the gratitude effect: a game-changing new approach for resilient leadership.

When even the U.S. Secret Service is dealing with an employee engagement crisis, including sky-high attrition rates and work-life balance that “is really not what it ought to be,” perhaps it’s time for organizations of all kind, public and private alike, to step back and ask: What is it about workforce management, and engagement and retention specifically, that we no longer get? 

We have an answer to that question. 

Namely, against a backdrop of unprecedented talent mobility and an (apparently accelerating) “Great Resignation,” there’s an overlooked input that seems to sit at the intersection of many of the new priorities we’re hearing about from candidates: authenticity, purpose, inclusion, belonging — you name it. 

That thing is gratitude, and the organization-wide benefits it can confer we’re christening “the gratitude effect.” Here’s why it holds game-changing potential for leaders like you today. 

gratitude’s latitude: seven components of the gratitude effect

What does “gratitude” mean to you in the context of work? However you answer that question (you probably didn’t land on philosopher G.K. Chesterton’s definition of gratitude as “happiness doubled by wonder”), the important thing is that we’re all on the same page. 

So let’s look at the seven essential components of gratitude in the workplace, calling out key organizational benefits of each as we go. From there, we’ll turn to how you can leverage the gratitude effect to improve human capital outcomes at your company right now. 

1. appreciation

As an organizational leader, your expressions of gratitude might sometimes sound like this:

• “The thoughtful feedback you offered David before his presentation made all the difference.” 
• “It meant a lot to me that you stayed late last night to help Trudy finish that deck. You’re a great mentor.”  
• “Your quick replies to that IT issue helped save the day!” 

Notice the obvious thing here: Every expression of gratitude is an expression of appreciation. This is pretty much true of gratitude in all contexts, not just work (and the reason why some social scientists say gratitude and appreciation are essentially the same thing). 

2. recognition 

Along with appreciation, what else gets packaged with gratitude? 

Recognition is obviously part of it: When you say, “You brought up some excellent points in the meeting,” for example, it isn’t just those “excellent points” that are being recognized. There’s a  broader and critically important kind of recognition at work as well. This recognition, however implicit, essentially says, “I hear you. I see you. I’m validating who you are.” 

So forms of recognition, explicit and implicit, should be understood as important components of gratitude as well. 

3. motivation and purpose 

Think about when — the circumstances or scenarios — in which you’re most often praising or expressing gratitude to team members. Chances are, these are moments when you’re dealing with goals and objectives in a fairly direct, concrete or concerted way. 

Think about what that might signal to your team. By telling Jean how impressed you were with the UX design ideas she shared with an important client, you’re obviously praising the quality of her work — but you’re also underlining the reasons you’re working together in the first place. You’re reminding everyone, in a subtle and positive way, “These are our goals, and this is what we’re out to achieve.” 

This is where expressions of gratitude ladder up to extremely important aspects of employee engagement like personal motivation, sense of purpose and more. You’re addressing the “why” of engagement. 

4. belonging and inclusion 

You might not do it deliberately, but as a leader, your expressions of gratitude almost certainly serve to integrate employees into a broader framework — that of the team, the mission, the culture or the organization at large. Statements like “We couldn’t have done it without you” or “You really stepped up to the bat for the team today,” for example, clearly frame and validate individual contributions within the broader context. They say, in boldface font, “You truly belong here, because you’ve become an indispensable part of a cohesive group, and we’re all working toward shared goals.”

As a result, every expression of gratitude becomes a statement of inclusion. No surprise, then, that gratitude in the workplace has been shown to strengthen feelings of organizational belonging by as much as 87 percent. And perhaps more critically, recent research from McKinsey reveals that not feeling a sense of belonging at work is the number-two reason employees are quitting today. So this is a key piece of the broader employee engagement puzzle. 

Finally, there’s obviously a link between these feelings of inclusion, which the gratitude effect facilitates, and mental health in the workplace in general. After all, a richly inclusive and supportive work environment is one in which burnout, for example, is far less common. 

5. trust 

Nothing builds trust as quickly or effectively as expressions of gratitude, period. 

Consider the following scenario: Monica, the department manager, tells Steve, one of her direct reports, that he did an exceptional job on their recent sales presentation. In so doing, a big part of what she’s saying is “I put my trust in you, and you rewarded that trust.” In effect, Monica’s expression of gratitude does two things at once: It acknowledges the existence of a foundational layer of trust with Steve, and that sets the stage for them to strengthen and grow that trust over time. 

This may help explain why one study found that employees who expressed feelings of gratitude at work were significantly more likely to say that they trusted their organization’s leadership than those who did not. 

7. reciprocity 

Perhaps the most unique thing about gratitude — as well as the reason the gratitude effect can be so powerfully applied in the workplace — is what you might call its “reciprocating tendency.” 

Put simply, gratitude begets gratitude, for reasons that may be hardwired in our DNA. After all, many other species, from chimpanzees to vampire bats, practice something loosely similar, engaging in acts of kindness with unrelated individuals in the hope that the favor will be returned later on (a practice referred to as “reciprocal altruism”). 

Whatever the causal mechanism, you’ll find that when you communicate gratitude, similar feelings often come boomeranging back to you. You could think of this as the “pay it forward” aspect of gratitude — and it isn’t the same thing as indebtedness, since nothing is promised in return. As one scientific paper summarized, “Feelings of gratitude can inspire reciprocal acts of generosity toward those to whom we are feeling grateful.” This also helps explain why there can be, as one researcher put it, “lasting benefits of people’s fleeting experiences of gratitude.”

leveraging the gratitude effect: two approaches.  

