Facilitating Expressions Of Gratitude And Appreciation • Two Easy Exercises (Facilitation Friday #46)
“The world’s most unsatisfied hunger is the hunger for appreciation.” —Mary Crisorio, author
The holiday season reminds us of the importance of thanking, appreciating, and recognizing those who have helped us throughout the year. It is a great opportunity to express gratitude to friends, colleagues, and collaborators.
Here are two simple exercises I often use to help others do so at any time. They are easily adapted for varied group sizes, time available, and intended outcomes. I’ve provided a concise overview of each activity along with brief instructions for its use. Feel free to modify them to make them your own.
Find Someone Who: Gratitude Edition
This activity is intended for groups with ongoing relationships (minimum 15 people; maximum 50-60). Individuals should have a fairly high degree of familiarity with each other.
Find Someone Who … is a classic low-risk icebreaker, particularly with people meeting for the first time. In its usual format, participants are given a sheet with a list of characteristics (is from the same state as you, reads a lot, loves to go to concerts) and asked to mingle with others, finding someone who matches each characteristic and signing their name.
I’ve tweaked this classic to give it an appreciation focus. People now scan the characteristics on their card (provided below in PDF form) and think of someone in the group that is a match, noting their names. You can provide them a few minutes to do this first step during a session or provide them the card in advance and allow them more time to note possibilities.
In the second step, they seek out those individuals and sign their name in the appropriate space on their gratitude cards. At the end of the exercise, individuals now have a card illustrating what others appreciate about them and their contributions to the group.
Statements on my sample card. Find someone you …
· want to get to know better
· describe as an effective collaborator
· appreciate for their good nature
· value for their professionalism
· learn from fairly regularly
· respect their attention to detail
· would like to interact/collaborate with more
· count on to tell it like it is
· appreciate for their perspective and insight
· might call Old Faithful: consistent and reliable
· are glad to have as a colleague
· think is sometimes underappreciated
Like the original version, this exercise allows individuals autonomy to complete the task as they see fit. The physical mingling is a nice energy boost as well. I often use the exercise at the end of a retreat.
Be sure to allow enough time for people to sign a reasonable number of cards. If the group does not work remotely, you could encourage people to keep signing cards once they return to the office.
A caveat:
It would be bad if some individuals didn’t get many signatures on their cards, either because of time constraints or because they may interact less with—or are less well-known by—others in the group. Two ways to manage this potential reality:
When introducing the exercise, I usually challenge participants to make sure they spread their appreciation around and first seek out those individuals they may not already thank regularly.
Tell participants that if someone they approach already has five (you might use a different number based on size of your group) signatures on their card, they need to seek out someone who doesn’t.
The statements on my sample gratitude card are designed to enable expressing appreciation to people with whom participants have varying degrees of interaction and familiarity. You can certainly replace any or all of them based on your needs and outcomes.
Appreciation Prompts
Use as part of any meeting or workshop in which you want individuals (or groups) to identify those for whom appreciation should be expressed, including donors of time, money, or both.
Invite participants to brainstorm responses to the prompts provided below. If using the activity for individual appreciation, allow time for people to do this on their own. If using the activity for group appreciation to others, you could have everyone brainstorm verbally or allow time for individuals to first note some ideas followed by large group brainstorming.
Provide the prompts on a slide or handout, selecting the questions appropriate for your group and outcomes.
Who has most influenced the successes you achieved this year?
Who has consistently supported you throughout the year?
Who has worked quietly behind the scenes, but made irreplaceable contributions to your efforts?
Who has contributed in small, but very meaningful ways?
These first four questions are appropriate for either individual appreciation or a group expressing thanks to others. The next two questions are more relevant for groups only.
Who has continued their years of service, perhaps unnoticed because of their longevity?
Whose time and energy could you not do without in the year ahead?
Once names are generated, challenge participants to eliminate some of the hunger for appreciation (see Mary Crisorio quote).
Prompts as an Individual Activity
Invite people to write each individual they identified, thanking them for their contributions and expressing heartfelt appreciation for their support.
I often provide a couple of thank you cards and allow time for individuals to immediately complete a few notes as a part of our gathering and then suggest they do the rest on their own time.
Prompts as a Group Activity
If done as a group exercise (i.e., with a board of directors, committee, or staff team) you might have individuals each take on a certain number of notes to write on their own time and/or regroup at another time to collectively write all the necessary notes.
An additional resource I recommend
Looking to learn more about the power of encouragement and appreciation in groups? One of my favorite reads on the topic is the classic Encouraging the Heart: A Leader's Guide to Rewarding and Recognizing Others by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner.
The book takes a deep dive into seven essentials of Encouraging the Heart, one of the five leadership practices in the Kouzes and Posner The Leadership Challenge framework. Perhaps most importantly, it stresses the need for individuals to find their own voice when expressing appreciation and encouragement so that it resonates as authentic with its recipients.
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