Why I Write Hundreds of Thank You Notes Every Year
Uncorking leadership, learning, and the conversations that move schools forward.
I write a lot of cards.
Like…a lot.
Hundreds a year.
I write them to welcome you to the team, recognize your impact in one observation, commiserate over hard weeks, celebrate big wins, celebrate quiet wins, say thank you for your work, call out awesome leadership moments, and sometimes simply because I saw someone do something that mattered and I don’t want to forget to tell them.
Actual cards.
With a pen.
In my handwriting.
Which, depending on how quickly I’m writing or the terrain my rolling desk might be traversing, turns the appreciation into a decoding assessment.
But I write them anyway. They include inside jokes, personal connections, and #facts about what I see. I am specific.
And here’s the strange thing I’ve learned after more than two decades in education:
People keep them.
I’ve walked into offices and classrooms of people I coached years ago and seen a card I wrote still pinned to a bulletin board.
I’ve had people tell me they saved a note from 10, 12, even 18 years ago.
Eighteen years.
Think about how many emails that person has received since then.
How many evaluation forms.
How many meeting agendas.
How many professional development decks.
How many “quick questions” that were absolutely not quick.
Gone.
But the little handwritten card?
Still on the board.
That taught me something important about leadership.
People remember being seen.
The Higher Up You Go, the More Your Words Weigh
There’s a strange phenomenon in organizations.
Leaders sometimes underestimate the weight of their own attention.
You might think:
“I just wrote a quick note.”
But the person receiving it may experience:
The Chief noticed me.
Or:
My boss’s boss noticed me.
Or even:
The boss of my boss’s boss knows what I did.
That’s different.
Not because titles make people more important.
Because organizational hierarchy makes attention scarce.
If you supervise 100 people, they probably hear from you occasionally.
If you lead an organization of 500 people, some employees may rarely interact with you directly.
Which means a specific message from you carries information beyond the words on the card:
I see what you’re contributing.
Your work traveled far enough for me to notice it.
You matter beyond your immediate supervisor.
That’s powerful.
And leadership research gives us some language for why.
“Great Job!” Doesn’t Count
Before we turn this into a giant organizational Hallmark campaign, there is one important rule.
The card has to say something.
Not:
“Thanks for all you do!”
That’s lovely.
It’s also the leadership equivalent of signing a yearbook:
Have a great summer! Never change!
Instead, I try to name what I actually saw.
“I watched you help that family understand the new process. You were patient even when the conversation got difficult. That kind of care builds trust in our school.”
Or:
“I noticed how you redirected the team today. You didn’t lower the expectation, but you also didn’t embarrass anyone. That’s strong leadership.”
Or:
“The way you kept showing up for that student this month mattered. I know the outcome isn’t where you want it yet. I also want you to know that your persistence has not gone unnoticed.”
Now the message isn’t simply:
You’re great.
It’s:
I saw what you did. I understand why it mattered.
Specificity makes appreciation credible.
Your Brain Is Constantly Asking: Am I Safe Here?
Human beings are extraordinarily sensitive to social information.
Belonging.
Status.
Acceptance.
Rejection.
Whether the people around us value our contribution.
Research on social pain has even found overlap between some of the neural systems involved in processing physical pain and social rejection.
Which makes sense if you think about it.
For most of human history, belonging to the group wasn’t an employee-engagement strategy.
It was survival.
Our workplaces are obviously different from ancestral survival environments, but our brains didn’t suddenly stop paying attention to social cues because someone handed us a Google account.
We are still constantly collecting information:
Do I belong here?
Am I respected?
Does my contribution matter?
Can I make a mistake and recover?
Will someone notice when I get it right?
A handwritten note doesn’t magically create psychological safety.
But it can contribute to the conditions that do.
Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.
That matters in schools because improvement requires interpersonal risk constantly.
“I don’t understand this.”
“My lesson didn’t work.”
“I need help.”
“I disagree.”
“Can you watch me try this?”
“I made the wrong call.”
Those statements are easier to make in an environment where your interactions with leaders have repeatedly told you:
You are a valued member of this team, even while you are still getting better.
Recognition is one of those signals.
Gratitude Isn’t Fluff. It’s Infrastructure.
This is where people sometimes get uncomfortable.
We work in education.
Outcomes matter.
Kids can’t wait for adults to feel sufficiently appreciated before we teach them well.
Agreed.
But that’s exactly why I care about gratitude.
Gratitude isn’t the opposite of accountability.
It helps create relationships strong enough to carry accountability.
Robert Emmons’ research has helped establish gratitude as a serious field of psychological study, linking gratitude practices with well-being and stronger social connection.
Research by Sara Algoe and others goes even further, suggesting gratitude plays an important role in building and strengthening relationships.
That matters enormously for leaders.
Because someday I am going to need to tell you:
This isn’t good enough yet.
Someday I am going to disagree with you.
Someday I’m going to ask you to change something you’ve worked really hard on.
Someday I’m going to hold a line you wish I wouldn’t.
And when that day comes, I don’t want our entire relationship to have been built through correction.
I want you to have years of evidence that says:
She sees the whole of my contribution.
Not because I’ve strategically stockpiled compliments so I can cash them in later.
People can smell fake appreciation from three hallways away.
I write the card because I mean it.
But genuine gratitude has a side effect:
It strengthens relationships.
And relationships are infrastructure.
The Card Is Also for Me
Here’s the part I didn’t expect.
I started writing cards for other people.
I kept doing it because of what it did to me.
Gratitude fills my cup, too.
Leadership trains your attention toward problems.
What’s behind?
Who needs support?
