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The thank-you note isn't old school. It's underused
Published 9 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader,
I have delivered variations of the same training many times over the course of my career. To students entering the workforce for the first time. To early and mid-career professionals trying to distinguish themselves. To entrepreneurs building their client base from scratch. To executives leading entire organizations. And across all of them - regardless of industry, seniority, or background - the same skill keeps surfacing as the most consistently overlooked one in the room.
It's not negotiation, nor is it public speaking or executive presence.
It's showing gratitude. And to take it one step further - expressing it through the thank you note.
I realize that might sound almost too simple to take seriously. Which is exactly the problem.
Sometimes the best way to understand a professional skill is to step outside the business world entirely and look at someone in history who embodied it without ever calling it a skill. I've always found C.S. Lewis fascinating for this reason. If you've followed his work, you know that he was a man who thought deeply about human relationships, about what it means to truly see another person, and about the responsibility we carry when someone extends kindness toward us. That philosophy showed up not just in his writing, but in how he lived.
In the years after World War II, Lewis found himself in an unusual situation. Care packages were arriving from American admirers - ham, cheese, tobacco, stationery - all near-impossible to come by in rationed Britain. The gifts kept coming, often from the same donors, which meant Lewis had to write thank you note after thank you note to the same people without repeating himself.
Rather than reach for the same tired phrases, he treated each note as its own small creative problem. He developed what one biographer calls "the Art of the Thank You Note" - writing with humour and specificity, punning on the gifts (signing one letter "Ham-icably yours"), noting not just the usefulness of what he received but the artfulness of how it was packed. On one occasion he passed a letter of thanks around a dinner table so that every guest could sign it - among them J.R.R. Tolkien. He turned each expression of gratitude into an extension of the relationship itself.
The medium was a note. The real work was paying attention to the person on the other end.
Why I Keep Coming Back to This
This isn't a skill people learn once and carry forever. It needs to be revisited, reinforced, and honestly - modelled. The reason I return to it in every networking workshop, every professional presence program, and every coaching conversation is because life gets in the way. We are so focused on our own next move that looking outward, noticing someone else's effort or contribution, and pausing to put that recognition into writing, is the first thing to slip.
I'll tell you something I don't say enough. In all the years I've spent training professionals, presenting to groups, mentoring people through their careers - very few notes have ever made it across my desk. And when one does, I stop what I'm doing. I read it twice. I remember that person. Not just that day, but long after.
That experience is part of why I take this so seriously. And research backs up what I've observed firsthand. Studies on what's known as the "beautiful mess effect" consistently show that people significantly underestimate how meaningful their expression of gratitude will feel to the person receiving it. We worry it'll seem excessive, awkward, or out of place - so we talk ourselves out of sending it. The recipient, almost without exception, experiences it as genuine and memorable. The gap between what we think our thanks is worth and what it actually does for the other person is the reason so many notes never get written.
That's not a knowledge problem. It's a human one. And it's exactly why this keeps coming up in every room I'm in.
So, You Think It's "Old School?"
I hear this regularly. And I respectfully disagree.
An email lands in an inbox already crowded with 47 other things. A handwritten note lands on a desk and stays there. It gets picked up again. It gets shown to someone. Sometimes it gets kept for years.
A LinkedIn post I came across recently illustrated this perfectly. A father described watching his daughter land her first job through her brother's referral. She was ready to thank him with a quick "thanks for the good word" in the hallway. Her father sat her down and told her to write a proper note instead - not because of formality, but because he wanted her to start her career the way she meant to continue it: by acknowledging the people who showed up for her, in a way that would stick.
Photo courtesy of Reggie Waterman, the father who I'm referring to, above
When a Note is the Right Call
More often than you think. After a job interview - always. When a mentor gives you their time. When a client signs with you. When a vendor delivers under pressure. When someone makes an introduction that opens a door. When a speaker gives up their morning to be in your room. When a colleague you barely know puts in a good word.
None of these require a lengthy letter. They require attention - noticing that something happened, that someone made an effort, and that it deserves to be acknowledged. In writing. With their name on the envelope.
That combination of specificity and care is what Lewis understood so well. Gratitude isn't just the sentiment. It's the effort you put into expressing it.
A Specific Ask For My Advertising & Communications Agency Friends
I'm designing a networking program specifically for agency professionals and I want to make sure it's built around what actually matters to you. Four quick questions: (1) Who do you think networking training is most valuable for in an agency - juniors, intermediates, seniors, or anyone who's client-facing regardless of level? (2) What's the biggest barrier to networking in your agency? Is it that people don't know how, it's not seen as part of the job, there's no real incentive tied to it, or something else entirely? (3) Where do you see the biggest gap in your team - starting conversations, working a room, first impressions, asking the right questions, following up effectively?
(4) When you think about networking, do you think about it as purely external - clients, prospects, industry events - or does internal relationship-building, collaboration, and mentorship factor in too? Or is that a completely different thing in your mind? Hit reply with your thoughts - even a few sentences helps. And if you're open to a 30-minute call to go a little deeper, I'd love to connect.
Early this month, I was invited by Jumpstart Refugee Talent to lead a workshop on something deceptively simple: eye contact at work. What made it such a rich conversation was everything underneath the surface - the cultural context, the neurological reality, and what we unconsciously communicate to others based on something as small as where we direct our gaze.
We brought art into the session. Blind contour drawings: you draw without looking at your paper, only at your subject. For some people in that room it felt natural, for others deeply uncomfortable, and for others something else entirely. It became the most honest demonstration I've found of why we can never assume eye contact means the same thing to everyone.
Interested in bringing a workshop like this to your team? Hit reply and let's talk.
NEW EPISODE: Are Blanket Device Bans Necessary in Meetings?
Years ago, during a strategy meeting, I reached for my phone mid-presentation. Just for a second - to check one thing. I looked up in time to watch the person presenting lose their stride completely. Shoulders dropped. Voice quieted. The energy in the room shifted.
In my latest episode, I share the three-meeting framework I used at my former recruitment agency to build intentional device culture - and why I think the real issue has never been the phone itself, but what your behaviour with it tells the people around you.
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