28 Gratitude in Leadership: Boost Performance and Satisfaction

As we head into Thanksgiving week, this episode invites you to slow down, take a breath, and reconnect with the power of gratitude.

Gratitude changes how we lead. Research shows that when leaders express genuine appreciation, team trust increases, collaboration strengthens, and performance improves. Employees are far more motivated when they feel valued, and gratitude is one of the simplest ways to create a culture where people thrive. Neuroscience points to why: gratitude increases emotional regulation, lowers stress, and boosts clarity. This gives you more capacity to lead with intention and presence.

You’ll also hear data on how gratitude builds resilience and personal fulfillment. From improved mood to faster recovery from challenges, gratitude helps you stay grounded, hopeful, and aligned with what matters most.

In this episode, I’m sharing practical, sustainable ways to weave gratitude into your leadership. You’ll learn daily practices you can implement immediately, team rituals that foster connection, and  small moments that create big impact.

This season is a beautiful reminder: you carry a lot. Let’s help it feel lighter. Gratitude is a powerful place to begin.

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Transcript

1:05

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to lead boldly, live lightly, and reclaim their joy. Whether you are leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Ham, leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. After years of high level leadership, I discovered that success doesn't have to come at the cost of your peace, your values, or your wellbeing. Each week, we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically. Even in a world that tells you it'll hustle harder and prove your worth, you carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter. Okay, my friends. Happy Thanksgiving. For those of you in the United States, for those of you outside of the United States who might be listening this week is Thanksgiving inside the United States where we give thanks for all of our many blessings and gifts that we have received throughout the year and just what a joy it is to be an American and um, and to live in such a beautiful, lovely country. So. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. I hope for those of you who are here in the US that you have a great time celebrating that you're able to take a step back from the day to day hustle and bustle and really, truly sincerely count those blessings.'cause as difficult as this year has been, we have a lot to be thankful for. And this is what we are gonna do today on the podcast. I, um, invite you. To take this episode as a little pause, as an opportunity to really focus on what brings you the most joy on what, what is fundamentally most important to you, and to celebrate those things that we have. I encourage you. To to be proud of all that you have accomplished so far this year through the incredibly difficult year that 2025 has been, and let's be thankful. We are also as a leadership podcast. We are gonna talk about gratitude and how gratitude amplifies, how it improves your effectiveness as a leader, both in terms of how gratitude is a catalyst for team performance, and then also the neuroscience behind how gratitude shapes your resilience and makes you more resilient, not just as a leader, but as a person, as a human. And so. Um, gratitude is really important in life and I, I'll, I will be candid. I don't know if you are like me. Maybe you are. I will speak for myself and I anticipate that many successful women, that, some successful women, I don't wanna like project, but I anticipate that at least a few of you listening share this trait that I have had in my life. And that is. I am a high energy woman and I have big goals and dreams, and I am ambitious in the best way possible, and that means that I can spend a whole lot of time. My natural inclination for decades was to always be looking ahead at what I was looking, what I was aiming to achieve, at what I was working to accomplish, and it was always the what's next? What's next? What's next mentality as opposed to actually savoring and grounding into and being grateful for all the accomplishments, all the achievements, all of the joy, all of the beauty, all of the wonder that was already present in my life, you know? And so I am glad that today we are really gonna talk about gratitude for what already is. Because we can continue to be ambitious. We can continue to be successful. We continue to have a lot of energy and to put that energy toward building and creating, bringing something into being in this world that is amazing. And also be grateful for what we have already, right? Those two are not mutually exclusive. And again, for a big chunk of my life, I ignored the gratitude to focus on the building. And so, um, I'm grateful that we have some time on this episode today to focus on the gratitude focus and how it helps support the building. Again, the two are not mutually achieve, mutually exclusive. Okay. So I just threw down a big claim, right? I just said that gratitude will make you more successful. That gratitude amplifies the achievement in the ambition. What in the world do I mean about that? Because wouldn't it be the case that if you just focus on what you're grateful for, doesn't that keep you where you are, that you're