The Power of Gratitude
By Steven Urban and Kat Cox
According to a UCLA Health study from April 2021, practicing gratitude in your personal life has a number of health benefits, including reducing depression and anxiety, relieving stress, improving sleep, and even reducing heart disease. But embracing the spirit of giving thanks for what you have can also improve your work life.
Explore how bringing gratitude into your work can help improve your relationships with colleagues, your productivity levels, and even your organization as a whole.
Create a Positive Environment at Your Organization Through Gratitude
“No duty is more urgent than giving thanks.” - James Allen
It should come as no surprise that thanking people for their work makes them feel better about working for you. Researchers have found that when employees get a thank-you from their managers, they’re actually more productive.
The difficulty, however, is that many leaders have a hard time expressing their gratitude to their employees. In fact, they may not even realize that they’re not thanking workers for all they do and assume that employees already understand how appreciated they are.
Many organizations have employee recognition programs that may include bonuses, extra time off, or other perks. These are certainly a good starting point. But managers can create a positive work environment by thanking employees in smaller, more regular ways. Taking the time to thank an employee verbally or through an email for a specific action can mean a lot.
Also, authenticity is important. Employees who receive rewards or recognition in an off-hand way (like just leaving a gift card on their desk) may not feel the gratitude that their manager wishes to convey. Gratitude should be regular, thoughtful, and meaningful for it to have an impact.
Build Trust at Work with Peers Through Honest and Authentic Gratitude
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” – Voltaire
Managers aren’t the only ones who can see benefits from expressing gratitude in the workplace. According to research, being grateful helps us build trust with our peers as well. Practicing gratitude helps us recognize that the good things that we have in our lives are often influenced by other people. From there, we can practice appreciation – the act of telling people that we’re grateful for their positive effects on our lives or work.
Thanking colleagues and peers for their positive influence on your life can make work a much more pleasant place to be, for obvious reasons. But it can also help us take down barriers that keep us from being vulnerable and authentic. Vulnerability is a key in building trust among colleagues, and allowing others to know we couldn’t do our work without them is a strong way to let them in.
Saying “Thank You” Is a Choice
“I am happy because I’m grateful. I choose to be grateful. That gratitude allows me to be happy.” – Will Arnett
Gratitude is a practice that you have to choose to engage in. Beyond your parents teaching you to say “please” and “thank you”, there’s a good chance that you haven’t been explicitly taught to sit down and consider everything you’re grateful for. Learning to have gratitude on a daily basis can help you in both your personal and work relationships.
Here are a few ways to incorporate gratitude into your life:
Keep a gratitude journal and write down three things you’re grateful for at the end of every day.
Take a moment once a week to really thank someone who has had an impact in your life, either in a phone call, email, or text message.
Look at your resume and think of the people (bosses, colleagues, mentors, or others) who helped you get where you are today.
By practicing gratitude, we can feel more fulfillment in our lives by recognizing what we already have and the people who have helped us achieve it.
Maintain Gratitude’s Impact
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” - John F. Kennedy
It can be easy to push through our work and not realize that people don’t know we’re thankful for what they do and who they are. It can be just as easy to force gratitude into our work lives through empty words or actions, which can diminish gratitude’s power.
For the practice of gratitude and its cousin, appreciation, to maintain its impact in your day-to-day and by extension in your workplace, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Do it authentically.
Practicing gratitude does not mean thanking everyone for everything they do all the time. It means really taking stock of what people’s actions mean in your life, and expressing authentic appreciation for the positives. Make your expressions of gratitude meaningful. Even if you regularly give out “thank-yous” at work, take time to express true gratitude when you really feel it.
2. Practice it regularly.
It takes time to learn a new skill, and practicing gratitude is no different. Gratitude is an internal process, and you’ll have to do it regularly to learn it. Taking stock of the good in your work life doesn’t mean running down the hall to tell your colleagues every time you feel good about them. You can still practice gratitude regularly without having to express it externally.
3. Be grateful within your boundaries.
Sometimes we can overdo new practices in an attempt to make them a part of our daily lives without recognizing whether or not we really have the capacity for them. Authentic, regular gratitude can take time to incorporate, especially at work, where we often divorce “professional” behavior from “vulnerable” behavior. Make sure that you don’t overload your colleagues or employees with gratitude and appreciation that you’re later going to forget to give them. Many colleagues may be sensitive to changes in behavior, and if you suddenly stop telling them you’re thankful for their work, they may think you’re unhappy with it.
Help Your Team Find Gratitude with Build Your Alliance
Find out new ways to find and express gratitude at your workplace with coaching from Build Your Alliance. Our certified coaches can help your team members figure out their values and how to map those to ways they can express appreciation for their colleagues in a more authentic way. Set up an initial consultation today to learn more.