One of my former bosses would, every time he visited my school, make a clandestine card drop on my desk, which I’d discover only when he was driving off into the sunset. The card was simple, the handwritten message heartfelt, and it never failed to make my day.

I struggle with gratitude. I don’t mean that I’m not grateful for things, just that the constant reminder to be more grateful for every waking moment sets my teeth on edge. I’m aware that I allow potential moments to pass, when I might have expressed some sort of thanks. True, I may rush off a text or emoji, but this normally leaves me feeling slightly diluted, like it was a poor effort, or a missed opportunity. And while the period of Christmas just gone is when we are expected to send cards, I’m normally ill or exhausted, so unlikely to send the kind of message anyone would actually want to receive.

Like most of us, however, while I normally feel deep admiration for those I work alongside, I live with low grade guilt that I don’t say thank you often enough, or well enough. I’ve also heard a few leaving speeches recently and asked myself why is it that we wait until the day people leave to tell them how much we value them? I’d like to say a better thank you, when it matters, and before it’s too late.

So I began to realise that unless I had some sort of system, I’d never find an effective way of changing this dynamic. So, one morning, I wrote down a list of people I had reason recently to be thankful for. I went out and bought five cards and five stamps.

Why a card? Well, there’s something gloriously old-fashioned about a letter (someone once said that a handwritten letter is a quiet rebellion against a fast and forgetful world), and a card is the next best thing. As Bill Bailey says in his essay on letter writing, I don’t see anyone printing off emails and framing them any time soon. But keep it small. Just a few cards. Not a huge project.

Receiving a card is so much more pleasant than receiving an email. Cards are short, to the point, and when a card arrives at just the right moment, it’s worth is weight in gold. I keep a stack of thank you cards I’ve received over the years. I reread a couple this week. They’re an antidote to the bad weeks, when I wonder if I’ve added much value. Cards I’ve held on to, which remind me to keep going.

Words of praise as part of feedback at work may contain hidden messages. You know the thing – a little feedback wrapped within a sandwich of vague praise. I think this explains why colleagues may suspect well-intentioned compliments at work. I find it easier within a card to craft a well-framed, 100% positive input with no unhealthy additives.

I tried to keep each card specific and concise. We may not all think we are writers, but we do all send cards. In two or three sentences I tried to describe what I’ve seen this person do that’s remarkable (ie. worth remarking on). Then I write how this makes me feel. It’s worth remembering that in saying thank you, you are also describing them at their best. The knowledge that you have studied them when they’re on top form is deeply encouraging for the receiver.

In his book, The Remarkable Ordinary, Frederick Buechner describes how a painter literally frames what it is they want you to focus on. He describes one of Rembrandt’s paintings of an old Dutch woman. Despite the ordinariness of the image and the domestic setting, he says, the picture simply shimmers with life.

It’s as if the artist is saying: look at each other’s faces the way that I looked at the old woman! Not for the hood and the wrinkles and the sunken lip, but for what lies behind the face. For the life that made that face the way it is. Look for the human, and for the sublime beyond.

This should be easy to do for school leaders. After all, we’re trained to look closely, to see beyond first impressions, identify good practice, make sound judgements. But it’s not easy. The truth is that often I miss ordinary yet important details that make up the daily grind and the real challenges for those around me. It’s so easy for people to feel unseen.

It took me a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to write my first set of cards. And guess what, thinking carefully about people I care about made the whole thing strangely enjoyable. Writing a card slowly helped me to put concrete words to vague feelings. Investing time in this way is helping me build a practice in which I think about a colleague, and how they work their daily magic.

I sometimes send a card to a former colleague I’ve known for years. I tell them what helped me at a particular point in my career, what I learned from them, and how things have gone for me as a result. I focus on just one thing. If you wait for the full character playlist, you’ll never send a card. And of course, a card is a great way to say sorry. When a conversation doesn’t go well, it helps to be brave and do something that can begin to set right that relationship. For some reason I used to believe this would be see as a sign of weakness. I’ll be sending more of these cards this year.

Then what was huge was just to do it – to send the cards. Not to overthink the gesture, or tell myself this card-thing is all too much. Anyway, what could possibly go wrong?

And what do I do next? Nothing. Certainly not wait for any sort of reciprocity. That’s not the point. It’s just the knowledge that I’ve finally made an honest effort to better acknowledge a few people. I was never going to be able to realistically respond to everyone or everything, but this was my small attempt. No more and no less.

And through this practice I’ve discovered two simple things:

Firstly, it has turned my mind from the negative elements of the job. The nature of any leadership job means that much of the tricky stuff makes its way to your desk. It helps deflect from the inevitable bad news – the complaints, the exclusions and frustrations – and towards the hundreds of small but significant gestures of goodwill my team make every day.

And secondly, the very act of spending time thinking more intently about my teammates, meant I opened my eyes to search for this in the future. Asking myself who’d receive the next few cards, got me on the lookout, hunting for colleagues doing good things. I began to see kindness, generosity, collegiality, helpfulness and humility where previously I’d missed it. Each month’s list provided me with a group of colleagues who I could think about as I drove or went about my week. It became a practice that is absolutely doing as much for me as any pleasure for the receiver.

Saying thank you better is one of the habits I’ll be working on in 2026. I hope that by making the writing of cards a more deliberate practice, this will help me appreciate more people instead of missing the moment. But it’s not about numbers, I want this habit to help me see people on the ordinary days. To sense what’s really happening beneath the surface. To see both the human and the sublime.