The practice of gratitude and appreciation is percolating the workspace. Not too long ago, the CEO of Campbell Soup Company wrote 30,000 thank you notes to his employees. And
at a Canadian tech company, the whole staff regularly takes time to listen as team members publicly thank each other. Amazing! From this comes a culture of gratitude.
Taking a lesson from these great examples, I personally practice what I like to call the “Sheldon Barris Way” of showing gratitude to my team. In a nutshell, my approach has been to
create a family-type culture at my company, Jorlee Holdings, where my employees are like a second family to me. I’m proud of my team, whose members frequently look for ways to
lift each other up. They also work collectively for the common goal of providing our clients with the personal service to which they’ve become accustomed. By the way, the “Sheldon
Barris Way” works! I’m pleased to note that we truly enjoy the friendships we’ve created by getting to know one another on a more personal level.
Though research on gratitude has been explored closely, studies of gratefulness at work are still somewhat limited; however, researchers at a university in the United States found that
when leaders show gratitude to their employees, the employees are 50% more successful. The results speak for themselves: gratitude elicits more positive emotions, less stress, fewer
sick days, and higher satisfaction with our jobs and our coworkers.
As society moves away from face-to-face interaction and on to more screen time, there’s a concern that relaying a simple ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ will fall to the wayside. Afterall, these
simple acts of gratitude are one of the first things we are taught as children, yet it seems to have gotten lost in the workplace. Going back to the Sheldon Barris way of doing things, I
have always believed in practicing gratitude, and have done so with my own children as it is a key principal of mine. My goal as a father was to shower them with the kindness and
respect they needed to become contributing members of society and pay it forward when they became adults.
At the same time, many leaders wonder why they should show appreciation to an employee just because he or she did their job.
We tend to think of the workplace as a spot where we are supposed to act “professional.” Some people may even think that it’s unprofessional to bring things like forgiveness or
gratitude or compassion into the office. I don’t believe this is the case, at all. Who wants to work at a place where your boss is unapproachable and your coworkers are robots?
For one, if we learn to appreciate our employees and our co-workers as people in and of themselves and not just on the basis of what they can do for us, we will begin to form more
authentic relationships. Gratitude is what separates workplace relationships to friendship. It can cultivate a sort of environment where employees actually want to come to work and
don’t feel like another cog in a machine.
A little gratitude goes a long way in the workplace. It creates an increase in productivity, improvement in well-being, it builds mental strength and the ability to handle stress, and, not to
mention, it can create a ripple effect. Showing gratitude and appreciation towards someone is likely to inspire them to thank other people.
Perhaps most importantly, gratitude creates an increase in job satisfaction: Workers that feel appreciated in the workplace are more likely to translate those positive reinforcements to
their job - which - is music to a leader’s ears!
