A Thanksgiving Challenge

This Thanksgiving I’m giving myself a bit of a challenge. Here’s why.

A Thanksgiving Story

I cried as I read his note.

I’ve been wrestling with how to share this with you ever since. I thought about writing about it generically but that fell flat. I couldn’t write it in a way that kept the impact. So here’s my pre-apology. This is not a “look what I did, follow my lead” post.

It’s a “Look what HE did, and OMG do we need more of that in this world!” post.

If even half of the LGL readers would just thank one person who didn’t expect it, we’d have a powerful force field of positive reinforcement for the behaviors that matter most.

Here’s what he shared

It had been 7 years since this store visit. I was his bosses’ boss driving seven hours to visit his store for a first meeting after he joined my team through a merger.

Neither of us work at Verizon now. There was no follow-up note asking for something. It was a genuine note of sincere gratitude.

I never got to tell you this or express my genuine thanks for something you did when I started my Store Manager journey when I was with Verizon. I got the store ready, changed every light bulb and dusted every fixture. You came in and had genuine enthusiasm, only to meet me at the time in a time of hurt. My grandfather was close to dying that day you visited. I remember standing in the showroom floor and Ryan informing you of what was going on personally with me and not only your look of sadness–actually you had tears in your eyes–and you looked at me and said “Why are you here?  Go home, go where you are supposed to be right now.” I never told anyone about that car ride home and how much I cried, not only tears of sadness but tears of thanks. So with that said, although the strongest most courageous man in my life passed away that day, you gave me happiness that day. Thank you is putting it lightly.

I had no idea.

My tears as I read his note where for the courage and effort he took, and for the lack of courage and effort I’ve made over the years to go back and say, “Thank you. What you did in that moment made an impact.”

So my Thanksgiving Challenge to each of us is to pick one person in our career for whom we are truly grateful… perhaps for a simple moment of human kindness… or perhaps for just a bit more and TELL THEM.

If that feels too far out of the blue, blame me;-)

I’d love to hear who you thanked and why.

I’m going to write to Ray, a Senior Vice President who took a chance on me and gave me my very first large team role in a contact center. I’m pretty sure that he has no idea of the impact he made on this growing leader.

For additional inspiration

We end our book Winning Well with a quote from Mister Rogers’s speech when he won the Emmy lifetime achievement award. Worth watching for a bit of Thanksgiving inspiration.