Member-only story
Thanksgiving season and all (in the U.S. at least), so let’s dedicate a little bit of time to the power of gratitude at work. Previously written about the power of friends at work, and this is somewhat connected. Let’s start with a little research on the power of gratitude.
Here we’ve got a study from the University of Kentucky about how gratitude reduces aggression. There’s also been 51 different studies showing that gratitude in a workplace can be a bigger, better motivator than compensation and bonuses. (I’ve mentioned this before too.) Much of this is cited in this recent article from Fast Company on the power of gratitude.
So, from an academic/research standpoint, we have some evidence for the power of gratitude. That’s good! However, if you’ve ever worked in an office, you know that a lot of guys who come to run companies give major side-eye to academia and research. “That’s ivory tower shit,” they snarl, “and I’m a revenue-generator.” Plus, because we all worship daily at The Temple of Busy, no one feels like they have time to read research and then implement it into their organizations.
The other issue is that a topic like “the power of gratitude” is tied to something like “employee recognition,” right? Guys who run companies — revenue hounds, usually — view a topic like that as “the domain of HR.” So HR works on it, but because most of the execs…
