Someday, COVID-19 will be in the history books, but organizations always face challenges. It could also take the form of actual thank-you letters sent to the people in your work world for whom you are grateful.įormer Campbell Soup CEO Douglas Conant famously sent 30,000 handwritten thank-you notes to employees during his time at the helm of the company, to show his appreciation for their specific contributions he’s credited the practice with building goodwill and higher productivity in his team.Īnd when we write and send a thank-you letter, research shows that it is as beneficial to the writer as it is to the recipient one such study found that letter writers were measurably happier for a full month afterward. That could simply be a list you make for your own use, a brainstorming session for a team, or an ongoing part of a weekly departmental meeting, with thoughts captured in a shared digital document. Take the time to document your reflections. We are also starting to tease out what aspects of remote work we’d like to bring with us into a post-COVID-19 environment through updated priorities, policies, and procedures. Maybe you never fully appreciated listening to audiobooks during commutes, or frontline interactions with customers, or that dorky departmental birthday song.īy taking a moment to actively reflect on these positive things, we’re already heightening what researchers call “positive recall bias” - the ability to notice the good things around us - and building neural pathways that help us continue to do so. Gratitude could also come in the form of realizing the good things taken for granted about pre-pandemic work life. Maybe staff has managed to maintain productivity maybe an agile product design process enabled the organization to pivot quickly or perhaps long-term plans to optimize online activities were completed faster than anyone expected. See the positive things that have come out of the crisis.Įncourage teams and individuals to deliberately consider the specific things that have worked better than expected remotely. ![]() So for teams reemerging into the physical work world after months of being home, it shouldn’t be hard to boost gratitude levels to help reset and reenergize. Eighty-one percent of respondents said they would work harder for a grateful boss, and a whopping 93 percent believed that a grateful boss would be more likely to succeed. While almost nine out of 10 respondents to a 2012 survey from the John Templeton Foundation said that expressing gratitude to colleagues made them feel happier and more fulfilled, 60 percent of respondents said they never, or rarely, did so. The bad news/good news is that when it comes to creating more gratitude at work, there is nowhere to go but up. Those three steps can be equally powerful when adapted to the workplace. ![]() See the good around me say something to express gratitude and by keeping copies of each letter to reread later, savor the reasons I have to be grateful. There were three simple steps I followed for my thank-you project: see, say, and savor. These lessons were driven home the year I spent writing a weekly thank-you letter to someone who had helped, shaped, or inspired me to that point in my life. Simply put, all signs point to us functioning best when genuine gratitude is part of the picture. People who are grateful have been found to exercise more patience and self-control, and even have a lower tendency to cheat. ![]() Studies show that actively noticing things to appreciate can help us sleep better, decrease blood pressure, and lower levels of anxiety and depression. What is there possibly to feel grateful for in 2020?īut researchers who study the science of well-being have quantified how taking the time to deliberately express gratitude can rewire our brains to seek out the good things around us, thereby calming our nervous system and building resilience. Health worries, employees juggling their children’s at-home educational needs with their own jobs, a call for organizations to reflect somberly on their role in perpetuating systemic racism that has worsened health outcomes for BIPOC communities: Our lives have been ravaged by both personal and societal suffering in the past few months. It may seem hopelessly naïve to suggest that to create a vision for work after COVID-19, we should start with a big dose of gratitude.
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