Chapter 4
Express Gratitude

While meeting challenges is valuable in building character, we also need to reward that effort. Expressing gratitude for good work is critical for trust and well- being in ourselves and in our teams.

Gratitude doesn’t mean just saying “thanks.” To show gratitude in a meaningful way, we must understand what drives our need for it, what drives us in our work and the rest of our lives. As we found in the previous chapter, it’s not money that drives most workers; it’s being able to do meaningful work, being challenged, and being appreciated. In this chapter we explore ways to stoke that feeling of being appreciated.

And while we all want to find meaning in our work, we also want to have fun. Having a sense of humor and encouraging others to express theirs can be a form of gratitude that helps build cohesion in the workplace and encourages everyone to strive for greater achievement.

Finding Gratitude

We touched on some of the ways we feel grateful for the work we do, but we need to dig deeper to really understand the source of that feeling before we can express our gratitude for the work of others and lead them on to greater accomplishments. We can start by exploring the effect on our sense of gratitude that making meaningful progress in our work and helping others can have.

Making Meaningful Progress

What drives you at work? I posed that seemingly simple question recently to a roomful of executives at a leadership retreat. No one budged. I offered some options:

• Is it the quarterly bonus?
• Is it simple praise and recognition from your colleagues and boss?
• Is it a sense that your colleagues have your back, that you’ll get the support and resources you need in your work?
• Is it a clear sense of direction and goals—that your team knows where the heck it’s going?
• Is it a sense that, day by day, you are making measurable progress in work that is meaningful to you?

They knew it was a trick question, because organizations have to get all of these factors right. Without fair pay, there is a deep sense of inequity and loyalty erosion. Without clear goals, people feel adrift and without purposeful direction. Without praise, people feel neglected. But one factor outweighs the rest—the last one: making meaningful progress.

As they wrote about in their book The Progress Principle, Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile and her colleague Steven Kramer analyzed twelve thousand diary entries from 238 employees in seven companies to come to the qualified conclusion that the most valuable work motivator is a sense that we are making progress in work that is meaningful to us.¹ When we signed up to run that marathon, we definitely had a clear goal in mind, but it was the daily effort in making incremental progress that kept us going. That quarterly bonus is nice, but we’re not going to stay if that’s all we’re getting out of a job.

When Amabile and Kramer concluded that research in 2011, only 5 percent of leaders surveyed understood that meaningful progress is our most powerful motivator. I interviewed Amabile when The Progress Principle came out in 2011, and she said her goal was to tip that figure over 50 percent.

It’s important to point out that, while praise, incentives, equitable pay, interpersonal support, and clear goals are all important, they are also all extrinsic motivators—they come from the outside, from someone else. A sense of satisfaction in making progress doing meaningful work is an intrinsic motivator. It’s a sense of joy and satisfaction that comes from within.

Creating a sense of meaningful progress is something that’s within our control. It doesn’t require external validation or reward. Here are a few ways to stoke your sense of meaningful progress:

• Express creativity. We should go ahead and add a flourish— put our signature on it, make it our own. When we dig a little deeper and do this, we take personal pride and ownership of our work. It becomes meaningful to us personally.

• Revitalize dormant relationships. Nothing is as marvelous as gaining new insights from old friends to fuel our efforts. As Wharton professor Adam Grant says, when we take time to proactively reach out to those people in our work and life with whom we haven’t connected in a while, we revitalize both parties.² That’s because, while we probably have a rich history we can catch up on, we can also share our ideas and projects over the past year and accelerate each other’s work.

• Assume leadership. We should take responsibility, step up. Assuming leadership can be terrifying, making us feel scrutinized, uncertain, and out of our element. And that’s a good thing. Pushing ourselves to the edges of our capacity in leading meetings, projects, and interactions will help us grow as leaders. We need to keep in mind that people are cheering for us. It may feel like we are being evaluated and dissected, but the truth is that most people in the world assume best intentions, are grateful we stepped in to lead, and are cheering for our success and the success of the whole project.

• Be of service. Other motivators come from the outside, from someone else, but our most powerful motivator comes from within. The real question we should be asking is not “What can I gain?” but rather “What can I contribute?” Not “What can I get?” but “What can I give?” Not “How is this person hurting or even helping my goals?” but “How can I help this person achieve her goals?”

Above all, we should avoid comparisons. Most of us, if we wish to be smarter than everyone else, will fail, because someone will always have more degrees, more accolades, or a higher Mensa score. And if the goal is to be rich, we will forever feel poor, because someone will always be richer. If the goal is fame, we need only look to the Kardashians to agree there is no amount of personal disclosure that could keep up with them.

Aspiring to be a better version of yourself is a good thing, but comparing yourself with others isn’t. Once we recognize that such comparisons are detrimental, it becomes easier to serve the work that needs to be done.

