Gratitude is a quiet but powerful tool that leaders often overlook. In fact, research shows that workplace gratitude reduces stress, increases happiness, and fosters a more compassionate and collaborative work environment.
This episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch covers all the amazing benefits of embedding gratitude into workplace culture, including its impact on employee engagement, team dynamics, job satisfaction and more. As I share what you can do to start living in gratitude and express genuine gratitude to your team, you’ll learn the difference between thankfulness and gratefulness — and why the distinction matters.
I also highlight regular feedback as an important way leaders can show gratitude while simultaneously helping team members grow professionally.
Tune in to discover how embracing gratitude can positively shift your mindset, transform you into a powerhouse leader, and elevate your team's morale and performance!
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Do you want tips and strategies for creating a culture of gratitude? BOOK A CALL with me and let’s talk! https://www.coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall
Download my eBook, The 3 ‘Must-Have’ Myths for Success, here: https://www.balloffirecoaching.com
Connect with Bernadette:
https://www.sheddingthecorporatebitch.com
https://www.facebook.com/shifttorich
https://www.instagram.com/balloffirebernadette
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadetteboas
https://www.twitter.com/shedthebitch
This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com
LISTEN HERE - https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
Gratitude is a quiet but powerful tool that leaders often overlook. In fact, research shows that workplace gratitude reduces stress, increases happiness, and fosters a more compassionate and collaborative work environment.
This episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch covers all the amazing benefits of embedding gratitude into workplace culture, including its impact on employee engagement, team dynamics, job satisfaction and more. As I share what you can do to start living in gratitude and express genuine gratitude to your team, you’ll learn the difference between thankfulness and gratefulness — and why the distinction matters.
I also highlight regular feedback as an important way leaders can show gratitude while simultaneously helping team members grow professionally.
Tune in to discover how embracing gratitude can positively shift your mindset, transform you into a powerhouse leader, and elevate your team's morale and performance!
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Do you want tips and strategies for creating a culture of gratitude? BOOK A CALL with me and let’s talk! https://www.coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall
Download my eBook, The 3 ‘Must-Have’ Myths for Success, here: https://www.balloffirecoaching.com
Connect with Bernadette:
https://www.sheddingthecorporatebitch.com
https://www.facebook.com/shifttorich
https://www.instagram.com/balloffirebernadette
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadetteboas
https://www.twitter.com/shedthebitch
This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com
LISTEN HERE - https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
How genuinely grateful are you for your work, your employees and other aspects of your work and life? Research shows that leaders who practice workplace gratitude help foster more compassion and consideration amongst their colleagues and team members, while reducing stress, increasing happiness and creating genuine and powerful relationships. And one way a leader can show that gratitude or express that compassion is through feedback, which, sadly, very few so-called leaders do so. In this episode, we're gonna be discussing the importance of gratitude to you, your team and your success, the difference between thankfulness and gratefulness, the benefits of a grateful culture and, lastly, tips for practicing and embedding gratitude into your life, into your team and into the workplace culture. Stay with us, welcome, welcome, welcome to Shading the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms female corporate executives into powerhouse leaders by showing them how to shed the challenges and overwhelm, along with any fear, insecurity, self-doubt and negativity holding them back. I'm your host, bernadette Beaus of Bollifier Coaching, bringing you powerhouse discussions each week to share tips, advice and sometimes tough love so you create the riches in your work and life you deserve. I can't help but wanting to kick off this episode all around gratitude by expressing my own gratitude to you, to the community, to just the love that I've been showered with over the last 12 or 14 years of doing Shading the Corporate Bitch. We've been through a lot of ups and downs together, we've been through a lot of changes and a lot of shifts and transformations, and for that is what I am eternally grateful for, because it has fulfilled so many of my not only goals, but my life passions, my why and my purpose, which is to really empower and to give back to those that may have their own journey, may have their own struggles, may have their own desires and ambitions and passions and aren't just not sure about what they need to be doing in order to not only pursue it but achieve it, and then coming together as a community, reaching out to one another, reaching out to me, me reaching out to you and really ensuring that you have what you need in order to have those fabulous aha moments and those grateful experiences to where you are indeed feeling gratitude for everything that you have in your life, the good and the bad, the easy and the hard, as well as just the opportunities and the struggles. And so I just want to express and be thankful by thanking you for just the ongoing, consistent, long-term showing up and being part of this community and giving me a reason why I absolutely, absolutely love getting up and working with you, working with my clients, partnering with you, discussing with you, collaborating with you. It just gives me so much joy. I am eternally grateful for it.
