The Power of Thanks

Derek Irvine

with Derek Irvine

Employee Engagement Expert

The Power of Thanks

The Power of Thanks 1200 1200 33Voices

Moe and Derek Irvine talk about how social recognition empowers employees and creates a best place to work.

The Power of Thanks

Long before performance coaching became a crowded and highly homogeneous field, Dan Sullivan was helping highly successful entrepreneurs multiply their progress.  Eager to extent his impact beyond his one-on-one client work, Dan and his life partner, Babs Smith formed the Strategic Coach in 1988 and shifted to a quarterly format that has since helped thousands of entrepreneurs discover their unique abilities, reimagine time management, and focus on their 10x possibilities.  

I was fortunate to meet Dan and join the program in the early 90s, and rarely does a week go by without Dan’s words ringing in my ears.  In addition to his character and example, I’ve built a lot of habits from Dan’s influence, one of which reemerged this week as I was preparing to speak to Derek Irvine of the workforce recognition firm, Globoforce.  Derek’s latest book, The Power of Thanks:  How Social Recognition Empowers Employees and Creates a Best Place to Work, triggered Dan Sullivan’s four referability habits, which are so simple that far too many take them for granted – show up on time, do what you say, finish what you start, and say please and thank you.  

To any professional, these are simple disciplines that show respect and appreciation to anyone with whom we work; still as Irvine, and his co-author Eric Mosley highlight, their greatest contribution to the workplace culture is that they add a greater sense of meaning to the work being done.  

Listen as Irvine and I discuss these questions:


  • The mindset of an appreciative entrepreneur or senior executive
  • The formula to inspire emotion and drive new behavior
  • How to approach changing a toxic culture
  • How to continually build on the success of an extraordinary culture
  • Can gratitude journals become an operational principle 
  • The correlation between self-worth and workplace productivity
  • The ROI of a Thank You culture