The Power of Gratitude
Thanksgiving week has a way of making gratitude feel mandatory. We say what we're thankful for around the table, maybe post something reflective, send a few professional thank-you notes.
Then we get back to work and immediately shift into problem-solving mode, scanning for: what's broken, what needs fixing, who's not performing.
I spent years doing exactly this. Gratitude was something I expressed during the holidays, not something that informed how I actually led my teams day-to-day. I was too busy tracking metrics and solving problems to notice what was already working. But did you know that expressing gratitude can be beneficial for you both personally and professionally?
That approach cost me good people who left because they never felt like their contributions mattered, even though I thought I was running things well.
What Your Team Actually Wants
Raises and promotions matter. But they happen once, maybe twice a year. The daily experience of feeling acknowledged—or invisible—accumulates differently.
During busy seasons, I'd get so focused on deliverables that I'd barely register the extra effort people were putting in. Someone would work through a weekend to fix a critical issue. I'd see the corrected files, think "good," and move to the next crisis.
No acknowledgment. No recognition. Just on to what wasn't done yet.
When I finally learned to pay attention, I noticed that authentic recognition shifted things I couldn't measure on a spreadsheet. People took more initiative. They brought problems forward earlier. They stayed through challenges instead of quietly planning their exit.
A specific acknowledgment, like "The way you restructured that audit schedule saved us three days and kept the client relationship intact," changes how someone shows up for the next challenge.
Stop Following Scripts
I used to send the same thank-you email to everyone. Professional. Polite. Completely forgettable.
Then I noticed something during a team workshop. When I publicly recognized one woman's work, she looked uncomfortable. Later, she told me she preferred one-on-one conversations. Meanwhile, another team member thrived on that public acknowledgment.
Same appreciation, completely different impact.
Some people save handwritten notes. Others delete them immediately but remember a 10-minute coffee conversation for months. Some want detailed feedback on their work. Others just want you to notice they stayed late without being asked.
The practice of actually paying attention to these differences is harder than buying gift cards for everyone. It's also the only thing that actually works.
Building a Different Rhythm
When I started practicing yoga, my instructor kept talking about noticing what's present instead of what's missing. I thought she was talking about my inability to hold a pose.
Turns out, she was teaching me how to lead differently.
I started paying attention to what was working on my teams instead of only spotting problems. Not because I became more optimistic, but because I trained myself to see differently.
This changed how I ran meetings. Instead of opening with everything that needed fixing, I acknowledged one specific contribution from the past week. The first few times felt awkward, like I was performing gratitude instead of expressing it.
Then people started contributing differently. They brought forward more ideas. They supported each other without being asked. They told me about potential problems before they became crises.
Start Smaller Than You Think
The most effective gratitude practices I've seen in organizations aren't elaborate recognition programs with points systems and rewards catalogs.
They're brief and specific:
A manager who texts: "Saw how you handled that difficult client call this morning. Your patience kept that relationship intact."
A leader who starts Friday meetings by asking: "What's one thing someone on this team did this week that made your work easier?"
A partner who notices someone's contribution in a meeting and says so right then, not in a performance review three months later.
These moments build something that shows up later in retention rates and team performance. But trying to implement them because you want better metrics misses the point entirely.
Make It Actual
This week, notice one specific thing someone does that matters. Not their job description—the choice they made, the way they approached something, the impact their work created.
Then tell them what you noticed and why it registered.
Not in your next one-on-one. Not in an email you'll send later. In the moment, or as close to it as you can manage.
That's the practice. Everything else is commentary.
This Thanksgiving, instead of just saying what you're grateful for around the table, you start noticing it at work too.
Gratitude for yourself and others is important when achieving balance in your life. Listen to my podcast episode B3 Breaks (B3 = Business, Balance & Bliss): Gratitude to learn how to embrace the feeling of gratitude and take small breaks in your day to re-shift your energy to show up in the way that you want for yourself and the people around you.