5 Tips for Writing Meaningful Thank-You Notes
When I received a new bicycle from my grandparents as a kid, my mother wouldn’t let me out of the house to take it for a spin before I sat down and wrote them a thank-you note. I remember grumbling over this at the time, but thank-you notes have since become a passion of mine.
The Benefits of Expressing Gratitude
When I joined The Estée Lauder Companies in 2000, my boss, Leonard Lauder, the CEO at the time, reinforced my mother’s lessons of gratitude and thank-you notes, underscoring them as a communications and managerial tool. (“Nothing makes me happier than writing a good thank-you note,” he writes in his memoir.) A phenomenal communicator, well known as an elegant and thoughtful man who built the empire that carries his mother’s name, Lauder observes that gratitude opens doors to meaningful relationships: “I find that thank-you notes, even a one-liner, help me establish a connection. Once you’ve established a rapport, you can offer thanks as well as advice and suggestions,” he told me.
