Why is it difficult for managers to just say, “Thank you”?

A friend came home for dinner to celebrate her last day at her current job. Her work had culminated in a three-day international conference where she had been asked to give a presentation in her field of expertise on behalf of an absent colleague. At the end of the well-received presentation, a senior manager approached her, she assumed to thank her not only for the presentation, but also for her contribution and work over the past six months. She was painfully wrong. The boss simply informed her that her security pass to the data base she used had been cancelled, and she would no longer be able to access the system. No goodbye, no thank you, no well done, not even congratulations on the presentation. Oh, and by the way stay safe on the risky mission you will be undergoing for us next month.

As she narrates this story, she is scoffing a few chocolates from an opened box in the kitchen, apologising for sneaking a few truffles. Don’t worry, I tell her, they were given to my daughter on her last day at work. She left them with me because she said she has no interest in chocolates that were bought by her boss’s assistant and presented to her with a post-it written by said assistant, “I wouldn’t get any pleasure from them.” she added despondently.

It seemed a perfect storm of disillusionment to add to a recent experience with an executive team in internal communications. One of the topics for their annual retreat was a lack of recognition for work and contributions. This apparently had been an item the previous year. I asked what this meant, and why it was still a topic now. Apparently, people were divided about what recognition meant. Was it tied to tangible ‘products’ like articles and case studies created to promote their work and provide evidence to media outlets of their achievements, or was it tied to compensation for collaborative work and the need for system-wide initiatives? I suggested based on my 35 years of experience and the fact that I had worked with this organisation for the past twelve years that if they asked people, they might be surprised to find that a simple’ thank you’ might be sufficient in many cases.

So, what’s going on? Why is it so difficult for people to give a simple and genuine ‘thank you’ in the work place? I wonder if these same people would omit to thank a waiter or shop assistant in the normal course of their day. My friend wonders had she done a bad job and the boss is too cowardly to address it, or maybe she had done a brilliant job and he perhaps might feel threatened by her performance and success. Clearly, she is as troubled and frustrated by the indecision and ambiguity as she is by the lack of appreciation.

For many years I have facilitated numerous global leadership programs. One of the things we actually practice doing is saying ‘thank you’ for a job well done, and ‘Sorry’, when managers made a mistake. It proved quite a challenge for many. A lot of the men, especially from more traditional cultures, claimed it was impossible for them to apologize as it would render them weak, and jeopardize their leadership position. Others thought it was unnecessary to thank people for simply doing a job, they were being paid for.

I’m not saying that a thank you replaces fair pay, compensation and legal and just entitlements. But far too many people think that giving recognition automatically means instituting formal complex compensation programmes with tangible benefits and remunerations. My experience tells me that the majority of people would simply be happy with a genuine, timely thank you. And they would be ecstatic to have a manager who admits their mistakes and apologises for them.

Sometimes good management is just showing common courtesy and respect.