Speaker 1:But our subject today is gratitude and is really ensuring gratitude is brought into the workplace. We certainly focus on it and have it and possess it when it comes to our families and our friends and our life. However, leaders really need to understand how important and how much of a differentiator it is to them, to their teams, to the business, if they bring gratitude into the workplace. Now I know for me just to be usually upfront and frank about it, I would have to say that in my 25 years plus in corporate, in my very ambitious, aggressive time period, gratitude was the last thing on my mind. It was seen even by myself, let alone from other people, as a potential weakness If you were overly grateful, overly sharing, overly emotional and huggy with those around you. And yet that's a sad, sad, sad statement. It really is. That's a sad, sad reality, and yet it still exists. Today, progress is being made in leaders and their workers really wanting to bring authenticity and transparency and compassion and empathy into the workplace.
Speaker 1:However, like I had mentioned in the opening, one real key consideration of gratitude is through the expression of feedback good, bad or ugly and I have often talked about here on Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the fact that employees, with every cell of their body, is screaming for feedback. They don't even care that it might be bad or it might be of kind of sensitive or it could create some negative emotions within them. They just want the feedback. They just want your expression of being thankful for them and yet, at the same time, also being grateful for them. And we're gonna talk about the differences between the two. But your employees are screaming for it and I bet. I bet because if you're anything like me, I too wanted it Now I might have acted as if I don't. Oh, I don't need praise, I don't need feedback, I don't need to know what I'm doing great or what I'm struggling with, but I would have been lying to myself. And I was lying to myself because we all need it, we all need affirmation, we all need constructive criticism, we all need that feedback as to how we're doing and what we could be doing better or differently. So we're gonna kind of weave that in the whole subject of feedback when it comes to what you could be doing as a leader to express your gratitude.
Speaker 1:So, first off, studies have found that leaders who express appreciation, thankfulness, are more influential, more respected. They're happier both at work and in their home life, and in a Glassdoor survey, 81% of employees said they would work harder for a grateful boss. And, best of all, positive recognition is contagious. All right, that's from Glassdoor. And if you think about it, truly think about it.
Speaker 1:We all know, and we've heard it for years, that employees leave companies, leave teams, leave departments, not because of the work, not because of even kind of their lack of opportunities and advancement, but they leave because of the person that they're working for. And so I don't know about you, but if you're here listening or watching this and you're looking to be a powerhouse leader and powerhouse leaders don't want that, do you? No, we don't want that. We don't want our employees leaving, especially when we have strong, high potential employees or those that are on the uptick of becoming that high potential. So we need to address it, we need to figure out and be asking the right questions to understand then, what is it that they need? And give you a shortcut straight to me, having spoken to hundreds of employees and their managers over the last just eight or nine months as a result of a project I was doing.
Speaker 1:They want signs of appreciation, they want ad-aboys, they want thanks for stretching yourself, thanks for taking on that challenge, thanks for covering for your peers, whatever the case might be. They want meaningful recognition and yet, at the same time, the number one what should I call it? The number one thing they said that would be meaningful it's not money, it's not gift cards, it's not a lunch, it's not the usual things that many managers kind of expect that and actually act on when it comes to recognition. It is that feedback. It is that verbal acknowledgement, whether it's one-on-one, whether it's in a group, which would be fabulous whether it's behind closed doors as a sponsor or an advocate. They just want feedback, and it's not just during performance reviews at the beginning of the year and mid-year. All right, that is their meaningful way you being grateful that they are working for you and at the same time, you're even thankful and grateful that they may be struggling, they may have things that they need to be addressing, but they're trying and they're working at it and if you give them the feedback, they're willing to actually focus on it and work on it.
