How Does Gratitude Create Better Teams?

I would say the real core as to why people resist gratitude, besides it's strange and awkward at the beginning, is the fact that they're scared that they won't be prepared for the inevitable doom that is always around the corner if they are happy.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host, Joe Hudson.

All right.

So I wanted to add a little bit of a bonus episode in here after talking about how to build a functional team and all about dysfunctional teams, because I know that the way that I might listen to this if I was a CEO might be to see all the ways that a functional team are not what I am or not what we have yet, and that I'm just not good enough. And then look at all those signs of a dysfunctional team and just see them everywhere. And just get really hard on myself and down on myself and down on my team. So I want to talk a little bit about that. And what would you have to say to somebody listening to those last two episodes and just walking out of it feeling like they just had a one-star meeting with themselves?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So what I would say is that's part of the dysfunction. That kind of self-talk is probably the the root, if not one of the roots of the dysfunction. And it's also incredibly limiting, meaning there's kind of two ways to get to solutions. One way to get to solution is to see what's wrong and how do you fix it. And the other way to get to a solution is see what's right and how do you build on what's right. And most people really focus on the first one because they have that negative voice in the head, because what's been really useful for humanity up until now is to be able to see what's wrong more than see what's right, See what's right is, "Oh, I like that apple." See what's wrong is, "Oh, that snake can kill me." And so we've learned, and there's all sorts of psychological studies that we tend to look for what's wrong. And especially the more intelligent you are, there's self-criticism is more likely to be heightened. So—

And more nuanced.

And more nuanced. Yeah, exactly. So I would say, It's really important in any kind of analysis is to really be able to see the data clearly and to see— and in this case, it means to see the positive stuff clearly. And one of the things that I recommend to do that, that creates team cohesion, is a gratitude process where— or gratitude session with a team. And when I was doing venture capital, we did that at the beginning of every one of our teams. We would have like 3 or 4 rounds of gratitude so that we could see what was right and How do we grow it as easily as we saw what was wrong and how do we fix it?

And so you're speaking about gratitude in the team, gratitude for the company, gratitude in personal lives, or just any form of gratitude?

So the way we used to do it is that before a meeting, everybody would say 3 things that they were grateful for kind of in a circle. So it'd be like 1, 2, 3. So everybody would go one time, everybody would go a second time. The most important part of a process like that is you actually have to feel the gratitude. You can't be like a 5-year-old at the table who just wants to eat. You have to be like, really feel into, oh, this is something I'm really grateful for. That's the key part of the process. Now, if you're working on a problem, it's really important to see what you're grateful for around what you think is lack or what you think is the problem. So, and that helps, that expedites the process. So for instance, if you feel like you're always poor and don't have enough money, to be grateful for the resources you do have is a great way to figure out how more resources come to you quickly. So that's a great example. Or if you, like, the biggest issue right now is that, like, your product isn't selling, then it would be really— it'd be great to spend gratitude around— this is difficult for people— around your product not selling, because then you can start seeing all the opportunities in it. Like, oh wow, I'm really grateful that our customers are telling us what they don't like about the product. I'm really grateful that the salespeople are telling us their concerns about what makes them not be able to sell the product. I'm really grateful for the learnings of that before we create a product next time, we should make sure it sells before we create it. And so doing all that really helps you see what's right and how to fix it, and it gives you all new solutions to the problem. So it's doing 3 rounds of gratitude. It's making sure everybody feels grateful. If it's a neutral kind of time, then I often would do it around the team. Like, what are we grateful for around the team so that we could continue to become more and more functional? And I think there's a great story about this, and I'm not sure if I've shared it, but I'll share it, which is this story I read about a guy who went to Vietnam, and he was like with Save the Children or some such thing. He was supposed to, with $50,000, stop malnutrition in kids in this county, which just seems like a completely impossible task. And he got met at the airport by some officials like, "If you don't do this in 6 months, we're kicking you out." And he's got like $50,000. So he goes into the first village, second village, and he finally finds a village where the kids aren't malnourished. And he's like, "Oh, what's happening here?" And he found out that instead of the same amount of rice in 2 meals, it was in 3 meals. That they took this weed out of the garden and they— out of the rice paddy and they chopped it up really finely, put it in, and then they took these like little microscopic shrimp and put them in. And so they had— it was just all right there available. So he saw this, he's like, oh my gosh. And so what he did was he took that $50,000 and he took the moms from all the other villages, brought them in with some kids and said, look, if you do this, this is measurably what your kids will be different as if you compare to do this. And all of a sudden, all the whole county changed their way of feeding their children, and he solved the problem. If he was just constantly thinking about what he didn't have and what was missing, he would never have been able to solve that problem. It has to come from a place of gratitude and seeing what's functional.

