It’s almost here. The day to see your extended family one of two times per year, stuff yourself silly with green bean casserole, pretend you know what a “cornerback” does, and think about what you’re grateful for. Just like the pilgrims and American indigenous peoples did!
You know what they didn’t do? Take advantage of a holiday to create some of the best small business marketing content this side of the Mississippi. I mean, who would even do that?! Who would even say that?! The nerve of some people.
On an unrelated note, in recent years, gratitude has proven to be increasingly responsible for one’s overall happiness and well-being. From simple things like thanking someone for holding an elevator, to intense week-long meditation retreats focused on the issue, gratitude allows us to heighten our frequency and change our perspective.
Let’s take a deeper look at the role of gratitude in business.
4 WAYS PRACTICING GRATITUDE IN BUSINESS PAYS OFF
BECAUSE SCIENCE
According to a 2017 Forbes article, we need three positives to outweigh the impact of one negative. In other words, we feel and hear negativity with three times the power that we experience positivity. The issue in our current culture, however, is that we tend to give 10 times more negative feedback than positive feedback. Essentially, we need a 3:1 ratio, but we get 1:10, which leaves us unfulfilled, anxious and depressed. This is why gratitude matters.
Regularly expressing gratitude (the quality of being thankful and readiness to show appreciation) literally changes the molecular structure of the brain, keeps the gray matter functioning, and makes us healthier and happier.
— UCLA’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center
Practicing and experiencing gratitude literally has the power to rewire your brain. (And, yes, I know how literally works.) Gratitude serves as a sort of natural antidepressant. During the practice of gratitude—say, thinking about or writing down three to five things you’re grateful for—specific neural circuits are activated. Production of serotonin and dopamine increases, and neurotransmitters, or “chemical messengers,” travel neural pathways to the brain’s “pleasure” center. The more we practice, the stronger these neural pathways become—a phenomenon known as “Hebb’s Law,” which states: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” “The more times a certain neural pathway is activated (neurons firing together), the less effort it takes to stimulate the pathway the next time (neurons wiring together).
Source: The Neuroscience of Gratitude
BECAUSE TEAM-BUILDING
In a whitepaper published by the Dale Carnegie Institute, researchers found that “showing appreciation” was the number one blind spot for most leaders. Which, in turn, makes it the greatest opportunity for improving employee engagement and company performance.
Gratitude is a social emotion—and moral emotion—that has the power to strengthen relationships because it requires us to take stock of how we are supported and affirmed by those around us. Additionally, gratitude puts us in a position to recognize how positive things in our lives, like a success at work, are often due to outside forces—particularly the efforts of others.
Of course there are (and will be more) business leaders who believe that this type of attitude toward gratitude doesn’t belong in the workplace. Some believe it shows weakness or lacks professionalism. To those people I say …
Let’s take a look at a few benefits of gratitude in the form of workplace recognition:
- Motivates employees
- Provides sense of accomplishment
- Provides feeling of appreciation
- Builds trust
- Increases emotional resilience
- Fosters cooperation
- Decreases toxic emotions (e.g., envy, materialism, etc.)
- Increases staff retention rates
- Strengthens company loyalty
- Promotes employee engagement
Sources: Making the Business Case for Gratitude; How Gratitude Can Transform Your Workplace
Keep in mind that in order for gratitude to work, it has to come from a genuine place. If done correctly, gratitude has the power to make your business more profitable because your employees will be more engaged and effective. However, if your team gets even a *whiff* of insincerity, you’re going to get the opposite effect—your employees will know you’re using them. You must honestly want what’s best for your team. And if you don’t want that, you may want to consider a new personality career.
BECAUSE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Establishing relationships is at the core of any business venture. Incorporating gratitude into this process will enable you to better connect with customers, attract new clients and foster beneficial rapport with manufacturers and suppliers.
According to Betsy Bugg Holloway, a marketing professor Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, gratitude is an effective tool largely because “it is a precursor to develop trust.” And trust, itself, is an extremely powerful driver of loyalty, no matter the type of relationship.
