Today, let’s talk gratitude and the discipline for leaders to slow down, be more present and aware of others, and remain grateful no matter the circumstances.
Think about how do prefer to receive appreciation from your boss. Do you know your preference? Does your boss?
What about the people you lead? Do you know how they like to receive appreciation for their work? And can you recall the last time you expressed appreciation to one of them? We might be a little embarrassed to realize how long ago we might have expressed our gratitude to someone for something they did.
This is not an individual issue, though. It’s actually a systemic leadership issue because more than 1 in every 3 managers don’t express any appreciation to their people over the course of a year. Any! And of the 2 remaining managers in this equation, 1 generally shares a simple thank you on average once every 2 months. Clearly, many of us in leadership roles feel that positive feedback, encouragement, and gratitude are optional, or worse, not even necessary.
However, research and experience argue otherwise. There is immense power in leaders expressing gratitude. So, in today’s episode we are exploring the importance of gratitude for leaders and offer specific ways we can be intentional in expressing it regularly and authentically. And you’ll walk away from this episode with 5 actionable ways you can start sharing gratitude today. So, let’s get into it.
Welcome to the 3x5 Leadership podcast where we champion intentional leaders who create significant impacts. In this show, we share simple, practical strategies to help you live, lead, and learn more intentionally. I’m Josh and thanks for joining us today as we look at gratitude.
So first, why gratitude? It sounds a little squishy and soft. Does it matter? And who has the time to be adding yet another requirement to our routine?
Well, there are several important arguments that point to the power of leaders expressing gratitude. For one, gratitude is a method to create belonging and engagement. Thoughtfully acknowledging people shows them that they are seen and valued. A 2012 study from the American Psychological Association found that 93% of employees are motivated to do their best when they feel valued.
Gratitude is also a simple, but effective way to connect peoples’ work to the impact they have. Often, employees don’t see the 2nd and 3rd order effects their work achieves like business results, impacts on customers, and lives changed. But expressing gratitude to our people allows them to see and understand that they are contributing to our mission in meaningful ways.
And lastly, sharing gratitude is a safe, easy mechanism to practice giving feedback as a leader. Feedback is hard, uncomfortable, and many leaders shy away from it or deliver it really poorly. But positive feedback is easier to deliver. So, expressing gratitude to our people gets us in the habit of noticing their work, staying connected to it, and directly acknowledging it with them. This practice builds our feedback muscle so we are better prepared and rehearsed to deliver constructive feedback as well.
In the end, leaders who demonstrate and intentionally share gratitude ultimately just make the workplace a better environment. Through gratitude-filled actions, we show respect, show that we care, and build better connections with our people. Studies find that workplaces with leaders who show gratitude have higher engagement, higher employee satisfaction, lower turnover, and better alignment to the organization’s mission and values. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a more enjoyable and productive workplace – one that I’m certainly interested in being at.
I do want to note, however, that we should not confuse gratitude with merely being nice as a leader. I think Ken Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, put it really well. He said that one of the things people get confused about is they see gratitude as simply being nice. This view of ‘I want to be very stingy with gratitude’ gets confused to mean I’m not being demanding. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You can be very demanding and bestow gratitude very often and be authentic.
So, gratitude is not being nice, easy going, or lenient as a leader. It is about showing respect, care, contentment with our situations and people, and staying connected to the work we are all doing.
I also want to note that gratitude felt is not gratitude expressed. We might regularly reflect on what we are grateful for in life on a personal level, but if we don’t express that to the person we are grateful for, it does no one but ourselves any good. It’s important to turn our mere thoughts and feelings of gratitude into behaviors of actually sharing it with others.
So, now, how can we express gratitude as leaders? Habits of gratitude do not have to be these grand efforts consuming our time and the organization’s resources. They can be simple. But they must be authentic, timely, and consistent. Let’s look at 5 ways leaders can effectively show gratitude. For awareness, we will go through these practices in order of increasing levels of effort and resources. So, this first practice is the easiest to start and sustain with the 5th one requiring the most effort.