Supporting the Work

“The world,” businessman and diplomat Dwight Morrow once wrote to his son, “is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.”³

Lisa Fischer might be the greatest contemporary female vocalist you have never heard of. When she tours with Sting, her voice is so powerful, Sting will often nod to her during shows and let her open up and take the lead. She will improvise long, beautiful passages of melody. Her voice is astonishing in range and power.

Fischer has also been the lead female vocalist on every single Rolling Stones tour since 1989, sometimes prowling the stage with Jagger and singing lead on “Gimme Shelter.” She claims that, when she is emotionally and vocally in harmony with Jagger, the audience vanishes and she feels as if she and the band are the only ones in the stadium. And you’ve likely never heard of her.

“Some people will do anything to be famous,” Fischer says. “And there are other people who just sing. For me, it’s not about anything except being in a special space with people. And that, to me, is the higher calling.”⁴

Judith Hill was in rehearsals with Michael Jackson when he died. She has been singing backup for years for Jackson, Prince, and numerous others.⁵ You’ve likely never heard of her, either. Luther Vandross sang backup on the late David Bowie’s hit “Young Americans.” You know Luther Vandross. He made the big time. But many do not make it to the big time, nor do they aspire to.

Next time we have a great idea, we should give it away, give it to someone who can deliver on that idea even better than we might be able to. Playing that supporting role is an act of kindness. And, as we learn next, small expressions of kindness can have immense impact in the world.

Performing Small Acts of Kindness

In October 2014, I interviewed Gene Klein, an eighty-seven-year-old Holocaust survivor, born in Czechoslovakia in 1928. In our interview, he vividly recounted the horrors of the experience. The only time he became emotional and tearful was when he recollected small acts of kindness—a guard who gave him portions of food, inmates who gave him hope, or a German engineer who protected him briefly from hard labor.

Kindness can be one of the most powerful and enduring gestures we can make to others. I’ll never forget feeling lost and alone at summer camp until a young counselor invited me to sit on his bunk and read Jaws with him. I’m certain that, wherever he is in the world, he has no recollection of it. But I do.

Kindness is hard- wired into the human genome. Researcher Michael Tomasello, who studies human behavior, demonstrated that infants and toddlers instinctively show concern and compassion for those in need or distress. In their study, Tomasello and his fellow researchers took fifty-six two-year-olds and divided them into three groups.⁶ All groups witnessed an adult drop an object and struggle to pick it up.

One group of toddlers was allowed to intervene and try to help the adult. Toddlers in another group were held back from helping by their parents. The third group watched as another adult stepped in to help. The group that showed the highest distress and concern was the group that was restrained and not permitted to help. More than 90 percent of those toddlers who were permitted to help, attempted to.

Another thing: kindness is contagious. It turns out both positive and negative behaviors are contagious. Bullying begets bullying. Teasing begets teasing. But Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have been studying community behaviors and found that prosocial behaviors spread much more rapidly than negative behaviors.⁷

Not only that, researcher David Buss studied ten thousand people in thirty-seven countries to figure out the most powerful attractor for those looking for a mate.⁸ Money? Yes, somewhat. Beauty? Yes, it matters—more to men than women. Intelligence? Yes, it ranks right up there at number two.⁹

But the number one characteristic desired around the world by those looking for a long-term relationship was kindness and compassion to others. We should reach out and practice kindness every day. It will make us and everyone around us happier and healthier.

Looking Outside the Box

The promotion we just got? A beautiful sunset with our family? That’s amateur stuff to be grateful for. The waiter just refilled our coffee? Oh, how considerate. We thank him. Now we feel warm and thoughtful.

Let’s go deeper: try being grateful for losing a big contract, or our kid’s soccer team getting crushed on Sunday. Good. Now even deeper. After we get dumped by a girlfriend because the relationship was truly toxic, we write her a heartfelt letter of appreciation and gratitude. We’re getting there. We should try to see these events as precious gifts.

This is where the hard learning happens. This is where growth, development, and renewal happen. My friend Kirsten, who also coaches youth soccer, argues that the greatest team bonding, life learning, and development happen after the throes of humiliating defeat.

In a study on relative happiness, both accident victims and lottery winners interviewed a year after their respective experiences, testified to the same personal level of happiness.¹⁰

“It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things,” writes Robert Emmons, codirector of the Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude project at the University of California, Berkeley. “No one ‘feels’ grateful that he or she has lost a job or a home or has taken a devastating hit on his or her retirement portfolio.”¹¹

If we can summon the strength to reframe a negative experience into a positive one, we can grow in our own self- development. If a relationship really was toxic and we have the strength to see through the emotional pain of being dumped to be grateful that the other person was willing to confront it and end the relationship, then we can grow and move on.

The beggar on the street can show us how privileged we are. The cancer that infected our body can show us how grateful we are to be healthy. When we summon gratitude in the face of adversity, we turn meaningless cruelty into growth and strength.

Increasing Engagement by Appreciating Others

Expressing appreciation for someone in our life can change our whole outlook. That’s right— simply telling others how much we appreciate them will improve the way we feel.

