The Best Leaders Practice the Two-Way Street of Gratitude

Being grateful and even sharing that gratitude with others can really make you feel great. It is very much a self-reinforcing activity. And sure, it feels good to others, especially when you're sharing how grateful you feel for who they are or something they did. Gratitude can be an excellent way to share recognition.

But an even better way to create the balance that can come from gratitude is to ensure you make your express your feelings about the other person when showing gratitude for their efforts. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Stop Making Gratitude All About You, author Heidi Grant points out how doing gratitude wrong can eliminate all the benefits that come from expressing gratitude to others.

In the example below, you can see how a small adjustment can shift the focus of the gratitude from ‘self’ to ‘other’, which allows everyone to realize the benefits. 

Note the difference here — 

I am grateful for the hard work you put in to make this project a success.

vs 

I feel like you worked really hard and dedicated a lot of extra time and effort into making this project a success. I really appreciate it and your work made a significant difference for so many others.

This changes the dynamic a bit — it ensures they feel as grateful as you do. The other person gets as much benefit as you do while delivering the grateful sentiment. 

Often, we expand upon simple ideas and call them something different. What could be seen as recognition becomes a component of gratitude because it became a leadership subject of interest at some point. You can remove the fancy words and descriptors. You can even take out the detailed research on all the benefits that do come from recognition, expressing gratitude, and being thankful. What you are left with is what is most important — be appreciative of what other people do. Period. When people work hard, when they achieve a goal, when they cross a finish line, show that it was meaningful for them as well as the others it impacted. 

Gratitude should be a two-way street. When we say how grateful we are for someone else being in our lives or something they did — we absolutely should capture, acknowledge, and appreciate at a ‘self’ level what that means to us. It just shouldn’t stop there. Share the importance and the specifics of what that other person has done with them also. That is the real power of practicing gratitude with a two-way street mentality.

How will you make gratitude a two-way street in your daily practice?

Join other retail leaders in continuing their development journey with Effective Retail Leader.com. SUBSCRIBE today to receive FREE leadership tips directly to your inbox and monthly newsletters that provide many tools to help further develop your leadership skills all at no cost. JOIN NOW!

No spam ever - just leadership goodness.