Speaker 1:All right, so it's really critical that, whether you are able to accomplish it at a cultural level immediately, your first term is for you first to really have a practice of gratitude and then for you to then start to instill it and embed it into your team, of which then these things are like just swell, but gratitude is just contagious, it's just expansive, and you start expressing gratitude, being thankful overtly, and I'll call it avertly, meaning that you actually are demonstrating and behaving in that way. Then the next thing, you know, every, all your other employees, your peers, your managers start recognizing it and they start to express it as well, because I'll often talk about the fact that employees and their bosses are like children and their parents, and the children are watching the parents for how they should be behaving, speaking, communicating, relating and therefore, if you start to demonstrate gratitude, then those around you will do the same. Okay so you have a lot of influence, you have a lot of power and a lot of opportunity to change not only your trajectory but also your teams individually and as a collective, and overall, your success. Okay so I want to also first kind of back up a little bit and explain the difference between thankfulness and gratefulness, because I think oftentimes we confuse it and that's okay. That's okay as long as we're expressing our appreciation.
Speaker 1:However, I was even listening to Mel Robbins' podcast earlier this morning and it just so happened that she was doing one on gratitude. She was looking at it from the toxic gratitude side of it and I won't go into all of that, you could check out her podcast for it. But she was also expressing the fact that, as much as there is a difference between thankfulness and being grateful, expressing your appreciation one way or the other is powerful regardless. But at the same time, she was also saying that for those that have a practice of writing out their gratitudes in a journal every day and whatnot, they're actually confusing thankfulness and gratitude, of then impacting the energy and what can transpire and come out of really expressing your gratitude versus just your thankfulness. So I want to make sure that we also explain the difference between those two. Either one of them is great, don't get me wrong, but just so you're clear on what the differences are. And you can actually, because I did over the last couple of weeks in researching for today's conversation and really kind of making note of my own position.
Speaker 1:When it comes to gratitude, I also found that a lot of the blogs and a lot of the experts out there so-called experts also were confusing the two, and so in reading a couple of blogs, I also kind of went wait a minute, those are thankful type of expressions, not gratitude type of expressions. So what's the difference? Well, thankfulness is almost kind of temporary, momentarily. You're thankful for someone doing something, for saying something, for something happening to you, but it's short-term, it's kind of on the surface. You are thankful, for instance, if someone saves you a parking spot. You're not going to be grateful to that person, but you're going to be thankful for it. They saved you this parking spot, I mean. That's just a really simple example to discuss it. So it's short-lived, it's momentary, it's temporary.
Speaker 1:It definitely is an expression of your emotion and how you're receiving someone helping you or someone supporting you or someone being there when you needed help, but it's not necessarily deep-seated, heart-moving, almost like bringing you to tears type of gratitude for something that is so much deeper and more powerful than of an experience that you've had. It's more literally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, moves you and shifts you and it's long-lasting. So think about it. Last experience you might have had with someone or something, or an encounter where you kind of walked away and were just moved by it, like deeply moved, deeply felt by that individual, by that experience, by that thing, whatever the case might be, to where, when you recount it right now maybe moments, days, weeks, years later it still moves you, it still brings you back to that expression, that emotion, that gratefulness that you felt.
Speaker 1:So gratefulness is definitely much deeper and it stays with you, whereas thankfulness you can be thankful for someone by simply thanking them, thank you, but at the same time you kind of thank them and move on, and that's okay. That's okay. So, even at work, let's tie it to work. And then I'm going to give you an example of something that happened to me several weeks ago that just brought me to tears. So at work it could be thank you for covering for your peer that was out. I know you didn't need to do it. I know you had plans this weekend, so I'm very thankful that you were available to be able to cover for that. Now, could you be grateful for that? Well, that's up to you. You walk away and you just hold on to it and, oh, I'm just so grateful for Joe.