Which number missed the target?
What deadline is approaching?
What went wrong at dismissal?
Why is that spreadsheet red?
WHY IS THAT SPREADSHEET STILL RED?
That’s part of the job.
But if you aren’t careful, your brain begins to believe that the problems are the organization.
They’re not.
So when I sit down with a stack of cards, I have to deliberately ask myself:
Who did I see this week?
Who grew?
Who tried again?
Who quietly carried something difficult?
Who made someone else’s job easier?
Who demonstrated the kind of leadership we say we want?
Who showed up for kids when nobody was watching?
For a few minutes, my attention moves from:
What’s wrong?
to:
What’s right that I don’t want to miss?
That’s not toxic positivity. I still know what’s red on the spreadsheet.
Trust me.
But both things are true.
There is work to do.
And there are people doing extraordinary work.
Strong leadership requires us to notice both.
Recognition Should Travel Up, Too
There’s one more practice I love.
When I see something great several tiers away from me, I don’t only tell the person.
Sometimes I tell their boss.
Or their boss’s boss.
“I want you to know what I saw from Maria today…”
Now something else happens.
Maria’s contribution travels.
Her immediate manager gets information about what she’s doing well.
Senior leaders learn the names of people making the organization stronger.
And employees begin to understand that good work doesn’t disappear simply because nobody put it on a dashboard.
That’s culture.
Imagine working somewhere where people regularly carried stories of your excellence into rooms you weren’t in.
I’d like to work there.
I’d like to lead there. (Full transparency: I do work here and I do lead here. Lucky me!)
The Cards They Keep
I think about those old cards sometimes.
The ones still pinned to bulletin boards after 10 or 15 or 18 years.
I guarantee I don’t remember what I wrote in most of them.
But they do.
That’s humbling.
Because leadership is full of moments we experience as small that other people experience as significant.
A hallway conversation.
A sentence after a difficult meeting.
A text after someone takes a risk.
A handwritten note.
You may forget it by Thursday.
They may keep it for 18 years.
So here’s this week’s Edutipsy challenge.
Buy a pack of cards.
Nothing fancy.
Pick three people.
Not necessarily your highest performers.
Not necessarily the people who report directly to you.
Find someone whose contribution might otherwise go unnoticed.
Write what you actually saw.
Name why it mattered.
Don’t ask for anything.
Don’t attach an action step.
Don’t sneak feedback into the last sentence.
Just say thank you.
Then drop it off to them.
That’s it.
No tracker.
No dashboard.
No fidelity check.
And please, for the love of leadership, do not create a Thank-You Card Implementation Rubric or SOP.
Some things can just be human.
Final Sip
I’ve spent the last few posts writing about systems, coaching, proximity, feedback, and outcomes.
All of those things matter.
But systems are ultimately carried by people.
And people need more than information about how they can improve.
They also need evidence that what they contribute is seen.
So write the card.
Especially if you’re the boss.
Definitely if you’re the boss’s boss.
And if you’re the boss of the boss’s boss?
Get a pen.
Your words weigh more than you think.
Years from now, the strategic plan may be gone.
The initiative will definitely have a new name.
Nobody will remember that spreadsheet you spent six hours formatting.
But somewhere, on someone’s bulletin board, there might still be a little card.
Because for five minutes on an ordinary Tuesday, someone with the power to notice them did.
And they remembered.
Our brains pay attention to moments that tell us something important about belonging (science says so):
I see you.
You matter here.
Turns out, I needed those moments too.
Gratitude fills both cups. My joy and outlook changed each day when I wrote that note to you. It turns out, my brain paid attention too. Maybe that is my own, personal retention strategy for my inner leader.
Sip Wisdom: Recommended Reading
Amy C. Edmondson — The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (2018)
Edmondson’s work provides an important foundation for understanding psychological safety. The connection to recognition requires some nuance: a thank-you note does not itself “create” psychological safety. But leader behaviors that communicate respect, appreciation, openness, and interpersonal regard can contribute to an environment where people feel valued enough to take the risks required for learning.
Robert A. Emmons — Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier (2007)
Emmons is one of the leading researchers on gratitude. His work helps move gratitude out of the “nice thing leaders should do” category and into a deeper conversation about well-being, attention, relationships, and the ways deliberately noticing what is good can affect the person expressing gratitude as well as the recipient.
Sara B. Algoe — “Find, Remind, and Bind: The Functions of Gratitude in Everyday Relationships” (2012)
Algoe’s research is particularly relevant to this post. Her “find-remind-and-bind” theory proposes that gratitude helps people identify responsive relationship partners, reminds us of the quality of existing relationships, and helps bind those relationships more closely over time.
In leadership language: gratitude isn’t merely a pleasant emotion. It can be relational glue.
Eisenberger et al. — Research on Perceived Organizational Support
Decades of research on perceived organizational support examine what happens when employees believe their organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. That idea helps explain why recognition from someone several levels above you can feel disproportionately meaningful: the message can represent more than one person’s appreciation. It can become evidence that the organization sees me.
Eisenberger, Lieberman & Williams — “Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion” (2003)
This influential neuroscience study helped launch a much larger conversation about how seriously the brain processes social exclusion. It should not be oversimplified into “rejection and physical pain are exactly the same,” but it reinforces an important leadership idea: humans are deeply attuned to cues about inclusion, exclusion, belonging, and social connection.
One More Sip
If you want the research rabbit hole, look into positive organizational scholarship, perceived organizational support, leader gratitude expression, and recognition and belonging at work.
But you don’t need another research article before you start.
You probably already know someone who deserves a card.
Go write it. Do your own action research.