Punch In, Say Thanks, Punch Out, Repeat: Gratitude at Work
Posted on May 04, 2020 by Gina DeRosa, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Making "thank you" a standard practice will lead you to experience vast improvement in the quality of your relationships with people at work and more.
(Original blog post from 11/02/2019. See all posts on Sixth Gear Series’ site.)
This time of year, we’re bombarded with holiday swag giving us sparkly directives to #bethankful and enjoy the “Season of Thanks.” When did gratitude become a chic seasonal tradition rather than an all-year-round event?
In college, I made a conscious effort to infuse gratitude into my daily interactions with others. As an idealistic social work student, I witnessed people on campus and beyond acting like ungrateful jackasses towards others, and I was simply disgusted by the students whose family members paid cash in full for their tuition yet treated their education with the same entitlement and carelessness as their cars and clothes. I am beyond grateful for those experiences because I may not have started to fully appreciate the sacrifices that my parents made for me until my later years, and furthermore, I might not have been able to give the gift of gratitude to so many others whose paths I’ve crossed since those days.
Gratitude goes a long way with establishing rapport and building effective relationships with others. There is also a ton of fascinating research that has been conducted on the physiological and psychological benefits that gratitude has on us, as both thankers and thankees.
I’m curious to know how gratitude plays itself out in your workplace. For example, do you have colleagues or leaders who express gratitude to you and others for following through on a task, anticipating a need before it was requested, or being a great team player? And when do YOU express gratitude to others?
Now, let’s take that a step further: When you receive or overhear the expressions of gratitude, which ones seem genuine? When you yourself express gratitude to someone, when is it heartfelt and when is it obligatory?
At work and beyond, “thank you” are two of the most powerful words you can say to another human being.
On the spectrum of gratitude at work, are you closer to the Moody Marthas, never saying it genuinely if at all, or the Humble Hectors, saying it all the time and perhaps so much that people question its authenticity?
Gratitude is described in a variety of forms, including but not limited to the following (all of which I find value and truth in):
- Skill
- Attitude
- Emotion
- Mentality
- Practice
No matter how YOU define gratitude, I encourage you to up your gratitude game in the workplace to build genuine, effective working relationships and to help raise the bar on the atmosphere and overall culture of your work environment. This will not go unnoticed, especially as the holidays fade into the past and we enter a fresh, new year full of people to be thankful for.