putting your energy toward what is, and we know that where our attention goes, our energy flows. So if we're focused on what we have, doesn't that keep us stuck with what we have? If we wanna build something new or grow or achieve or, or promote or, or get, don't we need to put our energy and our attention there? And the answer is, well, you, you can, you can do both. So let me explain how, uh, and we have a ton of research to back this up. Data point number one. Employees are 50% more likely to be productive when they feel appreciated, and that comes out of research through the University of Pennsylvania. Why is that? Well, it's just a human dynamic when I feel like I'm being appreciated. I'm gonna be motivated to lean into that feeling. It feels good to know that I'm appreciated. I'm gonna want more of it. And so I'm gonna do more of the things that receive that allow me to receive that appreciation. So when you as a boss, when you as a leader, that could be formal or informal. That could be you as a parent, you as a spouse, you as a member of the PTA or, or the board at your church or whatever, the coach of your soccer team, whatever it would be. When you express appreciation for others, when you are intentional and consistent and authentic, right? Honest and truthful. Sincere about expressing your gratitude, your appreciation for others, you boost their motivation to perform. Period fact. We know it to be true. Well, okay. What we also know to be true is that leaders who express gratitude for others. That they see higher levels of trust and stronger relationships with their team members, which correlates with improved collaboration and performance. And that comes outta Harvard Business Review. And so when you invest in your people, when you show your appreciation for your people, you strengthen those relationships and that allows for. Stronger working relationships and collaboration. And particularly today when people can feel so disconnected and alienated from everybody, you might be one of the few people pouring into expressing gratitude for an appreciation for that individual. And again, it's a natural human thing. We wanna do what makes us feel good. And so when someone expresses appreciation for you, like you want more of that, so you're gonna do more of what gets you that. And so as a leader, gold, gold as a leader. And then now here, here's another one that I think is, makes a ton of sense, but it's just like mind blowing when you hear it. This is from Glassdoor. They've done a survey and they found 80% of employees say that they are more willing to work harder for leaders who show them appreciation. Like that is both simultaneously. Like, duh, like of course that's true, but just the sheer, like 80% of employees, 80% of the people they surveyed. That's impressive, right? Like that's, that should be telling you something. As a leader, 80% of your people are gonna work harder for you if you show them appreciation. And so gratitude is not this like. Wishy-washy. Little nice to have. And it is absolutely not something when you're grateful for where you are and what you have and for what's working now, that does not keep you stuck where you are. It is the catalyst for your growth. It is the performance multiplier. It is a key to what gets you to that next level, and, and I think this is important too. Gratitude is not a personality trait. Gratitude is a skill. It's an action, and so you can do more of it even if you haven't done much of it yet. And so first I want us to talk about the science behind gratitude and why it improves clarity, why it improves decision making, why it is this catalyst for growth. And it's just because of the way our brains are wired, that gratitude activates those parts of the brain that are connected to learning, to emotional regulation and to executive function. And so when you adopt a regular gratitude practice, and we'll talk about those more here in a few minutes, but when you do that, when you are intentional and consistent in expressing gratitude for what you have in your life and for others in your life, that reduces cortisol levels, which ladies? Is important. We have a lot of cortisol in our lives, particularly as we age, those fluctuations the demands. Cortisol can not just spike, cortisol can, can remain elevated. Gratitude reduces cortisol. Amazing, amazing gratitude increases our experience of groundedness. It increases our nervous system regulation. Vital cash money, so important for us. And this is really important for you as a leader because you make better decisions when your nervous system is regulated, right? When you feel regulated, that reduces your mental load. You free up cognitive bandwidth because you're not churning on the stuff that feels, um, overwhelming or uncertain or vaguely threatening, right? Go back to resilience. You might see a challenge instead of a threat. And so focusing consistently on gratitude, and it doesn't have to be gratitude on the big things, right? Doesn't have to be gratitude. I'm so grateful I got the promotion, or I'm so grateful I won the lottery. No, you could say I'm really grateful for that sunrise. I'm really grateful for the way the clouds look today. I'm really grateful for how cozy these slippers are on my feet. And I really am. I'm wearing really good slippers right now. They make me very happy, but it is just finding those little things. I am grateful for this warm cup of coffee. It is being