Speaker 1:Was it such an impact on you that you actually deeply embed it and it stays with you as you move on into your day, week, month, year? Or is it just that you're thankful? You appreciate the fact that they stepped up, you appreciate that they received difficult feedback openly and constructively and they didn't get defensive and you were worried about that. You were nervous to go into that conversation of conflict and therefore you're thankful that it went as well as it did. Those are levels of thankfulness. Now gratitude could be where you've had a health issue or a tragedy in your family life and your boss and your company as a whole just really fully supported you and kind of brought down all of the love onto you. Take time off. We're not going to reach out to you. You need to take care of your family. Here's meals for you and the family. Don't worry about anything here. Well, that's much deeper than a thank you. That's you're feeling grateful about.
Speaker 1:And, as I'm even expressing this example, I recall when my father back in 2004, he suddenly was implications Otherwise being brought home into Philadelphia into hospice, the nurses were sharing with me because I was the only one away that it'll be very soon, two or three days at max. I raised home. I was in North Carolina working consulting at the time and I raised home to be by his side, along with my 11 brothers and sisters and my mother. He actually stayed on and stayed with us for almost two weeks and that experience with the hospice nurses and with what my father was going through and what all my brothers and sisters and us as a family were going through, and the ultimate beauty of his passing I was so grateful for the hospice experience I was so I can start crying now. I was so grateful to my family in the way that we were all coming together and handling it. I was so unbelievably grateful for how my work stepped in and, even though I can work remote and I have for 30 some odd years my boss was like no way, you are not to be contacted, you are not to be touched, you need to be there for your family. Even as this two to three days lingered into a week, then started moving into a second week, the entire, my entire team, my entire company just rallied around me and just took care of me and my family in such a way that I actually could start crying right now. But I want so that's gratitude Makes sense Difference between thankfulness temporary, fleeting, momentary to gratefulness being really deep seated.
Speaker 1:So I said I had another example for you between thankfulness and gratitude that happened to me several weeks ago and that would be I was down in South Carolina taking care of couples of friends house and their puppies. You all know how much I love my puppies, and so I was down there for three weeks or so taking care of their house and their pups, and so when they returned, they expressed how thankful they were that I'm kind of dependable, I love dogs and I really take care of their property, their home and their loved ones, which are their puppies. They were very thankful for that, but it turned into gratitude when we were having a conversation and that's a story in itself. But we were having a conversation and I was sharing how I was looking to spend more time in that area, this part of South Carolina, and that I was already looking for some places to rent, that I could work remote or I can travel back to Atlanta or wherever my customer needs to send me.
Speaker 1:And as I'm having this conversation, they started expressing their gratitude and their love for me in such a way and our friendship in such a way that I always knew we were friends but it wasn't really kind of firm and embedded within me Because we're just in Separ. They were it's a long story, but they were my renters in my house and we spent time together. But it wasn't as if they were my best girlfriend and guy friend that I hang out with all the time and have known for days and weeks and years that kind of thing. But they started expressing that they indeed felt friendship for me and therefore they would absolutely refuse any idea of me going into that area and renting. They opened their home to me. They said they opened and welcomed me into their home and I was sitting in the backseat of their car as we're driving from the airport and they're sharing this with me and it took every ounce of energy not to just break down and ball, just break down in tears. And it was really because what they were emoting the friendship and the love and the appreciation and the thankfulness and the gratitude was just so moving to me and again I could start crying.
Speaker 1:Now thinking and reliving the conversation and the way I was feeling during that conversation and the way they were expressing it. As a matter of fact, he's Italian and they were coming back from Italy and, as I was kind of pushing back, oh no, no, that's not necessary, and I can pay my rent and I can find a place of my own, as I'm expressing that, of course, when I'm not really good at receiving, I'm still working on it, but they're expressing this. He says something in Italian and I'm like I don't know what that means. And he said well, it means in English translation would be don't dishonor my gift by saying no. I'm offering you a gift at a friendship and so don't dishonor that by saying no. Anyway, so that to me still, like I said, stays with me. That's gratitude and therefore it is gratitude relevant to a leader in the workplace. Well, absolutely, absolutely, yes, and I shared with you the example that I had with my boss and my company while my father was passing.
