People usually express their gratitude in jackal, not in Giraffe. If they express gratitude at all.
This offers a great opportunity for giraffes, because so much connection can be felt from gratitude. You can listen to any person saying ‘thank you’ in a judgmental way by putting your awareness to feelings and needs, as well as possible observations that might have stimulated happiness or satisfaction in the jackal speaker. Usually in a thank you there is no explicit request. But often the person enjoys when you receive their gratitude as a gift from the heart and when you can join their celebration of the fulfilled need.
How a giraffe can listen to “You did a good job.”
First and most importantly, the giraffe does not judge the fact, that the person uses jackal to express their feelings and needs. The giraffe puts her awareness to the feelings and needs, that might have been fulfilled.
It cannot be overstated how important the focus of attention is. There is no good job or bad job. Don’t go there, resist this tendency to believe such judgments carry a truth value as such. No: there is a person, who is feeling pleasant and it is wonderful to connect with the met need.
So …
Did you enjoy the competence you experience in this work?
So the giraffe can try to verbally connect by making an empathy guess for a need. The giraffe can just think this and connect silently to this guess. It depends on the situation – if it is connecting, speak up and ask. If it might be too vulnerable to ask the person to open up their hearts about it, keep silent and feel for yourself.
Also, I find it helpful to consider the circumstances. If the business could make an important deadline because of your work, the project leader or your boss might have been fearful of not being able to fulfill the expected time of delivery. If that is so, they would probably feel relief, when the contract was kept after all. So their need might have been support, help. This will be different in each specific situation.
So the giraffe connects with what it knows already from a given situation or it simply guesses a possible situation too.
The giraffe can also ask for more information, to connect deeper with what is going on for the person, what is the deeper meaning of their gratitude. Asking for more information does not involve too much vulnerability for the other person, most of the time they will be happy to supply it to you. Then you can get more clarity of might be the fulfilled needs and the feelings.
Can you say more why this work I did was important for you?
A dialogue is possible, with the intention to connect to feelings and needs. To celebrate together.
Again, the giraffe can try to connect in silence to what is alive in the other person. But the thought process inside can follow the same steps, as if it were spoken out in dialogue.
Are you feeling, because your need for so and so was fulfilled?
She can also connect to her own joy, of having been able to contribute, of feeling accepted – or whatever else is alive inside the giraffe herself.
Thanks for connecting with this content!