Implementing a 30-day gratitude action plan
Adopting an attitude of gratitude shouldn’t be a solitary movement or a one-time initiative. Instead, it needs to be consistent enough that it becomes habitual. As a start, here are three simple things you can do right now to incorporate gratitude into your organization:
1. Launch a commitment to focus on thoughtful framing.
Creating a gratitude culture is a whole team effort, but it starts from the top. And there’s more to gratitude than constant thanks and praise. The core of it comes down to how leaders and employees frame daily conversations.
Leaders must buy-in to the idea of framing, as words that come from executives have a lot of influence. If all-hands meetings always kick off with “we missed this” or “that could have been better” rather than celebrating a milestone or achievement, over time, it will discourage your team and make them feel like the things they did accomplish weren’t as meaningful. To avoid this issue, executives should be mindful of the ratio of positive reinforcement and constructive feedback they deliver, both at company-wide and team-specific meetings.
If a leader needs to call a meeting to address an issue, it’s best to provide employees with an agenda on what to expect ahead of time so it doesn’t catch them off guard. Knowing what to expect will also allow team members to come to the table prepared with ideas on how to make positive changes moving forward.
When delivering feedback in a one-on-one setting, career and leadership coach, Gia Ganesh, suggests the following approach, “Frame [it] in a way that [puts] the focus on the change that needs to occur without resorting to accusations. Include the benefit to the person making that change [and] change the focus from “you” to “how” to help deliver the message.”
Business and life coach, Gina Gomez, encourages framing that leverages the age-old adage to think before you speak and treat others the way you want to be treated. She says, “Think about why you feel the need to share the criticism. If it’s truly to help someone improve performance, approach it from a place of how you would want the information communicated to you. Stay factual to avoid an emotional confrontation and make sure you create the space for it to be a conversation (versus a directive) that leads to a positive outcome.”
Here are a few other go-to guidelines that will help your leadership team be intentional and use emotional intelligence to build strong relationships throughout your organization:
- Praise in public, criticize in private
- Be specific about changes or behaviors you’d like to see
- Frame constructive criticism as an opportunity for growth whenever possible
- If you’re not in a good state of mind to have a productive conversation, table it for later
- Focus on building a collaborative environment by encouraging new ideas
The big so what is, the single highest driver of workplace engagement is whether workers feel like their managers care about them and their well-being. The way a leader approaches delivering positive and constructive feedback has a significant impact on the health of the working relationships within their team.
People teams can proactively support conscientious communication across all levels of the organization by providing training on thoughtful framing.
2. Build in easy ways to recognize teams and individuals consistently.
There’s been a dynamic shift among teams these last two years as colleagues saw each other struggle and supported each other through a foreign COVID world. Overwhelmingly, the result has been tight-knit colleagues getting to know each other and each other’s families – mostly through Zoom or your virtual meeting platform of choice – on a different level.
As a result, teams have a new respect for the balancing act we’re all working on perfecting and can support one another more intuitively. Why? Because now we can see all the things our colleagues juggle each day.
How does that translate to workplace gratitude? Thanks to their increased closeness, team members are more willing to celebrate each other’s successes and lift each other up.
Consider using this shift to your advantage by implementing a peer-to-peer praise system and putting some of the onus on your employees to celebrate each other. Giving people a platform and process for championing colleagues and celebrating wins goes a long way in building a gratitude-powered culture. There are easy, automated, and structured ways to encourage gratitude, e.g., surfacing recommendations to individuals on who they may want to give praise to based on recent meetings in their calendar, featuring kudos from different departments on a weekly basis, mapping gratitude to company values to encourage specific behaviors, or scheduling a recurring Gratitude Week.
When you structure a recognition and reward system, be thoughtful about your process. Often, the most visible people within a company garner the most kudos, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the team is doing less work.
To avoid having people feel left out, consider accepting nominations that include anonymous self-nominations and randomly select a set number of people to celebrate based on your company size. You may surface some ‘quiet but mighty’ all-stars who are doing great things.
3. Ask everyone to add a little more detail to praise this month.
Which of these acknowledgments has more impact:
“Jen is super great – let’s all say thanks to Jen!” Or:
“Huge shout out to Jen for working her butt off to bring our Q4 app overhaul project to a successful conclusion. She tirelessly drove the project forward by spearheading research efforts, collaborating with our engineering team, and performing endless QA tests to make sure we were ready for a seamless launch. Major kudos, Jen! Thank you so much.”
If you chose option two, we agree.
Think about your career to date. Has there ever been a time when you felt like your efforts have gone unnoticed, or you’ve been overlooked? That feeling is born from a lack of recognition for your effort. Employees can see that their leaders and peers are really paying attention when they receive feedback that includes acknowledgment of specific actions. Detailed feedback also helps employees establish good habits because they know what elicits praise.
Ultimately, companies that prioritize making the time to be specific build stronger cultures. As a result, their team operates more efficiently, and everyone gets to take advantage of all the incredible productivity and revenue gains we talked about at the beginning of this post.
Action Plan Summary
When it comes to gratitude in the workplace, there’s nothing to lose and so much to gain. Use the next 30 days to build an action plan to cultivate a transformative culture of gratitude in your organization. Don’t be afraid to take fast action and optimize your process over time. Here are three things you can do to get started right away.
1. Launch a commitment to focus on thoughtful framing.
Use the guidelines above to train your team on how to deliver effective feedback and incorporate more praise into their day-to-day interactions.
- First, copy and paste some of the tips shared above into an email and send it to your leadership team.
- Over time, consider offering managers and executives access to ongoing training or one-on-one coaching sessions to build their leadership skills.
2. Build in easy ways to recognize teams and individuals consistently.
The key here is making praise and gratitude a habit – so whatever you do, make it a goal to inspire frequent, consistent participation across all levels of your organization.
- First, consider setting up a channel dedicated to public praise on your company’s chat platform and encourage employees to recognize a colleague once a week. Test choosing a specific day and sending out reminders to prompt action.
- Over time, make your recognition program more robust. Create new processes with channels for submitting nominations, build a celebratory component into your all-hands meetings, or include prize incentives to increase participation.
3. Ask everyone to add a little more detail to praise this month
Being specific is the quickest and easiest step to implement, but it does take discipline, especially on resource-constrained teams.
- Start by encouraging leaders to include at least three specific bullet points in any public praise they deliver.
- Over time, try to build another layer into your praise system by celebrating team members who prioritize recognizing others. Acknowledging progress toward consistent, effective praise can help you build momentum when it comes to participation.
For a lot of us, this year felt like an ever-so-slightly better version of 2020. We faced many of the same challenges – but some silver linings started to appear, with a shimmer of normal on the horizon. As we head into the holiday season, focus on gratitude by giving your team something to celebrate. Acknowledge the good things that happened this year – big or small.
Be glass half full. Thanks! 🙂