Speaker 1:And yet, at the same time, like I said, I speak to hundreds and hundreds of employees and their managers and they don't even connect some of their expression to be gratitude. And yet it is. And I think they hesitate for the reasons I mentioned earlier, which is that fear of well, they're being too nice, they're going to be considered a doormat, there's too much fluff, too much motion, that's not appropriate in the workplace, so forth, and so on. And I'll be damned that. I would want you to be thinking that, let alone acting on that Deep seated gratitude for the work, the contribution, the sacrifices, the compromises, the conflicts, the challenges, the opportunities that are presented to you and your team members, as well as your peers and the rest of the company. There is gratitude in that. There's thankfulness, absolutely, absolutely. And if you're not thanking and ataboying and that kind of thing on a regular basis to your team members and colleagues, then shame on you.
Speaker 1:But there are those instances of gratitude and I heard them, dozens of them out of the hundreds and hundreds. I heard those expressions of gratitude, experiences, and yet they kind of fell deaf on a lot of the leaders, a lot of the, the managers of these employees and vice versa. So it is very relevant and very critical in the workplace as much as in your social and personal life. Like I said, it is a differentiator. You start expressing your gratitude, your thankfulness to your employees, to your peers, to the business, so forth and so on. All of a sudden, as I mentioned, is contagious and all of a sudden it also gets recognized and differentiate you from many, many, the majority of other so-called leaders.
Speaker 1:So in what way, and especially when we think about the workplace, in what way and places is gratitude showing up? Well, gratitude shows up, even your past, present and future. We'll stick with the work dynamic. In the past it's all the hard work and the crap and the successes that you've had. It's all the lessons and the experiences that you took from it and those things that made you who you are today. So there's gratitude in the past. In all of those hard times, great times, ups and downs, successes and failures, there's so much gratitude that you can bring with you to where you are right now, for the person that you are right now and the leader that you are right now. There's also gratitude in what you're dealing with right now.
Speaker 1:I have learned and I've put into practice that, even when shit is hitting the fan, even when I'm getting stressed out over something or I'm getting triggered by something because I have my triggers, that I can immediately pull myself back and be grateful for what it is I'm experiencing and what I am is that I'm feeling and what it is that I'm going to use as a result of this in order to work my way through it. There's many instances where it gets so deep-seated that I was so grateful that that was happening. Then I recognized it was happening and I shifted my focus and I worked my way through it. It was much deeper than thankful. I have probably tens of thousands of instances of thankfulness through the day, but there's also those grateful moments, experiences, encounters, challenges, opportunities that we could be dealing with right now. I'm grateful to be here. I love doing the show and I love hearing and reading your experiences with it. There's gratitude there. Then again, there's also gratitude in the challenges, really, because it shows you what you're made of.
Speaker 1:Why not be grateful for that? It could be the contributions, the receiving, the giving from others that you're then grateful for. We talked about those from the workplace. It could be your workers. It could be your bosses. It could be things they're helping you with as personally as the examples I gave, or it could be that they're doing their job, but they're also going far beyond it. There are so many examples you could be thinking of as far as how the contribution of others is also something you could be grateful for, then, quite honestly, if you looked at the when, why and how, there's things in all of that that you can be grateful for.
Speaker 1:Now, I mentioned that oftentimes people confuse gratefulness and thankfulness when it comes to when they journal. If you are one who practices gratitude, I have done it multiple times through my life, but I have to say and admit that not consistently, not every day I journal every day. I don't necessarily purposely, intentionally, consciously then focus on my gratitude, but where people get confused when it comes to that is they'll sit down, they'll say well, I'm grateful for my health, I'm grateful for this blue sky, I'm grateful for the birds chirping, I'm grateful for my day off. Are you grateful? Are those deep-seated, moving, transformative type of experiences, or are you thankful for those things? Why do you really want to focus intentionally on gratitudes when you're journaling Is because, again, these are experiences, encounters, events that move you, that transform you in some way, even if it's really small, that you literally can recall and feel and appreciate and relish again and again. Therefore, if there are those type of experiences and things in your world right now that you want to acknowledge and express, then that's really where you want to be intentional and focus, as opposed to just scribbling really quick without much thought about what you're thankful for. Really being intentional about considering what you're grateful for in your life creates an energy that's like a thousand, 10,000 times stronger than your thanks. Therefore, that's when the gratitude swell is created. You just want to really be looking at the what, where, when, how, why, the contributions of others that you're grateful for, which could be not only from a work perspective, but support, help, donation, whatever charity, whatever it could be. You want to look at the challenges that are ahead as well as what's happened in your past, which could be five minutes ago, that has also influenced who you are right now. That's how you really want to be looking at gratitude Again. Start bringing that in.
