Gratefulness Increases Leadership Capacity
The benefits of being grateful can help us in many ways and are well known, but we may not think of how being grateful is required to grow our capacity to lead. We understand that when we are not grateful, people feel energy leave the room, It causes them to lose their desire to give us their best efforts.
Let's take a look at how being grateful affects our leadership temperature. Then, ask ourselves two questions that will help increase our self-awareness in this area.
1) Do we recognize the obvious?
Our ability to lead requires that we recognize the obvious contributions individuals do that help us achieve our goals. We can recognize people verbally, through notes, a card, and in ways that are meaningful to them. Leaders do this in some fashion daily.
Giving recognition to others can feel like oxygen to their souls.
Living from an attitude of thanksgiving allows us to be grateful for the kind and helpful acts people show us and is fundamental in leadership development.
One cannot lead well without consistency in this area. To get better, we can list out how we have incorporated gratitude into our daily routine. Are we modeling the behavior we want our team(s) to adopt?
Gratefulness is a light that opens the door to possibility.
2) Do we care enough to look deeper?
In addition to recognizing the obvious ways people are helping us, leaders worth following dig deeper and appreciate that any success achieved depends on many factors beyond our control and people outside our own teams.
Purposefully looking for ways people are making a difference and recognizing them increases our capacity to earn follower-ship. We create new possibilities to meet our teams' needs they don't even know they have. Our ability to anticipate needs of others increases efficiency of the team and builds trust over time.
3) Don’t become the ungrateful leader
Ungrateful leaders will habitually overlook the efforts of others that have helped along the way. Some may acknowledge the people that directly help them achieve their goals. Others find their “what’s in it for me” attitude causes them to avoid helping others that don’t further their agenda.
Actions to consider:
Identify a person on your team that deserves recognition and do something meaningful for them.
In a meeting, list off some specific things your team does that you are grateful.
Want more reasons to be grateful, check out the Happier Human article, The 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life.
Want to become a leader others want to follow? Consider reading The Heart Led Leader.