The first habit of gratitude is as easy as just saying thank you and I appreciate you doing X. Consider a scenario where you were not able to attend a meeting, but it is important to have representation from your team present at it, so you send Madison, one of your direct reports. After the meeting, the next time you connect with her, it will be easy to focus on her meeting notes and the due outs from it. But it also requires almost no effort on your part to also say, “hey, thanks attending the meeting for me, Madison. I appreciate you doing that.” That quick, easy statement sends several important signals to her. It shows her that you notice the time and effort it took for her to attend the meeting, it shows her respect for her effort, and it lets her know that doing so mattered to you and the team. Or, say you asked Anthony to draft up an email for you to send to your boss to argue for an upcoming decision. After he sends it, the next time you see him, you can causally say, “Anthony, thanks for the email draft to the boss for the project decision. That was a well-written and compelling argument. Good work. I appreciate it, man.”
And there is no ceiling, restriction, or zero-sum limit to sharing your thanks. There is no consequence to saying thank you more often. I encourage you to even say thank you to people when they complete routine parts of their assigned job description. So, let’s say thank you and I appreciate you more often.
Habit 2 is to publicly recognize people through routine outlets like meetings and emails. I once had a boss that sent out a daily synchronization email listing out our team’s priorities of work and who was assigned to what project or task that day. Our working environment at the time was really fast paced and needed a synchronization tool like that every day. But he would start every email by first sharing a quick note of gratitude to someone for a task or project that was completed successfully. His comments would be as simple as, “Great work Katie and Dave on completing the X project report. We published it to our national-level staff yesterday and are already getting encouraging feedback on your work. Well done.”
We can also do the same at a meeting. Before we dive into the agenda, pause to quickly acknowledge a few peoples’ efforts on whatever they completed or are currently working on. Not only does this practice achieve all the benefits of gratitude that we talked about, but it also helps everyone on the team know and appreciate what is going on around them. It’s often easy for teammates to get siloed and focus on their individual work, so pausing to express gratitude for one another helps others know what’s going on across the team too.
Habit 3 is what I call 3rd party praise. Imagine you walk into your boss’s office for your normal weekly one-on-one meeting and as you enter, your boss says, “hey, come on in and take a seat. I was just talking to Heather over in the other department and she wouldn’t stop talking about how impressed she is by the work you’re doing on restructuring the company’s knowledge management system. She’s really excited about the impact it will have on everyone.”
Wow, talk about some great feedback and appreciation. For me, I’d feel over the moon receiving a comment like that. Now think about the power if that was your boss or one of your peers sharing comments like that about you. This is what 3rd party praise is – speaking well of someone and building them up behind their back, instead of the normal gossiping and tearing others down when they are not around. When we speak about other people, our comments will inevitably make their way back to that person. Think about the impacts of our words of gratitude and encouragement making their way indirectly back to that person. Hearing that someone spoke highly of me while not in my presence, especially when they didn’t have to, is some of the highest praise I could ever receive. So, be intentional in building up, speaking highly of, and expressing gratitude for others behind their back.
Habit 4 is to regularly write hand-written thank you cards, or gratitude cards, whatever you want to call them. There is power in a hand-written note. It’s personal, thoughtful, and meaningful. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve found a thank you card that I wrote someone hanging in their office or at their desk – even months or a full year later.
Now, some of us might immediately be thinking who has the time for regular gratitude cards? I don’t! And yes, I get it. I hear you. It does require time and resources. But there are a few ways we can make it an easier habit. One way is to set a manageable goal of writing a certain number of gratitude cards per week and then designating a day, time, or specific trigger to do them. For example, I write 3 letters of gratitude per week, and I do them on Fridays before I leave the office for the weekend. 3 letters is sustainable for me and Friday is the day of the week that I have the least amount of requirements like meetings and tasks. So, that works for me. Then I hand out the cards on Monday the next week. You can also find certain triggers to initiate your card-writing habit that work for your situation. Maybe you travel regularly, so you can commit to writing cards while in the airplane. Just find what will work for you to make it easy, sustainable, and routine.
Another way to make them easy is to tie gratitude to peoples’ birthdays. If you write a birthday card for your people, that is an easy way to express gratitude for their work while also celebrating their big day.
Habit 5 is to initiate a team gratitude ritual. This is the most intense gratitude habit requiring the most effort and resources but from my experience, it is also well worth it. A team gratitude ritual is a regular event in our team’s rhythm where we pause to celebrate one another in specific and deliberate ways. It can be weekly, monthly, or whatever, but the key is that this ritual is consistent, intentional, thoughtful, and prioritized by leaders.