Speaker 1:Show up at work in a nasty mood and sit down because you don't want to be in that space for the rest of the day. Sit down and recall something you're grateful for not just thankful, but grateful for and your shift will move. Your mood will shift, all right, your mood will shift. You cannot be in a negative, pessimistic, bad mood when you're really living in gratitude. You just can't. It's just totally. I don't know the nor science behind it, but it's just totally contradictory to one another. Or if you're in a bad mood and you want to shift into a good space, then really just intentionally, purposely, consciously, recall an experience where you are grateful and really feel it. Live in it and I can guarantee you that mood will shift All right. It's like I tell my clients all the time want a simple little tip, and you go out into the world and you're in a negative space.
Speaker 1:Smile, smile for yourself and smile from the inside out, like, just don't put a grin on your face, but smile, think of something, feel something that'll make you smile. One. It'll completely shift you. Your whole chemistry, brain waves will be shifted At the same time. Just then, witness how that then is projected and received back from other people. Someone who smiles at you. You can't not smile back, right? So and I do this a lot myself when I go out and maybe I'm not paying attention, maybe I'm distracted, maybe I'm frustrated or aggravated or angst, and all of a sudden I'll realize that I'm in that space and I'll just simply smile internally and then seeing someone else smile back and then, even if they don't, that smile within me shifts.
Speaker 1:All right, so that leads to the benefits of gratitude. Why is it so important? Well, we talked about it. It shifts your mood, so your energy, your positivity, your attitude, your everything. So why not? Why wouldn't you? Right, if you're having a nasty, you got out of the wrong side of the bed and you're having a nasty morning, why wouldn't you want to use the power of gratitude to get out of that space before you go out into the world?
Speaker 1:It definitely definitely lowers stress for you, for those around you, let alone if you add, with gratitude, that expression of feedback to your employees Because, again, remember, employees stick around when they have a grateful boss who's expressing that gratefulness. So definitely a lot of less stress and more satisfaction, more happiness, more fulfillment, more appreciation, more compassion. You definitely will be building better relationships, more stronger, genuine, powerful relationships, by being grateful for those around you, for what they're doing, who they are, who they're not, so forth, and so on. Of course, those relationships that genuine, powerful, collaborative relationships, creates connectivity, it creates true engagement. Of course, if you're working on all of that and your people are feeling that well, it elevates their job satisfaction, their morale, their happiness in the workplace, then it impacts everyone's mental health, self-esteem, confidence, purpose. Their self-worth is built up, your self-worth is built up. Of course, all of that would just simply help improve your overall health mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, just in every aspect. Gratitude is definitely proven to alter your health.
Speaker 1:What can you do to be more grateful? What can you do to embed gratitude even into your team and then into the culture? Well, first let's focus on you. You can learn to be more grateful by really being clear of your values, of your beliefs, of those things that are non-negotiable, because once you really understand what those are and you live there and therefore your boundaries ensure that those are protected and you're able to make decisions better. As a result of knowing what your values and beliefs are and you're kind of no compromise, your decision-making becomes so much better. If you can get clear there, then, as you are experiencing and encountering and acting on your day in, day out well, you find more and more grateful moments, grateful experiences, grateful encounters, all right. So just get really clear on your values and your beliefs and your non-negotiables, so then you can live in your I hate to say your truth sounds very woo-woo, but you now know what you're going to allow and not allow, which only creates gratefulness.
