Gratitude or Platitude?
Recently I was in a store and I overheard a lady with her child, prompting the child to say thank you to a store employee. Just as we would in the United States, here in Spain parents want their children to use good manners and to learn good habits.
I learned from my parents the basics of human decency as a child. Saying please, thank you, I’m sorry, and other polite expressions are part of the childhood process. Perhaps you remember learning these as a child or teaching them to your own children.
However, I’ve seen the look on some of those children’s faces. And I know that while they may be saying the words out loud, in their heart, they do not necessarily feel the corresponding emotion.
As adults, the same thing sometimes happens. We have learned to be polite, and so we say thank you—a lot! But saying the words “thank you” is not the same as actually feeling gratitude. In fact these can be just insincere, empty words. In my ministry experience, for example, I’ve seen many leaders /pastors with a habit of thanking volunteers or staff members without ever really expressing GRATITUDE.
What do I mean? Let me give you some examples:
Thank you is insincere when it is followed by a list of things to do “better next time.”
Imagine a husband saying to his wife, “Thank you for fixing dinner, honey. Next time, you should make it like my mother does.” The second half of the phrase completely overrides the thankfulness —if there was any! And this pattern is repeated everywhere. “Thank you for that great sermon, Pastor, but I think you should preach from the New Testament more often.” Uh, gee, how kind.
There is always room for improvement, and of course there are times when brainstorming for progress has great value, but that moment is not five seconds after you thank someone. Your “appreciation” is clearly insincere if it is served with criticism on the side.
Thank you is insignificant when it’s the stage for YOU the be the star.
“Thank you for all your hard work on that project - you really made me look good to the big boss today!” This type of back-handed gratitude cares nothing for others - it’s entirely self-centered. And yet, we use these expressions more than we realize. Expressions of thankfulness should be focused on the other person, and not on ourselves. There are ways to reframe the sentence to make the other person the focus. “I appreciate that you went the extra mile, that you took on extra responsibilities, that you sacrificed your own time... you’re a valuable member of the team.” Also, these types of gratitude provoke our true understanding of their efforts! Which leads us to the next one...
Thank you is insufficient when it is so general that it fails to adequately recognize the extent of someone’s contribution.
I can remember years ago working at a location where we hosted big events. These events would be months in planning, enormously detailed, and usually involved 15-30 people coming early to set up, working all day, and then cleaning up after. Each one was a MAJOR effort. And after each event, the boss (who incidentally stopped by for an hour or so, shook hands with everyone, and did NOTHING) would send out a group message, “Thanks for all the hard work today! What a great team!” He was faithful to send that message each time, immediately after the event, and I’m sure he believed he was doing what every good leader should do: textbook leadership. But it was also meaningless. He had no idea what that endeavor entailed, so it always had a counter-productive effect. Far from feeling appreciated, it made me roll my eyes. He could’ve sent a personal message to individual members: “Ariel, thank you for all your hard work today.” Or, he could have still kept it in a group message, but acknowledged something more reflective our actual energy, “I know this was the product of months of preparation and hours of effort, and I admire that type of commitment.” True gratitude expresses WHY someone’s gift was so valuable.
Thank you is ineffective when it’s based on such low standards that you are literally thanking people for putting forth no effort at all.
Americans have a cultural tendency to say thank you for EVERYTHING. It is noticeable when you live abroad. We say it constantly, and sometimes I’ve been “corrected” here for saying it too often. Why on earth would saying it too much be a bad thing? Well, partly because if you’ve said it ten times over 30 minutes, it’s clearly a meaningless habit. But also, it’s setting the bar way too low. Sometimes we believe we should thank people for the behavior we EXPECT, like hopeful parents saying to their kids, “Thank you for putting on your shoes,” while the kid is clearly just playing and NOT putting on their shoes at all. But in actual life with adults, saying thank you when people have done nothing at all is creating such low expectations that you’re training people into laziness. If you’re effusively thanking them for such minimal effort, why should they put forth more? They can get all the attention for doing next to nothing. This is also destroying the motivation and morale for those who want to give their all, because they see that just “showing up” apparently gets the same recognition, so they stop working as hard because they feel unappreciated for their actual efforts.
True and sincere gratitude can be expressed personally even profoundly, but usually it takes more than just “thank you.”
*All of this is also only the VERBAL ways that we handle our gratitude. Anyone who has read or studied The Five Love Languages knows that there are many other ways to express gratitude that aren’t just words. And I highly recommend exploring those non-verbal ways to show your appreciation as well!