Gratitude motivates positive reciprocal behavior. If a customer believes that a business has his [sic] best interests at heart, that customer is more inclined to develop a long-term relationship with the business.
— Randy Raggio, marketing professor at the University of Richmond
Let’s go over a few DOs and DON’Ts of gratitude with regard to current and potential customers.
| DOs | DON’Ts |
| Build memorable bonds that transcend “business relationships” | Be afraid to show [rational] emotion; consider emotion a “weakness” |
| Know your client well enough to add a unique, personal touch when sending a gift | Send a faceless, generic gift to an important client |
| Look people in the eye; give genuine compliments when they’re due; engage in active listening | Look at your phone during client meetings; dole out insincere “compliments” to further personal agenda |
When your customers believe you sincerely care about their well-being, they’re more likely to refer a friend, write a positive online review or pay a little more for your products and/or services in the future.
Sources: 5 Reasons Why Practising [sic] Gratitude Is Great for Your Business; Why gratitude is good for business, year round
BECAUSE THE BOTTOM LINE
I hope it is becoming clear how important gratitude in business is. It’s one of those things that often gets overlooked in the day-to-day, but plays such a crucial role in a business’s ability to thrive.
Still, many business leaders view gratitude as a social nicety rather than a tool to improve company performance. Perhaps some hard facts & figures from the Harvard Business Review will do the trick.
- Depending on industry, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.
- Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.
Take, for example, Reston Limousine. In 2009, its President & CEO, Kristina Bouweiri, began holding fancy customer appreciation lunches for a friend’s lagging business. Those lunches provided Bouweiri with the opportunity to meet 900 clients, which gave her own business a healthy boost. She knew that her unexpected success was a testament to the power of appreciation and gratitude in business and immediately pivoted her strategy.
From that point on, rather than going after new business, she and her team decided to go back to old clients and thank them—to develop relationships with them. For nearly 20 years, the Reston Limousine team had done little to nothing to show gratitude for its nearly 20,000 clients. “Now,” says Bouweiri, “I consider it the most important initiative that I have.”
Similarly, Dr. Justin Wood, Th.d., CJME, who was given the task of reviving a dying restaurant, decided to put the practice of gratitude into place and had employees focus on making customers feel appreciated. Not only did this double business in a month, but continued to set quarterly financial records.
I retain a high percentage of customers. This costs me less in marketing and those customers tell others of my services; in turn, gratitude saves me money, while making me money and costing me nothing.
— Dr. Justin Wood, Th.d., CJME
These examples only tout the benefits of gratitude toward clients. What about your internal team?
Continuing on the idea that gratitude is a business tool rather than a “social nicety,” let’s take a look at employee turnover. Most employees leave a position because they feel disengaged. The root cause of this disengagement? A lack or total absence of gratitude in the workplace. They feel like they’re neither being seen nor appreciated at work.
- 71% of American employees report feeling not fully engaged at work
- 26% of American employees report feeling actively disengaged at work
Fear not—there’s an easy solution. A study reported by Harvard Medical School and conducted by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found that employees who heard expressions of gratitude before doing work made 50% more progress on their goals. All because of something as simple as a sincere “thank you” or “great job.”
Sources: Why gratitude is good for business, year round; 20 Examples of How Showing Gratitude Helped a Business; Why Expressing Gratitude Is Good For Business And People
As technology continues to develop at lightning speeds and we become increasingly isolated from one another, it’s imperative that we all make an effort to reach out, listen carefully, speak intentionally and strengthen the bond that binds us all: love for our tribe. Whether it’s a familial tribe, professional tribe, or chosen tribe, if we don’t support one another—on any scale—the whole system collapses.
We hold the power. We have the ability to not only reinforce our relationships, but to forge new ground and create bonds that we never imagined creating. Gratitude is the answer. This Thanksgiving, and every other day of the year, gratitude is the answer.
So, from this boutique ad agency to you …