Speaker 1:Then we talk about it a lot here, but you really need to understand your why, your purpose, your meaning for getting up each and every day and going out and working as hard as you work, really understanding your why. Why am I so passionate and so invested in coming to you each and every week, not only on this podcast, but even in the work that I do each and every day and the speaking engagements and the writing that I do? My why is because I want to see more of you really living your full purpose, your full why, having you experience aha moments and deep-seated gratitude in your life, both work and at home. Nothing is more exciting, exhilarating for me than to get feedback that just one little thing that I said, or one little hard feedback that I provided, shipped it someone's mindset, shipped it someone's behavior, shipped it someone's actions for the better, and therefore they achieved even a partial part of what they're working so hard to achieve. I could go on and start crying again, and then what you could be doing when it comes to living in gratitude is being intentional about it, taking time. It's great that you might keep a gratitude journal Awesome. Don't stop doing that. And if you haven't started doing it, start doing it.
Speaker 1:I have to talk, take that piece of advice myself, but be intentional about it. Really, sit and be thinking about what are you grateful for? And real quick. My gratefulness right now has to do and has to go to a few contractors that I'm working with right now at my house, because I have been screwed over so many times over the last 20 years of living in this home that I just lost a lot of faith, a lot of trust, just a lot of desire to want to do anything when it came to engaging home contractors. And so right now, a small of a project that I have going on is the two of them are just so unbelievably genuine and honest and transparent and helpful and supportive and taking everything off of my shoulders and helping me get fine sleep again, because for the first several weeks of looking for these contractors it certainly was many sleepless nights, but I am so grateful that I can trust and I can kind of turn over and be at peace with even this small little project. But I digress. So be intentional about what you are grateful for when you are considering your gratitudes.
Speaker 1:Okay, but what can you do for your team? What you could be doing for your team is a lot of things, but if I were to pick out even three, remember what I said express your gratitude through feedback to your team members, and it doesn't have to be all positive. They will be grateful, moved, shifted, heartfelt, if even you tell them where they need to improve what they haven't been doing, where their gaps are, as much as, certainly, when they are showing up, when they are expanding themselves and stretching themselves, when they are kind of going beyond what the expectation is. Expressing that as well. But number one would be get them feedback. They're craving for it, trust me, just as probably you are from your own boss.
Speaker 1:Then the second one would be take time, intentional time, to actually celebrate those around you that are going over and beyond. Now, that was the other interesting point that many of these employees that I've been talking to over the last nine months have said is I don't need recognition for doing my job. That's my job description, but we should be recognizing when there are people stretching themselves, when they are covering and going way over and beyond what is expected of that. So take time to actually celebrating, recognize individuals. One-on-one is awesome, but of course, if it can be amongst their peers or the senior managers, that's even better. But in public is a beautiful expression of your gratitude, sincere, genuine gratitude. Don't do it because you have to check a mark off of a list, and many of those employees that I've mentioned have expressed the fact that it just feels like performance reviews are just a check mark on a list of what managers need to do. Well, that's not a leader and that's certainly not an expression of genuine gratitude.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then I would also say that express to others kind of the impact that they have on you. It could be simple, it could be very deep, it could be someone who is a mentor to you or just someone who is a loyal follower I'll call it a lieutenant, as some would call it but really express genuinely how that individual makes you feel, what difference they make in your world, what they bring to you as a leader, or maybe you're just an individual contributor, but make sure that you are not only giving them feedback or recognizing when they've done something good, but really go that next level, down that deeper level, to say this is the difference you make in my world, this is the difference you make in my day in, day out. And again, going back to those hundreds of employees and managers, interviews and conversations that I've had, I would say there was definitely a couple of handfuls, maybe a handful and a half, where one person did alter another person's life. Maybe it's just the work life, but there was kind of a difference made, a shift made in some way, and therefore you would hope that, beyond just saying thank you or that I'm grateful, that they actually express the difference that individual made to their life, because that's a whole different, deeper level of expression of emotion, of gratefulness.
Speaker 1:Those are three, because I'm big on just focusing on one to three that you could be doing right now to both. I had three for you to work on yourself when it comes to gratitude and three for what you could be doing to instill, embed gratefulness into your team and into your culture. And if you want tips and a strategy or even a plan of how you can be embedding a culture of gratitude into your team or organization, then book a call, let's talk about it. You can go to coachmebernadettecom. I would love to be able to help map out a plan that you could be taking so you can have a practice of gratitude as well as those around you. I will be grateful to have you right back here for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Pitch. Take care.