Gratitude and the Work of Leadership

3 Lessons Learned  

Kim Clark, Co-founder and Chairman

In this season of Thanksgiving, I want to share with you three important lessons I have learned about the power of gratitude in the work of leadership. They were hard to learn and I am all the more grateful for them. 

Lesson #1: Gratitude is the Great Antidote to Pride 

The work of leadership is all about mobilizing people to act, learn, and change in ways that help them thrive and create a thriving organization. In that work, pride in the leader is a problem. I don’t mean the self-respect, or confidence, or satisfaction kind of pride; I mean the plain old puffed-up self-importance kind of pride.  

I have learned that pride can creep into your heart and soul very easily if you let it. When you are a leader, people around you, with every good intention, pay you compliments, award you with honors, and tell you how wonderful you are. On the other hand, some people around you are not happy with you, don’t like what you’ve done, and may not like you. It is easy for pride to become a coat of armor, a defense against criticism.  

No matter how it comes, pride is not good for the work of leadership. You may start to believe that the good things that happen are your own doing, and, therefore, downplay in your heart and mind the work of others; you may start to believe only your ideas are worth your attention, and you may stop listening to people. You may devalue the people around you, failing to see the potential in them. You may miss warning signs and may send the organization down the wrong road. All of this can be damaging.  

I know the dangers of pride; I speak from experience.  

I have described a very negative picture of pride, but it is not an extreme picture. It happens all the time in organizations. But there is an antidote, something that will protect you from the infection, and heal you if you slip up, even a little. The antidote is gratitude, plain old fashioned, real, genuine gratitude for the people, their talents, their goodness, their work, for who they can become. It is gratitude for the opportunities you have, for the many people who sacrificed and counseled, and corrected, and taught and helped you all along the way. It is gratitude for your family, loved ones, friends, and just plain blessings that are yours.  

When you feel gratitude like that, you do not get puffed up in either way. You feel less stress, have more clarity, have better control of your emotions, and make better decisions. You also listen, encourage people to speak up, learn from them and rely on them. You change your mind, admit when you are wrong. And most important, you express gratitude for the people around you. And they know it’s real. It happens when you have gratitude in your heart, and you live it.  

I know the power of gratitude; I speak from experience.   

Lesson #2: Gratitude Builds Relationships of Trust 

The first lesson is about you as a leader. The second is about building relationships. A good friend and wise teacher, Tom DeLong, gave me the three questions that all leaders need to ask about relationships with the people they lead.   

1. How do you feel about the people you lead -- are they instruments to be used for your purposes?  Or do you care about them, and see them as people valuable in their own right with an important role to play in the work? 

2. How do people experience you – do you seem distant, not relatable, uninterested, self-absorbed?  Or do you seem personable, connected, interested in them and trustworthy? 

3. How do people feel about themselves when they are with you – do they feel unvalued, unworthy, and unimportant? or Do they feel appreciated, inspired, a person of great worth with significant potential?  

Your answers to these questions will drive the kind of relationship you have with the people you lead.  

Gratitude for them, expressed and lived, connects you to them, and helps them see you as competent and trustworthy. It helps you pay attention to their needs and avoid being distracted by the press of tasks to be done. It helps you to really see and hear them, learn about them and their potential. Because they trust you, you can help them see that potential too. Your gratitude brings to life the idea that they are just as important to the overall work in their sphere of responsibility as you are in yours. You elevate them, lifting them to a higher plane of purpose, accomplishment and meaning.

In short, your gratitude for them (and your overall attitude of gratitude) helps you see them and treat them in ways that lift them and strengthen them. You help them thrive. 

I know the power of gratitude; I speak from experience.  

Lesson #3: Gratitude is a Wellspring of Power 

The third lesson is about the power and the organization. At the Leading Through Institute we believe that everyone in an organization has the work of leadership to do in their sphere of responsibility and influence. That principle applies to any kind of organization of any size. When all the people doing the work of leadership in an organization have gratitude for the people around them, something quite remarkable happens: the power in the organization grows and grows.  

Power is very important in leadership. However, too often the power that comes with authority or position or knowledge or expertise is used to control, compel, or coerce other people. At LTI we call that the “power over” paradigm and where it takes hold it breeds pride, arrogance, moral failure, lost potential and sluggish innovation.  

There is a much better way that we call “power through” - - power used by leaders to activate the power that is in the people and their teams. Instead of control, power through fosters initiative and creativity. Instead of compulsion, power through fosters agency and freedom of action. Instead of coercion, power through fosters trust and care. And here is the remarkable part – the power the leader uses does not diminish; it grows. And the overall power in use in the organization grows. The potential was always there, but power through turns potential into power in action.  

That is why I believe gratitude is a wellspring of power. It diminishes pride, opens up relationships of mutual commitment and trust, and makes power through effective.  

I know the power of gratitude; I speak from experience. 

Now what? How do we help gratitude become widespread, an important part of our culture?  

I have experienced two things that I know are helpful.  

1. You, the leader of whatever organization you lead, have to teach gratitude, and you have to express it often.  

Teaching gratitude comes through living it, sharing stories about its impact, connecting it to things people care about, and doing it at every opportunity. Expressing gratitude often cannot be rote or mechanical or cold. It has to be from your heart, that means it has to be in your heart. But if it is, and if the teaching is personal and real, gratitude can be contagious.  

2. You can help people catch the spirit of gratitude.  

Here is something I felt impressed to do when I served as dean of Harvard Business School. I proposed to my executive team that on the last day of work before the Thanksgiving Holiday, we invite all the people who worked at HBS to come to a large room on campus and pick up a delicious pie (free) baked by our own bakers on our kitchen staff. We would offer classic flavors – apple, cherry, blueberry, pecan – and we would provide refreshments, a little music, and nice note cards and envelopes with pens on tables so people could write notes of gratitude to anyone on campus. They would put the notes into envelopes with the name of the recipient and place the envelopes in baskets around the room. We would arrange for the notes to be delivered. This was a huge undertaking – we had something like 1500 people who worked on the campus – but the team pulled it off in an amazing way. The people loved this event. We did it every year I was there, and it has continued every year since then. It is now embedded in the culture of HBS. Pies are not the only way to get people together to practice gratitude, but it is the notes that make a difference. And the difference is palpable.  

I know the power of gratitude; I speak from experience.  

Gratitude is the great antidote to pride; Gratitude builds relationships of trust; Gratitude is a wellspring of power.  

May this season be a season of gratitude for you, and may these three lessons help you in the great work of leadership.