intentional about being grateful for all the many ways that life is all ready delighting us. We are invited to find delight throughout our day, and the more consistently we do that. The more consistently our cortisol levels remain lower and the more consistently our nervous system remains regulated. That just does free up cognitive capacity. It makes deposits into the body budget, which we've talked about on a previous episode. I will link below and it also reduces our mental load. The tagline for women Lead Well is joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership. Gratitude is a through line through all of those fundamentally important. And so let's take a second to talk about practical ways that you can integrate gratitude into your daily life. I've talked about its significance, importance, the value that it gives you, as a team leader. So the value it provides your leadership, but then also the value it provides you as the human being. And so let's talk about what you can do to consistently incorporate, intentionally incorporate gratitude into your life. Number one, and I, I think I've talked about this in other places here on the podcast. It certainly comes up in my digital program, frantic to flourishing, and that is a daily reflection. I use the. The journal app on my iPhone and every day at the end of the day, I've habit stacked it with my nighttime routines where I brush my teeth in the evening and then I pull out my phone. And I have three things that I'm grateful for that day. And it might be something big that I've signed a new coaching client. I always express real gratitude. I love my coaching clients, uh, but it might be. It might be the cup of coffee. It might be that it's finally cooling off. Like fall is here, winter will be here, I think by the time this episode airs. But just the three things that made me happy today. Three things that made me smile. It doesn't have to be big, it just has to be consistent. We have talked on other episodes, let me, I'm gonna divert for a second. We have talked on other episodes about the reticular activating system. It's that part of your brain that, um. Filters, the hundreds of millions of data points that your body processes or that comes into your body, into your sensory system every minute your brain can't focus on, it focuses on, is it 2%, 3%? I forget, but a tiny little fraction of all those sensory inputs your brain actually consciously recognizes. The literally hundreds of millions of others, the reticular activating system kind of filters out'cause it's too much. It would be overload. And so the way the RAS learns to focus on things is it takes what you have prioritized in the past and it goes and it looks for more of it. So it's, this is why we have confirmation bias because we are consciously, constantly, unconsciously, constantly looking for things that look like things we have seen and cared about in the past. And so when you take 45 seconds, 60 seconds at the end of every day, as you're winding down, getting ready to go to bed, to type in the three things that you were grateful for from the day you are programming your brain to look for things to be grateful for, to look for, and find, and find to focus on more good in your life. Y'all. Come on. Come on. It's the easiest win that you can get for yourself. Three things at the end of the day, takes you a second. Okay? That's the daily reflection. I would also do, uh, an end of week review why I had talked before about how, um, previously before I started doing this work myself, that I was always focused on the next thing and what's the next, and the next and the next. Well, when I did that, what did I not do? I didn't celebrate my progress. I didn't celebrate my wins. And so when you do this weekly review, the, the option, the benefit, the potential is twofold. You can celebrate your own wins. So what, what are the three, what are the five things that, that I'm proud of that I did this week? And also as you're doing that, you can look at what your team did over the week. What am I proud of that my team did this week? And why is that important? Well, because then the next time you have a team meeting or the next time you interact with somebody, when a member of your team who did something, a win, you can remember to celebrate it with them. Right. You can lock in that win for them by you mentioning it to them. It's, it's one of those ways that you can express your appreciation and gratitude, and it really, really builds them up. This can feed into. Maybe an appreciation round in a team meeting that you can do a shout out. You can shout people out during your team meetings to talk about their wins. You can highlight the things that they did that you're grateful for. Maybe it is, I'm talking about wins, but maybe somebody, maybe there was a failure, maybe there was a missed opportunity. Maybe there was something that went south. But there is a part of that that you can express gratitude for. Maybe team members really rallied and they did exactly what they should do and it didn't work out anyway. Well, you still wanna celebrate the fact that they did exactly what they should do, that they did exactly what you wanted them to do. It just turned out a different way. Or maybe you can celebrate their tenacity that somebody identified the problem early on and took quick action. Right. You can celebrate the wins within the broader challenge, and that reframing can help