Five tips for giving presents to family and friends—get better gifts and be a hero at the same time.

Last week I treated the notion of what works best for managers at giving and getting gifts at the office, offering some tips that have worked very well for me and others I know at the office.  Here are a few ideas for gifting in the personal part our lives, after all, none of us are “managers” all the time--at least I hope that’s the case.  How we buy for others who are in our lives apart from the workplace frequently tests our abilities to be good “consumers”; knowing how to be good gift givers is a great trait to cultivate but not easy to come by if you’re a slave to work. 

I’ll share some ideas about what’s worked for me as a shopper and consumer in the art of gift-giving: 

[1] If you don’t know what to get someone, it probably means that you don’t know the person as well as you should. This circumstance suggests that you’ve got two issues to manage:  what to get how, as well as how to remedy an estrangement problem.  You can solve the first problem with a little luck, the second one will take more time.  At the moment, the best way to get the present that’s called for is to ask for advice from people who the preferences of other person better than you do. 

[2] If you don’t know the gift recipient like you might, maybe you should give them your time instead of stuff.  For those who are important to us, face-time and our attention are frequently immensely better than anything money can buy.  The spouse who says you spend too much time at work would vastly prefer your undivided attention and time to something they could buy for themselves at the mall with a credit card.  Fathers and mothers are made happiest when their grown children come to simply visit and be with them—something a million dollars can’t really substitute for.

[3] Don’t buy things for people to decorate their homes or their bodies with—unless you’ve personally witnessed them touching it in the store and saying they’d like to own it.  My sister-in-law taught me the lesson that most people don’t really want or need others to buy stuff they have to wear or put on display in their house.  It’s ‘way too personal for you to assume your tastes are the same—or even as good as--other people’s tastes!

[4] Get somebody what you’re pretty sure they’d be too reluctant to buy for themselves.  When you do this—when you buy what someone would love to have someone else get for them—you relieve them of the guilt they’d otherwise feel for being too spendthrift or extravagant.  This is, in truth, the secret of a great present, buying for others what they can’t bring themselves to personally justify or buy for themselves.

[5] Don’t necessarily spend a lot of money when a gift that reflects your thoughtfulness and “heart” is worth so much more to the recipient.  When I receive a gift that shows the giver thought of me in terms of buying something that I could use, would enjoy, be amused by, or would be of special interest to me—I am genuinely touched by the motive behind the gift, completely irrespective of how much the object itself might have cost.  Gift recipients are “moved” by the intentions of the thoughtful gift giver, not really by the price of the thing itself. 

Giving good gifts is a genuine skill, not acquired easily; instead it is an art that is developed over time with application and practice.  I have found that if you apply these notions, you’ll give presents that really “count” and, in the process, gain a reputation as a person who is special and valued for more than the money any particular gift might cost. 

That, in turn, is a “gift” that others confer upon you that’s  a pretty neat "present"—at least I think so!  
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