The easiest way, by far, to start building a 5-Star Relationship is by using The 5-Star Thank You. It’s easy. Try it!
Tyler Small: Thank you can be so easy. And in fact, I believe that saying thank you, is the easiest way to build a relationship. I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence. So I have this Five Star. Thank You, spiel that I go through and I just wanted to share it with you really quick today.
[00:00:24] So the five star, thank you. Is basically the easiest one. Whereas the five star experience you've got to go through the plan, deliver follow up. You have to get this agreement multiple times from the person you're working with in order to confirm like. Is this going to be a five-star experience with you?
[00:00:47] If I do it this way, if I do these things for you, like it requires some cooperation. Similarly the Five-star Apology that I talked about in the last episode, it is it requires some humility, and that can be difficult to come to. It can be scary, right? But a thank you is so much easier.
[00:01:06] It's so much lighter. And an apology can be great, but you're only gonna want to apologize here and there. You're not going to want to apologize for five different things in a day. That would be overkill. Thank you. On the other hand, you can.
[00:01:21] You can just hand those out like cookies, right? Valentine's day cards. I wouldn't do it tritely as sometimes Valentine's day cards are, but you can give genuine, authentic, thank you's with huge volume. So let me just tell you the it's Hey. Thank you, right? You're saying thank you.
[00:01:44] And sometimes saying sometimes that's all it's needed, but then explaining Hey, that was a Five-star Experience when you did this thing and then why it matters to you. That was a Five Star Experience for me because when I first started working here, someone helped me out in the way that you just helped this person.
[00:02:06]And that's meaningful to me. So let me go through an example that I've used before. I'll change the names, but I said, Hey thank you for doing this for Nancy. I won't tell you what the thing was. It's a complicated story, but thank you for doing this thing for Nancy. When I saw you do that for Nancy,
[00:02:25] I realized that I'm really grateful to work at a place where people do that kind of thing for each other. So now I don't know if you caught this, but a Five-star Thank You can be so broadly applicable where if you're building your relationship with someone who doesn't even like you and you know that they don't like you, and that if you're trying to build a relationship with someone.
[00:02:51] Who you know, is trying not to be kind to you, right? This worst case scenario, I keep mentioning these worst case scenarios. You can still give them a Five Star Thank You for doing something for someone else. So they don't even have to do anything nice for you. , They can have absolutely zero intention of doing anything for your benefit, for your good and you can still recognize them for doing that.
[00:03:17] Now there's lots of different ways that you can express a Five-star Thank You. One of them is verbally. You can do a phone call. You can do a video chat. You can sometimes meet in person if that's if that's a possibility you can send an, IM an instant message. You can send a text message. If you work in an office environment to get together, you can do a little sticky note.
[00:03:41] You can use something that. Is called a thank you card that people used to use back in the day. And thank you, cards come, I should add with a variety of price points. Sometimes a thank you card is four or five, six, $7. Other times you can find them for 10 for a dollar. I've gotten large stacks of thank you.
[00:04:04] Cards 10 for a dollar. Great. Cause I love to give them. And so I like to give a lot of them. And I've also found if you work for a larger company, there are often company cards with company branding on them with the little envelopes and things.
[00:04:19] So if you work for a larger company and they've got that kind of thing, grab a stack, bring it back to your desk and just fill them out. Just take a few minutes each day. And. And write a thank you card. One thank you card goes a long way. You can even send them in the mail. There's this thing called snail mail and you can send thank you cards through the mail.
[00:04:39] It blows people's socks off. And I highly recommend it getting a physical address for a person who works from home can be a little bit tricky. And I wouldn't push that if it ends up being tricky. However, if you know someone who knows them, you could have them mail it.
[00:04:58]That's another way to do it. But the Five-star Thank You is a wonderful thing. I wanted to tell you about another Five-star Thank You. I received. And this is a larger one, but I was having lunch with some coworkers. We're eating outside of this table and it's a beautiful day.
[00:05:13] And we were talking about how I just turned in my notice and I was going to go work at this other company and it was going to be this bittersweet experience. There was actually two two picnic tables close by to each other. And one of our other friends who worked for the company In a different part of our department.
[00:05:31] They said, what you're leaving, we must throw you party. And it was, like a farewell party, but it was a way to thank me for my contribution and being a good friend. And so that was the way that someone else thanked me for for this and that. And I've, I, it stuck with me. I think about it from time to time and it was just this really.
[00:05:54] Awesome highlight experience of my life. Like somebody throwing a party for me and they didn't have to do that. It wasn't a necessary thing. It wasn't a tradition necessarily. But it was this really amazing experience. And it was a way to say, thank you. So it doesn't have to be big like that.
[00:06:12] It can, like I said, it can be an instant message. It can be a sticky note. It can be just a simple, thank you. But those thank yous go a very long way.
[00:06:21] , I always like to add some troubleshooting to give you some more support and structure for those worst case scenarios.
[00:06:28] I am always talking about the worst case scenarios, I guess it's because oftentimes when we're trying to build a relationship, it's because it's been damaged. And so we're coming from, the other end of things, trying to work our way up. And so sometimes we need to give extra support.
[00:06:44] And in the context of what we're saying, we need to frame things a little more. And so one thing that you can say when you're thinking someone is, you can say, Hey, I don't want this to sound silly thing, but I actually really appreciated the way you did X. Or you can say, Hey, I know I thanked you for doing this thing yesterday.
[00:07:05]But I just want you to know that I wasn't just being silly or superfluous with my words. I actually really enjoyed that you do that and I'm really grateful for it. So I just wanted to let you know it was serious about, I actually appreciate that and thank you very much for it. When you back up your original, thank you with a second.
[00:07:28] Thank you. That can go a long way because sometimes especially if it's the first time that you've said thank you, or the relationship is new or changing or it's or the environment is really fast paced and there's a lot of commotion and turbulence in the emotional environment.
[00:07:45]People can really question whether or not you're being authentic. And so going back and letting them know Hey, I was really serious about that. I want you to know that I really do appreciate this. That second instance of the thank you that, that can really confirm it and nail it down when sometimes people wonder, is that person being
[00:08:05]authentic with me. And then that builds trust rapidly. If you're trying to hack your own emotional intelligence, remember that, thank you's are perhaps the easiest of all the ways that I talked about to rapidly build a relationship. These are the things that change lives. This is things that change relationships.
[00:08:27] They change culture. Highly encouraged you to do it. Reap the rewards. Enjoy it, have fun with it and have a great day. I am Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.