Use These 4-Word Phrase Instead of ‘Thank You’

How to Cause People to Do the Unthinkable for You While Smiling

It’s a known fact that gratitude can be a powerful way of appreciating someone or a group for doing something remarkable. It can also be used as a leadership tool to help transform workplace culture and deeper inter personal connections.

According to Adam Grant and Francesca Gino, a team of human behaviour researchers, a simple 4-word phrase expression of appreciation and praise can have a powerful and profound impact on motivating and inspiring someone to do for you the unthinkable. But will a simple “thanks” do the trick?

This 4-word phrase can improve inter personal engagements between loved ones and also work relationships and help workers become more productive.

Research findings

One of Adam Grant and Francesca Gino’s field experiments focused on fundraising for a university, specifically the critical task of securing alumni donations.

If you’ve ever hit the phones to fundraise, you know it can be brutal since fundraisers often have to deal with rude feedback and frequent rejections.

Grant and Gino wanted to explore how a gratitude expression from an annual giving director could influence fundraisers’ behaviour when raising funds for the university.

Could a simple act of praise lead fundraisers to raise more donations? And what’s the magic phrase people may want to hear to go above and beyond?

The study involved 41 fundraisers at a public university in the United States. The researchers randomly assigned fundraisers to two groups: the control group, which received no appreciation or gratitude, and the gratitude group, which the director of annual giving personally visited to express gratitude for their hard work.

Four Magic Words of Gratitude

Both groups of fundraisers received daily feedback on their effectiveness; the key difference was whether or not they received a direct expression of gratitude from the director.

Here’s exactly what the director said to praise the fundraisers:

I am very grateful for your hard work. We sincerely appreciate your contributions to the university.

The four magic words that immediately pop out: I am very grateful. Not just a mere thanks or even “thank you.” Being grateful — very grateful — has much more impact and meaning, especially for a thankless job.

So, what happened as a result? While the group without expressions of gratitude showed no change in their average number of calls, those who received the warm, two-sentence expression of gratitude from their boss made an impressive 50 percent more calls in the following week. This underscores the positive impact of simple appreciative gestures like “I am grateful” on employee performance.

The Big Takeaway

Grant and Gino concluded that when people in positions of authority express gratitude, individuals are more likely to contribute extra work. In a sense, expressing gratitude makes people doing the work feel more valued.

This reminds me of my favourite Maya Angelou quote:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Bosses who make their employees feel like they matter, like they are seen and heard, will intrinsically perform at a higher level. It’s human nature.

In other experiments, Grant and Gino conducted, participants also reported feeling a greater sense of self-efficacy, meaning they perceived that they were making a more significant impact on the world around them.

As a manager, it’s important to take a moment to thank your employees and colleagues when they excel at their tasks. Simply acknowledging their efforts by saying “I am very grateful” and expressing it genuinely and from the heart can go a long way in boosting morale and motivating them to perform even better.

This goes also to all our relationships with one another, by appreciating what your friend, neighbour, wife, husband, child or a stranger has done using these 4 phrases always will give you a much more and a better response next time they have to do something for you again.

A simple thank you may seems good but most of the time never cuts it, but a sincere gratitude from your heart can have a greater impact on the receiver and trust me, when it comes to you, they will always be ready to bend back and do the unimaginable.

Let’s allow this spirit of gratitude to flow in our hearts always. This eventually makes us a better people and a genuine love will always flow among us each time we interact with each other.