about sending an email or a message to...I think he says like ten to fifteen close friends or family, and just saying to them, like, "Can you tell me a story about a time when I was at my best?". And then you look at the stories and you look for patterns. And I've done this with clients before, and it always blows my mind to realize how we diminish or don't see our unique strengths. So this is all just, it's all just an exercise in self-awareness, I think.

Jen: So the other side of this is being the person doing the thanking. And when you recognize how impactful your thank you, with specificity, could be for someone else...it is an incredibly generous act to send that note, to send that email, to write the letter, to send the text. Because your two sentences calling out something specific about the way someone might have helped you, or made an impact on your life could be the two sentences they needed to read in order to have a major breakthrough.

Pete: Yeah. This is good finding, right? And I think the, the specificity is so important here. And I think this is why Adam Grant's prompt to tell us to ask for a story is really important because it promotes, or encourages specificity. Because we've all received a generic compliment before, which may be well-intentioned but is easy to brush over. Like, "Oh, you're such a great friend.". Or like, "Thanks for being so supportive.". You know, like...I mean, cool. But it's also very generic. Whereas someone who takes the time and the energy to just like specifically call out: when you did this thing, it made me feel this way, and the impact was blah...that can really help people. And, in fact, that framework I just described is the FBI framework, right, for giving feedback. Which is the Feeling, the Behavior, and the Impact. If you can cover off those three things when giving feedback, or saying thank you, it goes a long way to helping be more specific.

Jen: Yes, and in the words of Brene Brown, "Clear is kind.".

Pete: Brene! Yes. Clear is definitely kind.

Jen: Okay, so there's one other angle I want to look at this from, and this was the closing of the beautiful note that I got today, which was...I'm paraphrasing, but it was in essence like, "This is all because of you.".

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And this is where expressing gratitude has to walk the fine line between giving gratitude and giving up your own accomplishment. Like, yes, I had conversations with this person. Yes, we had work sessions. But she did all of the work. She did all of the hard part. I might have given some prompts, or some encouragement along the way. But if she hadn't taken it upon herself to let the rubber meet the road, to do the hard part, to find her courage, none of this would have happened. It all would have been a theory. But she turned it into a practice.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: So I'm looking forward to sending her this episode, and saying thank you for the thank you note, and, "You should know that you're the one who did it. It's all because of you.".

Pete: Yes. Okay, this is juicy. So I had a conversation with a client yesterday, actually, about this exact thing. Which was around, can you change people? And I'm trying to remember my exact reply. But it was essentially what you described, which is: you can help someone try and create change in themselves, but they have to create the change in themselves. And-

Jen: Yes.

Pete: -how I think about this in terms of coaching, for example, is our role is to open doors and turn on lights, to offer a unique perspective, to give them the tool or resource to see something differently, but ultimately they have to walk into that room. So I can open the door and I can turn the light on, but they have to walk into the room and do the thing, or make the change, or, you know, create the project, whatever it is, whatever the example is. But I think this is so fundamentally important, which is: we can help people see things differently, we can offer perspectives, but, like, change is internal. A change has to come from a decision to create change ourselves, and then like stepping into that. And so like, there's that. And the other thing I would say is, I think this is like, this is a struggle of a lot of generous people. Which is-

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: -we, we project the change on someone else as a way of saying thank you, without necessarily like stepping into the fact that, and patting ourselves on the back, for being like, you know, "Great job on walking into the room. Jen helped me turn on the light, but like, I did some good work here. I stepped into that.".

Jen: I'm just connecting the dots between this conversation and a conversation I was having with my husband yesterday-

Pete: Connect!

Jen: -about one of the things, one of the things that just drives...[laughter] well here it is, Jen's, you know, favorite statement, "One of the things that drives me crazy...".

Pete: Yes! Our favorite segment on the podcast.

Jen: ...is when, yeah, is when I see a coaching colleague in my industry take credit for someone else's success.

Pete: Ah. No, no no.

Jen: When they'll post something on social media like, "Congratulations to Peter Shepherd, who booked such and such a job because I coached him.". It's like, that feels so, that feels so gross to me.

Pete: Oof.

Jen: And I don't know if somehow we have trained ourselves to credit other people with the hard work that we are doing on and for ourselves. But my hope is that the people listening to this will recognize that gratitude doesn't have to be disempowering. And you can be completely empowered and share gratitude at the same time.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, and also, I wonder if...just like noodling on that, I wonder if like self-gratitude is a thing. Which is like, "I am grateful for…"-

Jen: Yes!

Pete: "I am grateful for my decision to step into the thing that Jen helped me see, and actually, like, follow through with it.". As well as being grateful for Jen helping me turn that light on, but like, "I am grateful for having the guts, or the gall to actually step into it.". Self-gratitude. Huh.

Jen: Yes, yes, yes. So as the year is getting off to a great start, as the decade is fresh like freshly fallen snow before us, no footprints yet set in it, how might we all level up our good finding game, get specific about the ways in which we want to call out the good work other people have done on our behalves, and also claim ownership of the fact that the hard work to change our respective lives is the work that we each individually have to do to find our courage, to take the learnings and actually turn them into actions so that we can all continue growing, continue moving forward in a way that feels empowered.

Pete: And with that incredibly beautiful summary and generous framing, I want to challenge everyone out there listening to take a moment to send three messages, texts, emails, phone calls, face to face interactions, whatever, and give someone some specific good finding. Thank them for what they helped you see, and then thank yourself for stepping into it.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.