SLIDE 1
ASSOCIATION NEWS
November 2019
The office will close on November 22 for Thanksgiving Week and reopen on December 2. If you need immediate assistance during that time, email info@nwmomgma.com
Why Being A More Grateful Leader Benefits You
Adapted from John Loflin’s Newsletter, November 2019 … Failing to understand the deeper impact of expressing gratitude on our personal growth can also lead us to only see the act as something we have to do this time of year. We check the box and move on the next urgent item screaming for our attention. So in that frame of thought, here are four ways I believe being more grateful makes you a stronger leader all year: It sharpens your emotional intelligence. … It’s about feeling thankful, either as a direct beneficiary or on behalf of someone
- else. It is expressing a positive emotion.” The five areas of
emotional intelligence include self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills, so practicing more gratitude helps you with understanding the impact of emotions
- n each of these areas.
It makes you more “real” to others. …. Telling someone else how their work positively influenced your ability to lead helps them see you differently. As Eric Mosley writes in The ROI of Gratitude In The Workplace, “When you give an award and write a personal message describing how someone else’s work impacted you, you are vulnerable and authentic in that moment.” It re-humanizes you. With all the focus on data analytics, metrics, and algorithms in today’s workplace, we can forget that what makes things happen is the work done by human beings. Behind every number in a monthly report is a person who gave their time and energy to create that result. Expressing gratitude acknowledges that while the numbers are important, the work given to get to those numbers is even more valued.
ACTION STEPS
… Take 2 minutes at the end of your workday from time to time to answer one of these questions:
- Whose work affected me in a positive way today?
- What did I see or experience with my team today that helped me be
more effective as their leader or manager? Finally, take action to express that gratitude. As William F. Ward is quoted as saying, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” As you make being grateful more of a habit, you’ll find that not only are your team members more focused, supportive, and successful, but that you are too… and doesn’t that make the case you should engage in the behavior all year? It changes the way you think about your
- work. While recognition is more of the act
- f expressing gratitude, determining what
you are grateful for is a much deeper mental
- exercise. Taking the time to stop and ask
how some activity or performance affected you is an important act of self-reflection. You gain greater clarity on the why of your
- role. As a result, you increase the emotional
and mental energy available to deal with the daily expectations of your job.