The Role of Gratitude in Leadership

Introduction

Next week kicks off the holiday season in the US with Thanksgiving, a holiday with problematic origins but brings focus to one of the most powerful emotions, gratitude. Gratitude can take you outside of your own head and help you connect with others in your personal life, keep you centered, and help you feel a part of something bigger than yourself. It’s also an important, and often under acknowledged, attribute of successful leaders. In this article we will explore the importance of the role of gratitude in leadership.

The Effect of Gratitude On Your Team

“Silent gratitude isn’t much to anybody” was famously said by Gertrude Stein. When it comes to inspiring your team, she couldn’t be more correct. If you don’t share with your team feelings of gratitude for the work, efforts, and energy that they bring to the team, you are missing a golden opportunity to inspire and motivate.

Some leaders may refrain from regularly showing gratitude for their team’s efforts because it seems like expressing gratitude makes people feel awkward or is too “touchy-feely”. But in fact it’s one of the more practical things you can do for your team. Everyone wants to feel like they are valued and their efforts are being appreciated. When you express genuine gratitude to your team members you can boost confidence, feelings of job satisfaction and overall motivation. This in turn can improve employee retention and help create the type of work culture that inspires collaboration and teamwork over competition. What could be more pragmatic than executing simple acts of gratitude that help to inspire others and improve productivity?

The Effect of Gratitude on You As A Leader

Keeping a mindset of gratitude isn’t just about benefiting your team. It is also a powerful technique to help reset your own mindset. In a previous post, “20-Second Task to Reduce Stress”, I talked about how expressing gratitude can be a good technique to help move your attention away from feelings of stress, anger, frustration, or overwhelm and in to a more balanced position where you can be more productive (not to mention, feel better).

Remembering gratitude keeps you humble. It forces you to remember that it’s not all about you and your accomplishments. It reminds you that as a leader, you are dependent on your team member’s contributions for your own success and it reminds you to place emphasis on the happiness of others, not just your own happiness, making it one of the core tenets of the servant leadership philosophy.

Simple Ideas For Expressing Gratitude

If you are still feeling uncomfortable with expressing gratitude at work or worried that you will come across sounding unauthentic, here are a couple of suggestions for easy ways to get started.

Say “thank you”. It doesn’t get much simpler than this. However, it can be easy to forget during the hectic work day. Make an effort to remind yourself to just say “thank you” to someone when they complete a deliverable, execute a task, or provide you with helpful information.
Walk to walk - Saying “thank you” is a great start. In addition to saying you are grateful, show that you appreciate your team by doing something simple such as letting everyone leave early (or sign off if you work in a virtual environment) on a Friday, bringing coffee or a treat to work, or tidying up a communal working area or break room.
Don’t keep it to yourself. Make your gratitude public by sharing an email newsletter or Slack post highlighting individual and team accomplishments to individuals both within your team and outside of your team or department.
Ask what you can do. Don’t assume that you know how to best express gratitude in a way that will be meaningful to your team members. Ask team members (either in one-on-one conversations, team meetings, or by using a feedback form) what kinds of day-to-day actions would make them feel like they are recognized and their efforts are appreciated.
Set a reminder for yourself. If expressing gratitude isn’t something that comes naturally to you, set a reminder for yourself in the form of a post-it on your monitor or a daily/weekly task on your calendar until the practice becomes second nature.

Conclusion

As we move into the holiday season it can be easy to get distracted by personal plans, end of year deadlines, and the fun distractions of the more commercial aspects of the holidays. In all the hustle and bustle don’t let the importance of gratitude escape you this Thanksgiving. Gratitude goes a long way in helping to cultivate the emotional intelligence needed to be not only a good leader, but a good human being.

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