The secret to great leadership
It hit me this morning as I was listening to a podcast from Dharius Daniels that great leaders have something in common. What - will you say? Gratitude. Yes, it hit me that the secret to great leadership is gratitude. Great leaders choose to be grateful, over and over.
Gratitude is a choice, not a feeling. Gratitude is a disciplined response to difficulty. It is a daily discipline of changing the focus. It is the opposite of cynicism.
Here are 7 benefits of gratitude:
1. Gratitude helps us to deal with hurts of the past and get over them. While cynicism usually takes root in the scars of the past, gratitude overcomes them by focusing on the lessons to be learnt and on how those lessons can be applied to a greater future.
2. It builds resilience. By remaining positive, and learning from the past, gratitude helps us dig deep and stay strong.
3. It builds creativity and thinking out of the box. It leads to seeing things from a different angle that most people don’t see. An angle full of opportunities.
4. It inspires people around us to be more positive, to achieve more, to go further. Who is ever inspired by a cynical person?
5. Gratitude calls for more. It gives confidence to go further. If you are grateful, you are naturally inclined to go the extra mile. And even better, if we see gratitude in others for things we’ve done, it will often inspire us to give more, do more, be better. Think about it: if you give a Christmas bonus to your team, what response do you think will inspire you the most to do better next year? A team member who is deeply moved and thankful or the cynical who asks “is that all you could afford this year? I bet you needed the rest for the yachting holiday?” And the same applies to a team member who spent hours preparing some material for your presentation, chances are that your response will inspire their attitude towards the next job, one way or another.
6. It attracts people with a similar attitude. And even better, it has the power to change people around us because sincere gratitude brings the best in people. The important word here is sincere. For gratitude to inspire others, it must ring true, it needs to be totally meant. Otherwise, it falls as flat as a failed soufflé.
7. It is an indication that we can be trusted with greater things. If our response to whatever is thrown at us is gratitude, then chances are we can handle deeper crisis, we’re ready for bigger responsibilities, we can take things further.
Becoming great means becoming grateful. If you apply these 7 benefits of gratitude in a business context, it leads to growth and success, not only for you and your business but for your entire team.
