Be Careful What You Give Thanks For
Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash
Expressing gratitude to your teams is important—but where you focus your gratitude is just as important
“Five Ways to Give Thanks as a Leader”
“Gratitude: The #1 Value to Cultivate in Your Organization”
“Count Your Blessings, Tell Your Teams”
Seen any titles like these floating around your news feeds yet? ‘Tis the season…
Articles everywhere this month will tell you to express gratitude to your teams, build gratitude into your culture, and give thanks for all you have as leaders and organizations. And that’s all well and good—leaders should do all of these things. But there’s a problem: blithely giving gratitude just to give gratitude doesn’t cut the cranberry sauce because not all gratitude is created equal.
Giving thanks is not enough—you need to be purposeful about the what, how, and when you express gratitude if you want to drive the best results in your organization.
Many leaders express gratitude and reward their teams only when they’ve achieved certain results. However, rewarding results alone can create the wrong incentives and drive unhealthy behaviors among your employees. It may continue to produce results in the immediate future, but what if those results came from people playing politics, hoarding resources or credit, or driving your best team members to the brink of quitting? Is that the kind of culture you want long-term? Doubtful. If you want to see strong results for years into the future, you need to reward clear, replicable, and inclusive processes that lead to world-class, repeatable results, and not just results at any cost.
WHAT: Give thanks for the process, not just the product.
The first rule of thumb is to get clear on WHAT you are giving thanks for. It’s critical to reward the effort, not just the outcome—the process, not just the product. And no, we are not suggesting you start handing out participation medals. What we are saying is that when you just express gratitude for the end product, you send the message that the end product is all that matters and, by extension, what happens along the way is immaterial. This practice can prompt team members to do whatever it takes to hit their numbers—take shortcuts, burn out their teams, steal credit, create silos, etc.
Harmful, uncollaborative behaviors like these foster toxic environments, false urgency, and unhealthy internal competition, which ultimately erodes performance and results in the long run. If you consistently reward team members for results regardless of how they achieved them, you are tacitly endorsing the toxic culture those behaviors produce.
Psychologist Carol Dweck drove this point home in her book Mindset. She noted the importance of rewarding children for their work ethic and resilience—the number of times they try and fail and try again—and not just for their grades. Those children who were praised for their work ethic scored better and better over time, while the kids who were simply praised for grades plateaued and often declined in performance in the long run.
Again, it’s all about the process. Express gratitude when you see the behaviors you want more of: challenging ideas, constructive debate, proactive collaboration, leading with heart, emotional integrity. Better behaviors mean better processes, which lead to better and more consistent results overall.
WHEN and HOW: Be timely and specific with your praise
Everyone loves big parties and holiday bonuses, but these “peanut butter” approaches to rewarding your teams don’t have the depth, specificity, or immediacy you need to drive better behavior. Recent research on motivation suggests that the more specific the praise and the closer the praise is to the event itself, the more successful it will be in driving more of the same behavior in the future.
When you tell people “you’re all doing such a good job,” that might feel good in the moment, but there is nothing to take home. “I did a good job? When? Doing what?” What is it specifically you want them to continue doing more of? To foster a culture where people will contribute at every level, collaborate effectively, provide constructive feedback, and feel the purpose behind their work, you have to praise the specific behaviors you want to see more of when you see them.
We like the “SBI” model for giving feedback, both positive and negative:
S - What was the Situation or context? “Yesterday in the staff meeting…”
B - What was the Behavior? “I really like how you asked a hard question about our Go to Market strategy…”
I - What was the Impact that behavior had? “Asking tough questions like that helps us find better solutions and prevents groupthink.”
Showing gratitude for your team is ALWAYS in season. But doing it well requires focusing on the process and not just the output, being specific about the Situation, Behavior, and Impact of the event, and making sure the feedback is given as soon after the event as possible. In this way, you will be building a team and culture that can produce great work not just one project at a time, but consistently and sustainably for many years to come.
Results and success are important, and we should reward them, as long as the process to achieve that success was not toxic and did not come at the cost of the team's ability to replicate that success in the future.