Yeah, I could imagine an alternate story where he tried to use that $50,000 to purchase food and bring it to the kids in all those other communities. And that the scalability of that with that money just wouldn't have done it.

Yeah, yeah. Like whatever, there's, I think hundreds of billions of dollars used that way in Africa and didn't work.

So something really interesting about that example is that he didn't go straight to the problem and where the problem is. And a lot of the wisdom in leadership is where there's a problem, look directly at that. What you're kind of saying here is some form of that, but also look for what's working in the problem. And I think that there's— people can have an allergy to something like, you know, gratitude in a meeting when they are feeling angry before the meeting even begins, as that that's just some sort of positive scanning or positive dissociation from what's real. And they'll bring in, well, I'm just being realistic and showing what's real here, and this is broken, that's broken, that's broken.

Yes.

What would you say to those people to help them see both the truth in both and look to the positive in a non-dissociative way, but see it as the fertile ground to grow from?

Yeah, what I would say is, because the people who are gonna do that particular thing are usually very intellectually based. And so what I would say is, let's just do the experiment. So for the next 3 weeks, we're gonna start our meetings this way and we're gonna note how our decision-making changes and if it's effective. If it's ineffective, then we won't do it. Also, because we're being positive, we're not being Pollyannish. I want to hear everything that's going wrong. I just also want to hear everything that's going right. And if you can convince me that hearing all the data is a bad idea, we can stop it right now. So I approach that very intellectually. I would approach that very intellectually. And also make it experimental, because if the team doesn't feel like it's a benefit, then why do it? It's far more productive to have the team know that what they're doing is beneficial. And so you can find another tool if that one doesn't work. And it's critical that they actually feel the gratitude. So that person who you're speaking to would probably most likely also be the person in the room that's like, I'm really grateful that I get a paycheck. Instead of, instead of, oh, I'm really grateful that this team is working together in such a way that allows us all to be paid and allows me to take care of my children and really feel the gratitude. And so I would also be quick to call that out. Like, hey, you're either running the experiment or you're not running the experiment. But don't half-ass it, because it's like, if the experiment isn't clean, you're never gonna learn anything.

Mm-hmm, yeah. And that would be dysfunctional, wouldn't it?

Yeah, so the simple practice is— and this works with your husband and wife and kids, and it's just an incredibly useful, really just beneficial thing. And I would say the real core as to why people resist gratitude, besides it's strange and awkward at the beginning, is the fact that they're scared that they won't be prepared for the inevitable doom that is always around the corner. If they are happy, if they are content, if they're looking for something good to happen. And so having empathy and compassion for that perspective is also really important.

Yeah, foreboding joy.

Exactly. Well, it's just, you know, for many people, joy is just the signal that the other shoe's gonna drop. Because it is, I mean, you're not in joy forever. It doesn't work like that. Everything is fleeting, so.

Every up comes down. Or at least even your nervous system will regulate back to it being normal.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So, but that's no reason. That's like saying I'm not going to eat this beautiful bowl of food because at some point it'll be gone. It's just, it's silly, but it is the way our nervous systems respond.

Right. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Great idea for this bonus episode.

Yeah.

Thanks, Brett.

See ya.

All right. Bye.

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