Being thanked, valued, and appreciated has an oversized impact on how people feel about themselves, feel motivated to perform, and feel connected and trustful with others.
When leaders are grateful for what people do, they unleash a flood of positivity that team members carry forward with how they approach everything they do.
The idea that people can do this for themselves has become increasingly popular.
Gratitude works in four directions. People can give it. They can receive it. They can reflect on it. And they can witness it.
Most recently, it is the reflection process that has captured the imagination of self-help experts looking for a way to improve personal well-being.
Daily gratitude practices, like journaling or listing what you’re thankful for each day, have been shown to reduce depression and anxiety, increase happiness and life satisfaction, and enhance sleep patterns.
By shifting attention to the positive experiences people are grateful for, they briefly relive them to a degree. This activates areas in the brain tied to reward and emotion, which has a positive and calming effect on how people view their lives.
Listing gratitude counters the brain’s negativity bias, which otherwise causes criticism, failures, and problems to dominate awareness and memory.
But recent research has shown these effects to be small or modest, even when practiced religiously.
Surprisingly, and somewhat counterintuitively, brain research confirms it is the witnessing of gratitude that produces the most significant advantages for well-being.
A consistent practice of witnessing gratitude, thankfulness, and acts of kindness stimulates similar brain responses as when people receive gratitude from others.
The big advantage, of course, is that you don’t have to wait for thanks or appreciation. Just by watching others receive gratitude, people can experience the same feelings of optimism, enhanced mood, and increased happiness as they do when it is directed at them.
The effect of observing gratitude mirrors the calming response of meditation and prayer, such as reduced heart rate and blood pressure.
More importantly, it makes people more likely to perform altruistic acts and spread their positive feelings to others.
The likelihood of compassion, generosity, and forgiveness all increase when people witness gratitude, which improves the quality of their relationships.
The best gratitude practice is not to reflect on what you are grateful for but to watch others receive appreciation or act altruistically.
Thankfully, films, documentaries, and movies provide an ample store of gratefulness in action. In addition to celebrations and other acts of expressed gratefulness, watching fictional and non-fictional characters express gratitude is as close as a television remote.
So, sit down and watch one of your favorite gratefulness flicks. We would guess that you have watched it many times before.
Repeat the process and search for new stories where appreciation and gratefulness are present. The experience is positively uplifting.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
