With Thanksgiving arriving tomorrow, our inboxes and feeds are flooded with sentiments of thanks. It is a wonderful time of year to pause and reflect on our blessings, but in the fast-paced world of business, “thanks” can often become a throwaway line—a box we check at the end of a quarterly town hall to boost morale scores.
As we head into the holiday, I want to challenge us to look at gratitude not as a sentiment we speak, but as a culture we operationalize. John F. Kennedy framed this distinction perfectly:
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
In leadership, the gap between “uttering words” and “living by them” is where retention is either won or lost. Employees can spot performative gratitude a mile away; it’s the generic “kudos” email sent while simultaneously denying resources or ignoring burnout.
True appreciation in a business context is demonstrated through investment. When a leader lives their appreciation, they stop viewing their team merely as assets to be managed and start treating them as partners to be empowered. This creates a tangible ROI on gratitude:
- Autonomy: You show gratitude for competence by micromanaging less and trusting more.
- Advocacy: You show gratitude for hard work by fighting for your team’s budget, resources, and visibility behind closed doors.
- Mentorship: You show gratitude for potential by investing the most valuable currency you have: your personal time.
This principle holds equal weight in our living rooms. We often fall into the trap of assuming our families know we are grateful for them simply because we haven’t said otherwise. But in an era of constant distraction, the highest form of appreciation we can offer is our undivided presence.
- The Shift: Instead of just telling a partner or friend “I appreciate you,” demonstrate it through the currency of attention.
- In Practice: It’s putting the phone away during dinner. It’s doing the chore that everyone hates without seeking credit. It’s listening to understand rather than listening to reply.
Whether in the boardroom or the dining room, the goal is the same: to move beyond the easy act of speaking thanks and embrace the harder, more rewarding work of showing it.
As you gather with family and friends tomorrow, I hope you find moments to demonstrate your gratitude through action. May your turkey be moist, your football team victorious, and your post-meal nap completely uninterrupted. 🦃🏈😴
And remember, calories don’t count on the fourth Thursday of November. That’s just science.
Happy Thanksgiving!
For those looking to dig deeper into the data behind this, I highly recommend reading “Leading with Gratitude” by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton.
The authors do a fantastic job of exposing the “gratitude gap”—the chasm between leaders who think they are appreciative and employees who feel undervalued. It moves beyond “soft skills” fluff and offers rigorous strategies to turn gratitude into a driver of high performance. It effectively teaches you how to close the gap between JFK’s “uttering” and “living.”