Dianne Whitford“Thank you” is such a versatile phrase! After bingeing on several personal development books over the last week that have to do with behavioral changes and forming and ending habits, it occurred to me that there are three situations (at least) where you should just say thank you…and then shut up. Enjoy!
Episodes referenced in this episode:
Books referenced in this episode:
- How Women Rise [affiliate link] by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith
- What Got You Here Won’t Get You There [affiliate link] by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
- Atomic Habits [affiliate link] by James Clear
Transcript
Hey everybody. It’s Dianne Whitford from Coffee, Grit and Inspiration and this is your weekly Coffee Break podcast. It is season two, episode seven. There is no video this week. In fact, this episode is a little later in the day than I normally like to post. So I thank you for your patience. I am not feeling great today. I hope my voice isn’t too scratchy or irritating to listen to, I’m fighting off a little bit of a cold or something, but I still wanted to get a podcast in today. So I’ve been reading a bunch of books lately having to do with behavioral patterns and changing habits and things like that. And I have three books that I read in the last week that I’m really excited about that I wanted to tell you about. I will link them in the description. The first one is called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter.
The second is How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith. And the third is called Atomic Habits by James Clear. And they’re all talking about habits and how you can change them. And how they may affect your relationships and really kind of behavioral stuff. So something I noticed as I was reading through them and as I think about interpersonal habits and behavior type stuff is how versatile the phrase “thank you” is. “Thank you” expresses gratitude, it brings closure, it’s polite and it’s a great way to end a conversation. There’s three times in particular that it occurs to me that “thank you” can be a great tool to change some of the habits that we maybe want to get rid of or stop doing. So I want to talk a little bit about those three today and hopefully you find it useful as well.
So first, thank you. Instead of apologizing, one of the earliest episodes in this podcast I talked about over apologizing and how over apologizing can lead other people to see us in a way that we don’t really want to be seen. And one of the ways you can avoid apologizing is to use “thank you” instead. So for example, you’re late to a meeting. “Thank you for waiting” instead of, “sorry I’m late”. Or “thanks for your patience” instead of “sorry for the delay” or “thank you for making room” instead of apologizing if you bump into somebody, “thank you for correcting me” or “thank you, I appreciate that” when someone points out a mistake instead of saying, “Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry”. So I’ve been trying to use that. I’ve been trying to use thank you instead of apologizing and I forget a lot. It’s a work in progress, but what I’ve found is that by doing that, people appreciate being thanked instead of hearing, I’m sorry all the time when you tell somebody thank you, you’re appreciating them instead of blaming yourself as an excuse.
I appreciate saying thank you because I don’t feel like I’m blaming myself all the time, I don’t feel like I’m putting blame on myself all the time for every little thing that happens and it can feel weird. You know when you join a meeting and you say, “hi everybody, thanks for your patience.” It is a little bit weird at first, but after you use it more and more often it becomes a little bit more natural. And I feel like I’m getting better responses from people around me because of that. So that’s the first tip. Thank you. Instead of apologizing. The second is when someone gives you a compliment. And I, I’m sure that I am not the only one that finds myself arguing with someone when they give me a compliment. Like someone is trying to say something nice and here I am arguing, right? Like someone says, Oh your, your hair looks really pretty.
And I’m like, “Oh I didn’t even do it today”. Or “I like your coat” and I, “Oh I just, I got this from Goodwill”, you know, or, or “Oh I don’t even remember that I put this on” or whatever. When someone is trying to give us a compliment and we do something to invalidate whatever it is that they said. And, and the biggest problem with this is it makes us come across like we have no self esteem and no self confidence. The other thing that happens is that as soon as we launch into this whole denial, you know, you’re wrong. I’m not as good or I’m not, you know, I don’t deserve that compliment or whatever is that people start to tune us out. They’re just sitting here trying to give us a compliment and we start to argue. And so you know, we also look insecure.
We look anxious, we look, you know, like we don’t believe that we deserve that compliment and maybe that’s why we do it, but just saying thank you when someone gives you a compliment is the best response. Just like with apologizing, when we argue with a compliment, we’re telling ourselves that we don’t deserve to have something nice said about us and our brains believe it. Like we’ve talked about before. Your brain believes what you tell it and you tell it, “someone gave me a compliment and I don’t deserve it because X”, then that’s what you’re going to believe. Another example is that recently my boss told me that I did a great job on a project and I didn’t feel like I deserved that praise because one of my direct reports, one of my teammates, had done all the work. And so what I could have said, I didn’t want to appear as if I was hugging all the credit, right?
