Communicating Gratitude

In the debut episode last week, Emiliana Simon-Thomas – an expert on the key roles that social connection, support, and belonging play in well-being – took us on a deep dive into the meaning and impact that gratitude has on our work and personal lives.

This week, Elizabeth Stokoe, professor of social interaction at Loughborough University in the U.K., explores the pivotal role communication plays in fueling gratitude in our day-to-day interactions.

The highlights:

• Effective communicators think about the person with whom they are communicating in a process called recipient design.
• Rapport is the outcome of an encounter, not something you can build with small talk.
• Though each is unique, our conversations tend to hit similar waymarks along the way. Like someone walking their dog around the block. Sometimes the dog stops at different places, but the general path is the same.
• Choosing words carefully should be a fundamental part of an organization’s culture because there is no positive alternative.
• There’s no clear line between actions, talk, behavior, and language. They're all entangled as one.
• How you say “thanks” matters especially as thanks has merely become shorthand for the end of a conversation in many instances.

LINKS:

Elizabeth's work at Loughborough University

Liz Stokoe on Twitter

Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM)

Elizabeth's first book Talk: The Science of Conversation

Elizabeth's second book: Crisis Talk: Negotiating with Individuals in Crisis