I think the best way to explore team gratitude rituals is to offer a few examples. One is from a tech company called Next Jump headquartered in New York City. They are actually one of three companies recognized as a “deliberately developmental organization” by Harvard Business Review in the book, An Everyone Culture. Every Friday, the office pauses to hand out Coro-nitas, which are just mini bottles of Corona beer. Why these? Because they chose this artifact and they have become the thing in the office. So, on Fridays, the office gathers and colleagues will share a story about how someone in the office did something great or helped them out a lot that week. Then, the colleague gets to hand a Corno-nita to the teammate they are celebrating. Everyone attends these celebrations, even the company CEO. And collected Coro-nita bottles on desks have become a signal of pride in the office.
That’s one example. Another way I practiced with a previous team I led was monthly lunches together. We’d get everyone together the first Wednesday of each month, provide food, and we would celebrate one another. We’d recognize upcoming birthdays for the month but then dedicate time for people to show gratitude for one another. Someone would stand up, tell the story of how a teammate lived out one of our team values and then give them a coveted “Best of the Bulldogs” sticker that they could display at their desk.
Beyond these examples, you can do things like start a certain meeting off or end it with celebrations, do it at off-sites, or even run Gratitude Weeks a few times a year, allowing colleagues to share gratitude cards with one another. Dedicating specific weeks makes them novel and big deals. And all it really requires is providing the cards for your people. I’d simply just establish a gratitude table with cards in a common area in our office.
When it comes to gratitude rituals, there’s not a right way to do this, it’s just important to make it authentic, consistent, and thoughtful. Leaders need to invest and make them big deals. And its key to design the celebrations to allow colleagues to celebrate one another peer-to-peer, and not restrict it to just leader-to-employee.
There you have it, 5 easy ways to begin leading with gratitude more intentionally this year. But to add a little flavor, I’d like to add a bonus 6th habit, which is…pause to build suspense!....don’t complain. We are leaders, we are not victims. We take what comes and handle the situation. We demonstrate ownership, maintain perspective, and have grit. We can lament, sure. Leaders deal with hard problems, so it’s ok to express that it’s tough! But we should not complain. Doing so can muddy our messages of gratitude and contentment, leading them to be perceived as inauthentic.
Lastly, I want to share a few important considerations to apply to our new habits of gratitude. First, when you do express your gratitude to others, make sure it is specific, and not vague. Comments like “thanks for all you do” don’t really encourage, or show care and connection to what they actually do. Just as in the feedback we share, make sure our gratitude is specific. State their actions and the impacts they have on the team and customers.
Second, make sure your habits of gratitude are authentic. Inauthentic attempts will likely do more harm than not doing them at all. Use language and a style that works for you. Don’t try and force activities that don’t come natural to you. Make it personal and genuine. There’s no objectively right way. Find and use what works for you.
Third, I know that the 5 new habits shared here on this episode seem like a lot. I am not arguing to start all of them now. Instead, I recommend we ease into them, starting with just one. Start at the top of the list. Or start with one that sounded most interesting and compelling. Build it into your personal work rhythm and with some iteration, make it a natural habit. Then, when you’re ready, add a second one. Grow your habits of gratitude over time.
Fourth, again like feedback, make sure your gratitude is timely. As time grows between the noted behavior and when you share gratitude for it, the impact dwindles. The emotions tied to the event fade, the meaningfulness of your comments mean less, and the impact of the gratitude declines. If we want our efforts of gratitude to actually mean something, ensure we share them in a timely manner and not wait weeks or months.
And lastly, consideration five, remember the people on the periphery of your organization. It’s easy to think of our star players or groups that seem to stay in the limelight based on their role or results. But everyone contributes in unique and important ways. Keep an eye out for those often considered on the periphery. It might be the IT department, janitors and cleaning crews, engineers, admin roles, or HR. Make sure they are recognized regularly as well.
Let’s make this year one marked by leading not only with intention, but also with gratitude. What is one habit you can start now to build this new gratitude muscle? It doesn’t have to be huge. Even small gestures as a leader can generate big impacts for your people and organization.
Now, if you’re really interested in the topic of leadership and gratitude and would love to learn more, I highly encourage you to check out the book, Leading with Gratitude, by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. It’s a super easy read but makes some really compelling arguments on why and how for leading with gratitude. I made a ton of highlights and margin notes throughout as I read it. So, if interested, I’ve got a link to the book in the show notes.
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Thanks for joining us today. And thanks for your support and for your leadership wherever you serve. And until next time, friends, take care and lead well.
