The two most important words...

I talked about the power of gratitude in my last post ("Gratitude", posted 05/01/2023).  Dr. Sara Algoe, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, recently wrote an article that was published in the Wall Street Journal that started, "There are two simple words that can increase productivity, enhance collaboration among employees, make managers more effective, and improve corporate performance.  Thank you."  In my opinion, these two words may be the two most important words in the English language.  Dr. Algoe has been studying gratitude for more than two decades, and her research has consistently found, regardless of the setting, that expressing gratitude (often by simply saying "Thank you") has remarkably far-reaching effects.

People who regularly express their gratitude are perceived as being warmer, more empathetic, more likable, and even more competent.  More importantly, the individuals being thanked are actually more willing to work harder for them!  For example, Dr. Algoe and her team conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to edit a cover letter.  Some of these participants were thanked by the person they helped, while others were not thanked.  When the participants were asked a second time to edit a cover letter, the ones who had been thanked spent on average 15% more time to the task compared to the ones who weren't thanked.  

In a similar experiment, participants were asked to help a writer proofread a document.  The document had been previously reviewed and included tracked changes and comments from both the first reviewer and the individual who wrote originally the document.  In some cases, the original writer expressed their gratitude to the first reviewed with an extra comment that said, "Thank you so much for catching these typos!"  Participants who reviewed the document containing a simple thank you were 38% more likely to correct additional typos that they found (even though this wasn't part of their assigned task) compared to participants who reviewed documents that didn't contain a simple thank you.

Expressions of gratitude produce physiological as well as psychological effects!  Dr. Algoe's research has also found that both the individual expressing gratitude and the recipient of that expressed gratitude have lower heart rate, blood pressure, and markers of inflammation.  In other words, the mere act of expressing gratitude reduces stress and improves well-being!

I talked about the important of gratitude for leaders in two other posts from several years ago ("Real leaders say 'thank you' a lot...", posted 07/30/2017 and "Gratitude", posted 08/02/2017).  I talked about the so-called 5:1 rule ("The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio"), which states that leaders of top-performing teams provide positive feedback, gratitude, and praise five times as often as they provide negative feedback or criticism.  I ended that post with the simple admonition, "Gratitude is easy.  Gratitude makes you happy.  Gratitude is fun.  And gratitude is a great example of leadership."