Words for the Workplace: A Deep Dive into Emotional Communication at Work - Day 5 - Gratitude

Gratitude is an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value, what brings meaning to our lives and what makes us feel connected to ourselves and others. Brené Brown. Talking about emotions can bring up a lot of emotions, and broaching this subject in the workplace can add another layer of complexity to the conversation, but it doesn't have to be that way. This mini series will cover five words or word categories that we can start bringing into the workplace to help communicate our emotions in more specific and helpful terms. Hello and welcome. To Connect the Dots, lead the Way. I'm your host, heather Balseric. I am a white female with short, strawberry blonde hair, red glasses and I'm wearing a gray t-shirt. Today I am sitting in front of a teal wall that is covered with multiple pieces of art, and it is day five of the mini series. We have made it to the last day. Thank you so much. If you've been following along. I really appreciate it. I'm really excited about today's topic because it's gratitude. I love gratitude. It's probably one of my favorite things. We talked a little bit about gratitude in day one when we were focused on the word happy. In that episode I said as a leader, you should be practicing gratitude, showing it to your team, your peers and leader. Honestly, we all need to right no leader title required. How do we bring gratitude into the workplace? We can thank people. We can tell people that we're grateful for them. Is that really going far enough? Probably not. When you are showing gratitude, it needs to be genuine, real, get to know the person and express gratitude in a way that is meaningful to them. Maybe you've been thinking about that this week. If you've been listening along, maybe you've been thinking a little bit about like, well gosh, how can I show gratitude? How can I be genuine with my gratitude? The first thing that you can do is remember that gratitude starts with you. It's a practice. Brunay in Alice of the Heart says an attitude is a way of thinking. Practice is a way of doing trying, failing and trying again. Think about how you are working to show a deep appreciation for the individuals that you value in this life. You're not always going to get it right. As you learn that person, as you build connections with them, you get to know them. You can try again. It's a practice. Do it, try it Fail, try again, then continue this cycle. The next thing that I want you to think about is don't be afraid to say it or chat it. I feel like sometimes people don't talk about how grateful they are for other people because they're not sure how they want to express it. They may think the other person could take it the wrong way or insert any other number of reasons here. Find a way that you're comfortable sharing gratitude If you aren't good with saying it in the moment. Send a chat. If your company has a kudos board or an accolade or whatever, send that If you remember at an odd hour, because I know I do that a lot. Schedule the message if you have the ability to do so, or set a reminder to yourself to do it the next day. If you have the opportunity to call it out in a meeting and say thank you or show your gratitude on the spot, do it. If you aren't sure, though, what do I do or where do I start? I say thank you to people, but I don't know how else can I show gratitude. There's a website called randomactsofkindnessorg. You can check it out. I really encourage you to check it out. It's got a ton of really good stuff out there. It talks about all kinds of ways to be kind and being kind. It's part of the practice of gratitude. It's hard not to show appreciation for someone or something when you're being kind to them. There's another website that I used before that would generate. You would go to it and it would like generate like something for you to do, and it focused on like in the digital workplace, and I can't find it. I could not find it, and I searched for a little while while I was preparing for the podcast, and I don't know. I've got to go look for it. I know there's one place. I know I sent it to somebody, but I could not find it via my phone, so I've got to look on the computer tomorrow, and so I'll keep looking and I'll let you know if I find it in the future. I'll talk about it in another episode, or I'll put it update the notes for this one too, but yes, it's a different website that you can just. When you go on it, it just randomizes and gives you something that you could do like in the digital world, which I think is like super awesome, especially if you work virtually with your teams. Another part of showing gratitude, though, is also showing respect, and I'm going to share a little section from Erica's book on digital body language that I talked about yesterday, and this addresses the ways that we can show respect and specifically how we can show respect in the digital space here. But she writes respect means that others feel appropriately valued, included or acknowledged. Respect means proofreading your email before sending it. Respect means honoring other people's time and schedules and not canceling meetings at the last second. There's a couple others that she mentions, but I'm going to stop it right there, because I think those are some pretty good ones in the digital place in terms of communication and making sure that people feel appreciated, that they feel like you're grateful for them. Their time is huge in the remote workplace, making sure they feel included, acknowledged, valued and I think about the proofreading your email before you send it right A base that, like one of the most basic signs of respect that you can do is spell a person's name right. If you're sending them an email, it's probably up in the two field. Spell their name correctly. If they have a name that auto-corrects double-check it. I know for me my boss's name is the same as my sister's and they are both spelled different ways and I told my boss very early on. I said hey, I'm just gonna forewarn you If I'm typing really quickly, if I'm typing something to you really quickly, I may accidentally type your name in the wrong spelling, because I had done it almost a couple times. I'd caught myself every time, but it kind of like gave her that forewarning, but really, like, respect starts there spelling somebody's name correctly. So many other things I could add here, but I really do. I want to keep this short. I really appreciate if you've been following along. If you just happened upon day five, go back. There's four other days before this that you can go. This is the August mini-series, which was focused on words for the workplace. We have talked about happy, we have talked about creativity, we've talked about burnout, we talked about connection and then, obviously today, we talked about gratitude, and I am incredibly grateful to you those of you who have listened, who have commented and engaged in over on Substack and on my Instagram pages. I just appreciate you so much and it means so much to me to hear from you and just thank you for that. Thank you for coming back again and again. I'd love to know how you show gratitude in the workplace. So I'm going to ask right, could you do me a little favor? Head on over to my Substack with the link that is in the description. That way you can comment and let me know how you show gratitude in the workplace. Make sure that you check out all the links in the description to learn more about Erica Duan's book Digital Body Language how to Build Trust and Connection, no Matter the Distance, and Brené Brown's book Atlas of the Heart. That's. I was about to say I'll be back tomorrow, but I won't because this is day five. So I really enjoyed this little mini-series on words for the workplace. I will be back, though, next Wednesday with the next regularly scheduled episode, so until then, remember you are loved, you are worthy and there are great things ahead for you in this life if you trust and believe in the Lord. Bye.