How staff can thank each other
Good morning - and Happy Tuesday,
Last week I shared a post on Facebook about how to encourage staff to effectively say thank you to each other. If you haven’t already seen it, then I have attached it below. If you have already seen it, why don’t you to take a moment to read The 99 Days of Wellbeing on my website?
So… here’s something for you to try in school…
When I was a headteacher, every Friday without fail, I would hold a weekly briefing. I’d talk about diary dates and events for the following week and communicate information anyone might need.
But before those points of organisational communication - I did something else...
It was 15 minutes at the start of the day for me to have everyone together where I’d tell a story of something I’d seen or heard during the week that made me feel proud of being the headteacher of my school.
It was almost always something small. But those small moments were powerful enough to remind me of the quality my staff possessed. And I’d always thank them for their considerable effort in making small moments become powerful moments.
When I support schools with conducting and acting upon my wellbeing survey - one of the statements used in the survey is: “I receive regular informal positive feedback”
I wanted 100% of staff members to ‘strongly agree’ with this statement.
As a headteacher I thought long and hard about a mechanism I could use to design a culture to make this happen - and so - ‘the thank you treat box’ was born.
Research tells us gratitude, the act of being grateful and thankful, significantly boosts wellbeing. So I used the research findings to devise this approach:
>In the staff room there was a silvery, glittery box with packs of post it notes and pens next to it.
>Over the course of a week I encouraged members of staff to write a short thank you note to someone who had helped, supported or gone the extra mile for them.
>At the end of my Friday briefing I would read aloud every single thank you note. It would prompt laughter, smiles, hugs, aahs and sometimes even joyful tears.
>When I had finished I would put them all back in the box and choose one out at random. That person would get whoops and cheers and be able to choose a chocolate bar from the treat box.
>I then emptied all the post it notes into a large brown envelope. At the end of the year I would tip the whole year’s worth of thank yous on to the staff room table for people to look through.
>When staff members left the school, for that week we would all write a thank you note just for that person. Then the member of staff would get to keep them. (I still have all my thank you notes from when I left.)
The wellbeing isn’t the chocolate bar - the wellbeing is the act of saying thank you to someone.
I insisted this had to happen every Friday and it was an immovable object in the diary. Even if I wasn’t in school, it had to happen regardless and would be led by someone else.
It became one of our most powerful wellbeing rituals - and one of my favourite times of the week.
“The struggle ends when gratitude begins.” -Neale Donald Walsch
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Until next time.
Best wishes,
Simon Bolger, That Wellbeing Guy
Website: www.thatwellbeingguy.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thatwellbeingguy
Twitter: @simonbolger
Read more: thatwellbeingguy.substack.com