How Showing Gratitude Can Help Your Career
November is the month when we focus on gratitude. For many of us that usually means family and friends. But, you can also be grateful at work. Expressing gratitude to your supervisors, colleagues, and clients can be a powerful tool for advancing your career. And it can make work more meaningful and pleasant, too, because being grateful makes you behave in ways those around you will respond positively to.
The trick to a gratitude practice is that you don’t wait for the people around you to do something to be worthy of gratitude. Instead, you push yourself to look around and be grateful for what the people around you have done.
Here’s an exercise to try: At the end of the day, write down the name of everyone you encountered during the course of your day (yes, online counts). Next to their name write down at least one thing they did or said that you might be grateful for. Some will be easy — a colleague answered your question, a client renewed their contract. Other interactions might be harder. Can you feel gratitude for a boss who gives you constructive feedback? Taking your gratitude practice to the next level means finding ways to appreciate negative interactions, too — they are often the ones that make us smarter, stronger, and wiser.
While feeling gratitude is the first step, which can have a positive impact by itself, to really benefit from gratitude at work we need to express that gratitude. After you do your exercise, take a few minutes to reach out and thank some of the folks on your list. This can take very simple forms: a quick email to your boss thanking her for her feedback, a Slack chat to a colleague who helped you out. “Hey, thanks again for answering my question this morning. You saved me hours of searching! I really like working with you.” Imagine, for a minute, how you would feel if you got that message.
I also suggest that you assume everyone you encounter deserves some gratitude. It’s easy to feel grateful for people we like or who we believe are working in our best interests. It can get murky at work, however, where it’s not always possible to know what might be happening behind closed doors or we see ourselves as competing for resources.
Here’s the thing: there’s no harm in showing gratitude to someone even when you aren’t sure they have the best intentions toward you. Also, you never know what they are dealing with. Sometimes a “thank you” may be just what they needed to have a better day. Don’t be fake, of course, which can be read as manipulative or political. (I hope it goes without saying that you should never use gratitude to manipulate people!) But pushing yourself to be genuinely thankful more often is a good habit to develop. And the end of year, when things often slow down, is a great time to develop that habit.
Don’t forget about people in your wider network. This time of year is the perfect time to send updates to people in your network and thank them for how they contributed to your career. A quick email is fine, but handwritten notes are even nicer. A few cards sent to people who’ve had a big impact on your life can be a great way to send goodness into the universe.
Sincerely expressed gratitude often creates a magical cycle. By the start of the new year you may find those good vibes bouncing back to you and giving you even more to be grateful for.