And so what I could’ve said was, “thank you. You know, Susan or whoever did a really great job”. Instead I said, “Oh no, it wasn’t me. It was, you know, Susan and she did all the work and I didn’t do anything” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just went on for a while. And not only did I undermine myself by doing that, but it’s basically irritating to hear a bunch of excuses like that when all someone is trying to do is give you a kudos. So I don’t know if this has ever happened to you before, where you’ve tried to compliment somebody and all they come back to you with is a whole bunch of reasons why you’re wrong. Why that’s not true. I don’t deserve that. Or LA LA, whatever. You’re just like, okay, whatever. So I keep that in mind when someone compliments you just say thank you, thank you, I appreciate that.
Or thank you, it was a team effort or thank you so and so helped me a lot, or whatever. You don’t have to make it look like you’re hogging all the credit, but you also don’t have to make it look like you didn’t have anything to do with it. It may be true that women do this more than men, I don’t know, but it really is hard when you compliment somebody and they launch into a bunch of reasons why what you just said isn’t really true or whatever. So someone compliments you, just say thank you and shut up. Even if you disagree, someone there, they’re just trying to be nice and they’re just trying to say something kind. So just say thank you. Third is when someone gives you feedback. So this one might be the toughest. And here’s the thing about giving someone feedback.
It is hard. The person that is giving you feedback maybe apprehensive about saying something you might get offended about. They might be concerned about hurting your feelings. They might be afraid of confrontation, they might be afraid of your reaction and when receiving feedback, it’s important that we first establish that we can handle it and b) that we don’t discourage somebody from giving us something that is so useful. We have to remember that feedback is one of the easiest ways for us to gauge if we’re doing a good job and so it’s intended to be, and we need to receive it as, a gift, as a help. Most likely the person that is giving us that feedback has our best interests at heart and they’re trying to reach out and tell us something that they hope will help us. If we get feedback and immediately try to justify or explain or refute or prove the person wrong, we’re sending all kinds of signals.
We’re saying that we don’t trust that person and that we don’t respect or care about them or their opinion that we don’t believe them or that we think our opinions about our own work are the only thing that matters and it’s super destructive. It’s destructive to the person that is trying to give you the feedback that’s trying to help you. It’s destructive to whatever kind of relationship you might have with that person. When someone has an opinion about how we can improve and they’re willing to share that with us, that’s a gift. They’re going out on a limb. By sharing that information with us. Now, it doesn’t mean that we have to act on every single piece of feedback or suggestion immediately or even at all. Just because someone gives you feedback doesn’t mean you have to jump up and go do that thing right away.
It doesn’t mean that you are accountable to implementing every suggestion that they have. So when someone gives you feedback or shares their opinion or gives you a suggestion, the best way to receive it is just to say thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. “Dianne, you could be a better listener”. “Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that”. I don’t have to say anything else. I can just say thank you and shut up. Not only does it let the person know, “I acknowledge, I heard you”, but it kind of ends the conversation, right? Cause it, it’s entirely possible that they could continue to go on and go on and go on and try to kind of beat me up with my own, you know, shortcomings. But if I say thank you, I appreciate hearing that and you can add, you know, let me go think about that or I’ll come back to you or let me, let me go process that or whatever.
You can just say thank you and then move on to something else. And then there’s all kinds of ways you can follow up with someone after they’ve given you feedback. And that’s actually going to be next week’s podcast. So giving you a little bit of a, of a sneak preview of what’s going to be in next week’s podcast. But for this podcast, just know when someone gives you feedback, one of the best ways you can respond is just to say thank you. We don’t have to comment or pass judgment or even have a plan to implement it right then. And the good thing about that is that the other person feels heard. They feel like you heard them, they feel they feel valued and the relationship is preserved. A lot of this stuff we talk about on this podcast does have the side effect of improving relationships and you hopefully you guys know I’m not talking about necessarily relationships between you and your significant other, but also relationships between you and your coworkers or people at work or your family members or your friends or whatever.
The relationships that we create between people are really important and I think that it’s worth doing what we can to build them up and make them stronger and so when someone gives you feedback, that is a hard thing for them. It can be a strain on the relationship depending on how you take it and saying, thank you, I appreciate that. I really do appreciate that and you don’t have to go into detail. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to pass judgment on what they’re saying. You don’t even have to really believe that it’s true at that moment, but in order to save the relationship and make that person feel comfortable coming to you again in the future, if they have something else, is to just say thank you.
So maybe that’s something to think about. Are there times when you could say thank you instead of apologizing or arguing or explaining or denying or justifying when maybe just, a “thank you, I appreciate that” could serve the same purpose and what might that change for you in the way that you think about yourself and your relationship with other people? So that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed it today. As a reminder, if you’re not getting the newsletter, you can sign up at www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. I hope you have a wonderful week. I hope you have lots of thank you’s and give lots of thank you’s and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye now.
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