As you’ll see in the following section, all of the components outlined above come into play once the gratitude effect is put into practice. And note, too, how directly those components map to measures of employee engagement, which studies show can impact everything from financial performance to customer retention, safety, quality and more. 

So those are the stakes. 

As for putting the gratitude effect in practice, there are two approaches to consider, as we’ll see  — and spoiler alert, the former is a lot less effective than the latter. 

the gargantuan giveaway 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but some companies seem to really think that gratitude can be bought. Are they right? Let’s look at a few high-profile examples from the past year to find out. 

For starters, there’s the very recent story of Spanx founder Sara Blakely celebrating her company’s $1.2 billion valuation with an Oprah-esque announcement: all 750 of her employees would be receiving two first-class plane tickets, redeemable for any destination in the world, along with $10,000 in cash. 

Here’s how Blakely explained that decision: “If you go on a trip, you might want to go out to a really nice dinner, you might want to go out to a really nice hotel, and so you are each getting $10,000!” 

Of course, all of this just happened, so it’s still too soon to pronounce a verdict on the relative effectiveness of the move. But the same can’t be said about our next example. 

Enter Matt Moulding, CEO of online health and beauty retailer The Hut Group. 

The story is as follows: Moulding reaped a staggering $1.1 billion when his company went public. He wanted to transfer some of that haul back to his deserving employees. So he gave them $28 million.

Not necessarily the wisest move from a retention standpoint, it turns out. 

In fact, there was near-immediate fallout. For starters, Moulding’s own personal assistant retired to live on her share of the windfall. She was 36. Meanwhile, a lot of senior-level executives, many of whom found themselves newly minted millionaires, left the company to launch their own ventures. 

A pretty mixed bag, when you think about it. And what about those employees who didn’t get in on the windfall? What sense of “gratitude” might they feel now? 

Needless to say, most organizations aren’t even going to consider dramatic moves like these. Nor (probably) should they. So what smart workarounds — and ways of leveraging the gratitude effect — should you focus on, instead?

the daily practice 

Implementing the gratitude effect at your organization doesn’t require million-dollar giveaways or Oprah-inspired forms of charity. Think of It more as an inclination, or something to lean into every day. 

For one, it would be pretty easy for your managers to leverage existing digital channels in order to highlight meritorious contributions — to curate the best of the best and share it via email with a broader internal audience on, say, a biweekly or monthly basis. How hard would that be? Just call attention to the latest wins, pay specific attention to the roles your team members played and connect their hard work to collectively shared outcomes. 

Simpler still, how about having a dedicated Slack channel in which employees can hashtag their coworkers and shout out their latest and greatest work? Too easy! 

So much of this stuff really is low-hanging fruit, because there really are countless ways in which you can help team members feel properly appreciated, recognized and heard. 

That said, if you’re truly struggling for ideas, one place to start might be this: Start connecting employees with people who have directly benefited from their work. That might entail, say, facilitating a conversation between a client-side project manager and someone from your team who had an instrumental role in the project. What you’ll discover, in all likelihood, is that there are extremely valuable learnings on both sides (as small-scale studies have confirmed). 

Critically, your colleague will come away feeling recognized, valued and appreciated. It’s a virtuous cycle — which is the gratitude effect, in a nutshell.

gratitude gift ideas for the holiday season 

While you can’t buy gratitude, as we have seen, thoughtful holiday gifts for people on your team remain an effective way of showing appreciation, perhaps more so this year than in the past. And even if you can’t, say, distribute 10 percent of your company’s stock to employees this holiday season — or, for that matter, even physically hand out gifts to direct reports — you still have a unique opportunity on your hands. 

Just focus on the unique experience of remote work for everyone on your team. What can you offer them that might enhance that experience? Can you help them, say, partake of the perks they once enjoyed as part of the in-office routine? Can you eliminate any work-from-home pain points? 

Above all, think through the things that they’re most likely to use and appreciate on a daily basis. (This is also substantiated by the scientific literature, which has demonstrated that feelings of gratitude in the context of gift-giving arise when two conditions are met: gifts “come as a result of perceived genuine effort from the giver,” and “are valuable and fulfill important needs for the recipient.”) 

With all of that in mind — and in closing — here are a few holiday gift ideas that will have special resonance this year. Gifts like these should help make everyone on your team feel more connected and engaged, while ensuring that your organization reaps the rewards of the gratitude effect, this season and beyond: 

• a hand-written note of thanks
• coffee or espresso makers (for caffeine-deprived teammates) 
• yoga mats (for your most flexible colleagues) 
• noise-cancelling headphones (for the person who’s always apologizing for the background noise during your conference calls)  
• cat or dog toys (for owners of four-legged friends) 
• home workout equipment (for your fitness gurus) 
• organizational aids for workstations (for the person whose desk looks a little bit cluttered on video calls) 
• robotic vacuum cleaners (for the person whose whole room needs a good dusting, at minimum) 
• kombucha starter kits (for kombucha-craving colleagues) 
• voice assistants (for tech enthusiasts on your team) 
• blankets or pillows (for the employee who just moved into a new space)
• flatware or cutlery (for the same) 
• cocktail kits (for the colleague who always takes the lead on virtual happy hours) 
• homebrew kits (for the DIY drinker) 
• smart alarm clocks (for anyone who occasionally has trouble waking up on time) 
• space heaters or oscillating fans (for the person on your team who sometimes complains about the temperature of their workspace) 
• herb planters (for the greenthumbs on your team) 
• tickets to concerts or sporting events (for your music- or sport-obsessed colleagues)