A few years ago, I was in the first quarter of working with a new client. A fundraising event was coming up. The founder was hosting a small event with about 30 supporters and donors. One of my usual tasks is helping to prepare the speech or talk given by the founder.
There are a few standard pieces of advice I always offer: the speech should repeatedly thank the donors, the talk should often say “you” and a minimal amount of “I”s or “We”s. When you are sharing stories the various efforts and accomplishments achieved by the organization, give credit to the donors. “You made this possible.” “We couldn’t have done this without you.”
When it was time for the founder to stand before the audience to speak, after listening to a few sentences, it was clear she ignored all the advice and suggestions I gave her. The speech launched into how hard she works, how tired she was, and how badly she needed help. I could see the expressions on the faces of the supporters. She didn’t directly ask to be thanked but essentially she came across as really wanting recognition, and not at all thinking what the audience, the donors, might have wanted to hear. It was not good.
And she knew, after the event was done, that her speech could have been better. She blamed it on being tired. But she could have been in any state and incorporated the advice I gave her and it would have been successful.
Later that week, I had the opportunity to meet with one of the attendees from that event. We hit if off very well, and she was comfortable enough to share with me what she thought of the speech, mainly to give me advice on how to prepare the founder for next time.
As expected, the donor pointed out how the speech did not offer much gratitude to the guests present. And even worse, she pointed out that she and her guest were not even greeted during the event.
The importance of gratitude is something that I can’t emphasize enough. I failed to recognize in this case with the client that she wasn’t used to showing gratitude in her everyday life. The lesson here is that we personally and genuinely must discover why practicing gratitude is essential for our own wellness and positive attitude. We need to find on our own the things we are grateful for everyday. Through our own journey, we must become someone who has chosen to make a habit of regularly finding reasons to be grateful. There is always something to say thank you for in almost every interaction, whether it is with another person, an animal, and even nature.
Today, one of the first discussions I have with new clients is a recommended task to start a gratitude journal. If they do so, I suggest writing three things everyday to be grateful for, and to do this task first thing every morning before life and work take the day. Of course I too have a gratitude journal and I also write in it everyday.
Let me know what you think about the experience I have shared and the practice of gratitude. And thank you for taking time to read this post!