Weight Of Thank You In A Weightless Economy
”Do more kinds of jobs ensure a better choice and a better experience with work?". We think that the answer is nuanced and for most people, it veers towards a "no". Studies done by various institutions, like Workplace Wellness Alliance, Gallup and the likes, on some linkages to employee engagement, are perhaps hinting at the increasing sense of disengagement with work.
If Adam Smith were alive today and would have done the rounds of what goes on in some of the companies, like he nuanced the "pin" factory, his dismay would have been on a wider display. As if assembly lines of his era were not enough for alienating people from what they are truly creating, as they are only tasked with a small portion of the total output, we now have added an element of "intangible" productions. That sentiment has only aggravated given that we are in an "attention economy" or the "weightless economy" as cited by American Economist Samuel Bowles.
So what is this whole experience of feeling alienated? The idea that the way we approach our work is making a human-alien to another human. We don't need aliens from another planet. We think we are aliens to each other! Have we ever delved deeper into this? Most of us are unable to see the human inside of us and the human inside another. And we believe that the other is also unable to meet and greet the human inside of me.
This is resulting in a very dehumanized aggregation of human beings within various organizations. Till a few years back, the word ‘emotions’ was not even allowed to be spoken about in the workplaces, but now we see the surge in practice of emotional intelligence at work. At the heart of all these categorizations of alienation, division of labour, disengagement and dehumanizing is the idea, that we now need to consider workplaces with notching gradations of appreciating more and valuing more. We are already aware of the connotations of appreciation and valuations mostly with respect to stock prices. I think true value and true appreciation is when we genuinely appreciate each other for the tiny acts that we do for each other, for the human that we see inside of each other. This is where the whole idea of gratitude integrates well.
Each of us goes through a humongous number of inner storms throughout the day, the week, the month, and a great deal of which is part of our waking life is practically spent at work. We could move the dial to see and recognize our self and other as human beings first and I think one of the easiest way to recognize a human inside our self and the other is by expressing gratitude more frequently.
This also ties into an experiment we did some years back before we started Thank You, India, where we went up to almost 1200+ people from all walks of life, over a period of 2 years and had very lengthy conversations. One of the questions we asked them was," Do you feel underappreciated?" Almost all 1200 answered with a "yes!". This was an astounding revelation for us and we decided to delve deeper into this entire phenomenon of gratefulness and genuine appreciation, and the sheer untapped potential it has for self and another.
In a paper that we wrote some time back, co-authored with Judith Glaser, author of Conversational Intelligence, we found that the unexpected side effect of Thankfulness is that it helps in managing levels of stress and fear – in relationships, partnership and teams. However through our years of exploration into the incredible power of Thanking Others – we have discovered unexpected connections between a simple act of Thankfulness and Appreciation for not only exceptional work – but also for routine work – that has a catalytic power on elevating the quality of relationships and conversations in the world.
Thanking others, valuing them, and appreciating them can become a powerful routine – or ritual. It literally has a transformational impact on shifting our neurochemistry from protecting ourselves from others, to connecting with others.
Imagine a scenario where 7 billion people on the earth are truly feeling that they are under appreciated. The question then is, "if everybody is waiting to receive appreciation, then who would really start offering it, offering appreciation?". We then realize that some of us will need to rise up to this opportunity, rise above our own self and start appreciating. Thus starting a gratitude attack followed by a gratitude war against thanklessness in the world. We have a humble beginning towards this. We have worked with Mumbai Police and Thane Police to gift daily tiny thankfulness to citizen following the law and also "thanking in advance" to those who haven't followed this time but we believe they would the next time. And through this, we have reached out to over 190,000+ humans.
How about walking up to someone who has done some routine thing right and thanking them?
Thank you for your kind attention.