people. Um, one, it builds that growth mindset of what can we learn and what can we capitalize on and where can we reinforce success? But two, it also helps to motivate and encourage through a period where people might be feeling a little low, right? If things don't go well, if you miss a target or, or something goes sideways another way, and I love that. I used to do this all the time back when I had a big team. Or worked in a larger organization, uh, are those notes of appreciation. And so I was a vice president within an organization. Anytime a member did something. That was just great. So maybe somebody from IT helped out. Uh, we were having issues in a meeting and somebody from it came and saved the day, or, um, maybe somebody over at the museum was really supportive to a board member who was coming to visit. Whatever it was, I would send an email to my counterpart, so the, the other VP in the organization. Bragging on what their team member did and how it helped our mission and the value that it provided, and how professional they were and how collegial they were and how much I appreciated them. And it was all, it's sincere and authentic. I love doing, I love bragging on people. It, it is authentic to me. Um, I would send it to the VP because they're my peer, and I would cc every supervisor down the chain, and I would include the individual or individuals I was bragging on. And I freaking loved to do it because it feels really good. To brag on someone, it just feels, it feels amazing to be able to talk about the good work that somebody is doing at another part of the organization. And for me to let one of my peers know, one of my counterparts, my fellow VPs know, like somebody, somebody within your team, within your street, they're tearing it up like they are doing exactly what we wanna see more of. And I'm so grateful to them. They saved our bacon or they helped out this like, it, it made me feel good. It made the VP feel good. It made the staff member. Maybe be a little embarrassed, but also feel good like it's just a win-win all the way down. And so look for those opportunities like there within the military, um, there is a common phrase that you praise in public and you correct in private. And so I would encourage you, maximize the number of times that you praise in public. Be sincere. Don't be fake. Don't make it sound like you're. Well, I'm just doing this to Uhuh, like actually be grateful for what you're expressing gratitude for, but it is, it feels really good to you and it's gonna feel really good to the person that you're bragging on. Now, as we wrap this up on Thanksgiving week, I wanna, I wanna give you a challenge, an opportunity, an invitation. Pick one of these gratitude practices. And, and start practicing this week. Now, today, Tuesday, when this episode drops, or whatever day you're listening, take the practice and really build it into your rhythm, into your life. Be intentional about it because remember, inertia is strong and you'll start type in your three daily things you're grateful for into your notes app until you, for or until you don't. Right? Be super intentional and if you fall off the wagon, just bring yourself back on. It's okay. You could even, if you wanna really be serious about it, you could even right now, as soon as you get to your calendar. Just put in a daily reminder, a weekly reminder. You put in a quick 15 minute appointment every day at the end of the day, or every Friday at the end of the week, or every Monday or so, whatever, so that when you fall off the wagon, because you will, because that is the human response to change. It is okay to do. You've got a support already in place to bring you back. Yeah, try it, see how it goes. This is, this is Thanksgiving, but let's not only express gratitude this week, let's really change the way we approach life so that we can be grateful for all the many blessings that we have every single day. And now I hope you will join me next week as I talk about clarifying your core values. Values come up a lot on this podcast. I think every single episode I'm talking about the importance of our values. And so I wanted to dedicate a full, episode to getting really crystal clear on your core values. That is part of the Success blueprint, part of the mini course, that I have right now. I'll be linked in the show notes below. If you wanna start setting your goals for 2026 and building the action plans that you need to actually implement those goals. Getting clear on your values is a critical piece before, even before you set your goals, you wanna be clear on your values. And so we're gonna spend an entire episode on that next week, and then the success blueprint will be linked below if you'd like to take a look at that. Now if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend who's running on empty. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline. And don't forget to like and subscribe and please, I would be so grateful if you would give me a review or a rating on whatever, wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps a little podcast like mine reach other women who could benefit. You can also grab one of our free resources, like the weekly reset routine or the mental load reset@womenleadwell.net and link in the show notes below. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible. And you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Ham, and this is joyfully Unstoppable.