Showing Appreciation with the Kudos Cards for the Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership

There’s a lot of whin­ing and com­plain­ing. After all, it is very easy to be out­raged about the mis­takes made by oth­ers and espe­cial­ly by “those up there”. How­ev­er, this way we focus our thoughts on deficits and prob­lems and tend to ignore the fact that the half-emp­ty glass is also half full. This neg­a­tiv­i­ty bias, i.e., the ten­den­cy to per­ceive the neg­a­tive more strong­ly than the pos­i­tive, has been well researched sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and seems to be deeply root­ed in our human nature. There­fore, it takes mind­ful­ness and prac­tice to over­come it. A nice start is to show appre­ci­a­tion in the form of the new Kudos Cards for the Man­i­festo for Human(e) Lead­er­ship.

Kudos comes from the Greek κῦδος (kydos) which means recog­ni­tion, fame, hon­our. It is wide­ly used in the inter­net (yes, there are not only shit­storms!) com­pa­ra­ble to the French “Cha­peau!” or the Ger­man equiv­a­lent “Hut ab!”. (which, of course, both come from com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent times and there­fore seem a bit outdated).

Ana­log media are regain­ing new sig­nif­i­cance because of the ubiq­ui­tous dig­i­tal­iza­tion. A small card with a hand­writ­ten thank you on beau­ti­ful paper stands out against the quick­ly clicked like. And con­scious­ly writ­ing and hand­ing over such a card works won­ders against the neg­a­tiv­i­ty bias described at the begin­ning. In this way, grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion leads to sat­is­fac­tion on all sides.

We are what we think. All that we are aris­es with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Bud­dha

Besides all the undis­put­ed short­com­ings, there are nev­er­the­less many good exam­ples of new lead­er­ship every day in the sense of the Man­i­festo for Human(e) Lead­er­ship. We should appre­ci­ate and strength­en these lit­tle flow­ers ade­quate­ly, for the glass is also half full. So the next time you notice exem­plary lead­er­ship behav­ior – and I explic­it­ly do not want to lim­it­ed this to man­agers – show it with one of the Kudos cards. 

The Kudos Cards for the Manifesto

The Kudos Cards are avail­able in the size 65mm x 65mm opti­mized for order­ing as square busi­ness cards from MOO. I rec­om­mend the cot­ton ver­sion, which is made of recy­cled T‑shirt fab­ric, feels very classy and is easy to write on.

I am also grate­ful for the incred­i­bly pos­i­tive recep­tion to the Man­i­festo and the Book on the Man­i­festo (avail­able in Ger­man at Ama­zon and in Eng­lish on Lean­pub). And to show that grat­i­tude I pro­vide the print­able tem­plates for the cards for free here: 

Down­load as print­able PDF: Ger­man / Eng­lish.

Since MOO only deliv­ers cards start­ing at a min­i­mum of 50, I am hap­py to offer sin­gle sets (con­sist­ing of the fol­low­ing six cards) at a price of 6€ per set (incl. ship­ping). Just send me a short e‑mail with the desired num­ber of sets and the desired lan­guage version: