CEOs: Get Better at Giving Thanks
Three Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Workplace Culture
TL;DR - You can build a culture of gratitude in the workplace in less than 20 minutes a week. Here are three simple ways to do so.
Here’s the simple truth: We think and work better when we feel both grateful and appreciated. Feeling grateful helps us feel full, like we have resources and options. Feeling appreciated makes us feel worthy and recognized, like what we’re doing matters.
The harsh truth in contrast is that most of us feel neither grateful nor appreciated at work. Recent studies found that only 5% of us “love” our jobs, almost 50% of us are so unhappy at work that we’re looking for new jobs, and 59% of us say we’ve never had a boss who appreciated us. NEVER.
Yikes. It seems like the American workplace is having a gratitude crisis. But why? Is it because showing appreciation is too time-consuming? Not at all. It’s that we simply don’t have good habits around it.
Here’s the simplest recipe we know for building a culture of gratitude in the workplace:
ONCE A DAY: Catch People Doing Things Right – All too often, the only feedback we give people is corrective: “Fix this, change that.” But we are MUCH more likely to get more of what we want if we tell people when they’ve done something well. “Great comment.” “Loved your energy in that meeting.” “Thanks for playing devil’s advocate there…” It takes five seconds, but resonates inside people for weeks.
ONCE A WEEK: Start Every Staff Meeting with Shout Outs – Teams that spend 5-10 minutes a week publicly thanking each other for things large and small are more engaged, creative, and motivated. Make this part of your weekly ritual, and if it doesn’t start improving your team dynamic within a month, I’ll give you a free hour of coaching to figure out why. Email my colleague here.
ONCE A QUARTER: Go Deep on Gratitude with Each Team Member – This is your opportunity to go deep and make it less about individual behaviors or specific efforts and more about larger themes and character traits. Here is where you help them understand why they are special, valued, and appreciated at a much deeper level. “You’re someone people look up to.” “You really live X value!” “You push back and hold us all to a higher standard.” And it only takes 10 minutes per person per quarter.
That’s it. By my back-of-the-envelope tally, that’s about 20 minutes a week. So, a total of around 16-20 hours a YEAR, or less than 1% of your total work hours.
Still think you don’t have time to build a culture of gratitude at your company? Neither do I. ;)
Happy Thanksgiving!