Jeffrey Froh, professor at Hofstra University, did this cool study in which he and his colleagues tracked students in eleven different classrooms, dividing them into three groups.¹² For just a few minutes each day they were asked to do the following:

• Group 1—write down things they were grateful for at home and school
• Group 2—write down things they found to be a hassle and not fun
• Group 3 (the control group)—do nothing

Here are a few things group 1 wrote down:

• “My coach helped me out at baseball practice.”
• “My grandma is in good health, my family is still together, my family still loves each other, my brothers are healthy, and we have fun every day.”
• “I am glad that my mom didn’t go crazy when I accidentally broke the patio table.”

After two weeks, the researchers measured their subjects’ school performance and engagement from both the student’s perspective and the perspective of their teachers. Essentially, they found these students to be happier (by their own account), to have more friends, to be more engaged in their schoolwork (by the teachers’ account), and . . . wait for it . . . they got better grades—compared with their own previous performance. That’s after only two weeks. The researchers checked three weeks later, after the study was over, and found the effects were still present.

The effect is even more powerful when we share our appreciation with someone directly and personally. As described by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in their book NurtureShock, in a powerful follow-up to Froh’s study, students were asked to write a letter to someone in their life whom they felt they may have never properly thanked.¹³ The person could be a teacher, a coach, or a family friend.

The kids worked on their letters three times a week for two weeks. They were asked to elaborate on their feelings, and to be increasingly specific in their writing about what the benefactor did that they were grateful for.

On the Friday of the second week, each kid set up a meeting with the person to whom he had written his letter to read the letter to the person, out loud, face-to-face.

“It was a hyperemotional exercise for them,” Bronson and Merryman quote Froh as saying. “Really, it was such an intense experience. Every time I reread those letters, I get choked up.” The positive outlook and heightened engagement were still present when the researchers checked in with the kids two months later.

What if we can’t easily get our kids to write a letter of gratitude to someone in their life? Here’s a simple trick to get anyone thinking and reflecting about others who have made a profound and measurable impact in their lives. Just ask them to finish the following sentences:

• Someone who helped me get through a difficult time is _______.
• Someone who helped me learn something important about myself is _______.
• Someone with whom I can discuss the things that matter most to me is _______.

Sending a note of appreciation to someone who has had a positive effect on us can have a big impact. Picking up the phone or tracking down our supporter in person to thank her can have an even bigger one. Such a small act of appreciation not only can make that person’s day but also makes us feel better about ourselves.

Now let’s take a slightly harder step by not only appreciating the positive people and events in our lives but also the nasty and unpleasant ones.

Healing Through Humor

Forty years ago Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, had been given six months to live. As he wrote in his book Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient, he’d been diagnosed with a painful, degenerative disease of the spine.¹⁴ Although Cousins was in constant agony and succumbing to paralysis, he checked himself out of the hospital (which he deemed “no place for sick people”) and moved into a hotel.¹⁵

He began taking high doses of vitamin C and prescribing himself a regular regimen of intense laughter. Watching Marx Brothers videos and stacks of other funny movies that were among his favorites, he laughed and laughed every day. He discovered that the periods immediately following intense laughter had the strongest effect in easing his pain and calming his mind. Cousins recovered from his illness and went on to write several books on the healing power of laughter.

Even though constant disruptive laughter is the bane of every elementary teacher, the benefits of laughter are now well known. It wasn’t always that way. There were times in the past in which laughter was frowned upon. “In my mind there is nothing so ill-bred as audible laughter,” Lord Chesterfield, a British public advisor on morality, proclaimed in the mid- eighteenth century. In 1903, psychologist William McDougall wrote that situations that incite laughter are essentially unpleasant.

But we now know that laughter increases blood flow, reduces stress, decreases risk of heart attacks, and boosts the immune system. Even the insurance giant AIG ran TV ads proclaiming that laughing will add eight years to our lives. And that information comes from their insurance actuaries, who should know.¹⁶

If the path to appreciating adversity is too great to surmount, or if the searing pain of defeat and rejection is just too powerful to allow us to be reflective and generous of spirit, we should let humor guide us. When we’re lost in the woods, have run out of water, and nightfall is approaching, we should tell a joke—because humor heals. It combats fear.

Humor has the power to disengage our fears and relax us. Behind a nervous chuckle is the sentiment, “We’re gonna get through this!”

Even dark humor might be just the right antidote. Try what world- class adventurer Erik Weihenmayer calls “positive pessimisms.” In his book The Adversity Advantage, he gives an example: “We’ll be sitting out in a raging storm. We’ve gone a month without showers. The wind is driving snow directly into our faces, and . . . Chris will look up with a big cheesy smile on his face and say, ‘Sure is cold out here . . . but at least it’s windy.’”¹⁷

As Weihenmayer describes it, it’s a way of saying, with humor, that we all understand this is a grim and possibly dire situation, we are all suffering together, and yet we will also persevere together.