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Very good article from HBR below. But the take-home message is that you reap what you sow, and get what you give. Sound trite? Read on.<\/p>\nVery good article from HBR below. But the take-home message is that you reap what you sow, and get what you give. Sound trite? Read on.<\/p>\n
If we are to cultivate gratitude, respect, and pride among employees, management from the top down must 1) genuinely feel those qualities, and 2) express them. It’s not enough to look at the work accomplished and think, wow those employees are amazing and we are so lucky to have those folks on our team.<\/p>\n
The WIN happens when that CEO, or VP, or manager communicates that pride briefly, authentically, to the employee(s). It’s like water to a flower. The expression of positivity creates positivity in a feed-forward loop. So “find the good”, and then communicate it so others can see it, feel it, and live it too.<\/p>\n
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As a leader, what traits should you cultivate in your employees? Grit \u2013 the ability to persevere in the face of challenges? Sure. A willingness to accept some sacrifices and work hard toward a successful future are essential for the members of any team. But I believe there\u2019s another component that matters just as much: grace. I don\u2019t mean the ability to move elegantly or anything religious. Rather, I mean qualities of decency, respect, and generosity, all of which mark a person as someone with whom others want to cooperate.<\/p>\n
Consider the\u00a0results of Google\u2019s Project Oxygen<\/a>, a multiyear research initiative designed to identify the manager qualities that enhanced a team\u2019s success. What they found is that yes, driving a team to be productive and results-oriented mattered, but so did being even-keeled, making times for one-on-one meetings, working with a team in the trenches to solve problems, and taking an interest in employees\u2019 social lives. In fact, these \u201ccharacter\u201d qualities outranked sheer drive and technical expertise when it came to predicting success.<\/p>\n This makes sense. Innovation typically requires team effort. Expertise has to be combined to solve problems, necessitating cooperation. And cooperation requires a willingness to share credit and support one another as opposed to always striving to take credit for oneself.<\/p>\n So as a manager, what\u2019s the best way to instill grit and grace in your team? My research shows that it\u2019s about cultivating three specific emotions: gratitude, compassion, and pride.<\/p>\n These three emotions not only increase patience and perseverance, but also build social bonds. For most of human evolutionary history, the ability to succeed rested almost entirely on the ability to form relationships. People needed to be honest, fair, and diligent \u2014 qualities that required a willingness to inhibit selfish desires to profit at the expense of others. And it was moral emotions like gratitude, compassion, and an authentic pride that motivated these actions. For example, research has shown that when people feel grateful, they\u2019re willing to devote more effort to\u00a0help others<\/a>, to be\u00a0loyal<\/a>\u00a0even at a cost to themselves, and to\u00a0split profits equally<\/a>\u00a0with partners rather than take more money for themselves. When they\u00a0feel compassion<\/a>, they\u2019re willing to devote time, effort, and money to aid others. And when they feel proud \u2013 an authentic pride based on their abilities as opposed to a hubristic one \u2013 they\u2019ll\u00a0work harder<\/a>to help colleagues solve problems. And all of these behaviors draw others to us. People who express\u00a0gratitude<\/a>,\u00a0compassion<\/a>, and\u00a0pride<\/a>\u00a0are viewed positively by those around them.<\/p>\n These emotions also build grit. They increase the value people place on future goals relative to present ones, and thereby pave the way to perseverance.\u00a0Work from my lab<\/a>, for example, shows that people induced to feel grateful show double the patience when it comes to financial rewards. They\u2019re twice as willing to forgo an immediate smaller profit so that they can invest it for a longer-term gain. In a similar vein, people made to feel\u00a0pride<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0compassion<\/a>\u00a0are willing to persevere more than 30% longer on challenging tasks compared to those feeling other positive emotions, such as happiness, precisely because pride and compassion induce them to place greater value on future rewards.<\/p>\n Unlike using willpower to keep your nose to the grindstone, using these emotions also helps solve an increasingly common problem of professional life: loneliness. Today, loneliness has\u00a0become an epidemic<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S., with 53% of American workers regularly reporting feeling isolated in their public lives\u2014an immense problem given the\u00a0toll loneliness takes<\/a>\u00a0on the both physical and mental health. Regularly feeling gratitude, compassion, and pride\u2014because these emotions automatically make people behave in more communal and supportive ways\u2014builds social connections. For example, people assigned to engage in simple interventions to feel and express gratitude show enhanced feelings of\u00a0social connection<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0relationship satisfaction<\/a>\u00a0over time.<\/p>\n Because of the connection between these emotions and grit and social connection, managers who cultivate gratitude, compassion, and pride in their team will see increased productivity and wellbeing of their workers. As one example,\u00a0Adam Grant and Francesca Gino examined perseverance in an environment that is rife with more rejection than almost any other: fundraising<\/a>. Over a two-week period, they recorded the number of calls fundraisers made in an effort to solicit donations for a university. Between the first and second week, however, half of the fundraisers received a visit from the university\u2019s director of annual giving, during which she expressed her appreciation for their work. To get a sense of how this expression of gratitude affected the fundraisers, Gino and Grant had them report how valued and appreciated they felt by their superiors.<\/p>\n Whereas the average performance of both groups had been virtually the same during the first week of the study, those who had heard the grateful message upped their fundraising efforts by 50% during the second week. What\u2019s particularly interesting here is the way the benefits of gratitude and pride can feed off one another. In another study on fundraisers, Grant and Amy Wrzesniewski found that the gratitude managers expressed toward their employees stoked the employees\u2019 pride, which in turn,\u00a0bolstered their efforts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Compassion, too, builds dedication. Surveying over 200 people working in different units within a large long-term care facility,\u00a0Sigal Barsade and Mandy O\u2019Neil found<\/a>\u00a0that those who worked in units characterized by higher feelings of social attachment, trust, acceptance, and support\u2014a composite that could easily be called empathy and compassion\u2014not only showed superior performance and engagement, but also increased work satisfaction, less exhaustion, and lower absenteeism.<\/p>\n Gratitude, compassion, and pride make us more willing to cooperate with and invest in others.\u00a0But because they accomplish this feat by increasing the value the mind places on future gains, they also nudge us to invest in\u00a0our own futures. In so doing, they make both teams, and the individuals who comprise them, more successful and resilient.<\/p>\n