How a Gratitude Process Can Improve Employee Retention [Chris Schembra]

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Hi, I'm Susan Drum. And welcome to the enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. Today we're focusing on gratitude. And who better to speak on this topic than my guest, the gratitude guru himself, Christian Chris Schembra. Chris is the best selling author of Gratitude, the Secret sauce for human Connection. Forbes ranked his book number two of 2020, while USA Today calls him their gratitude guru. He's used the principles of gratitude to spark over 500,000 relationships around the dinner table, serving Fortune 50, CEOs, Olympians, Academy Award winners, graduates, Grammy winning artists, and even super bowl champions. Chris has won 14 Tony Awards, seven Emmys and a Grammy for his work in the theater. And he's been featured in Forbes, Inc. Entrepreneur, USA Today, and the New York Times. So welcome, Chris.

Thank you, Susan, for having me. And just for all the fact checkers out there, I haven't won 14 tonys. Our plays that we've either produced or invested in have won 14. But still very grateful for my involvement. Thank you.

Well, I'm really grateful to have you here today to talk about gratitude.

Thank you for having me, man. I remember when we met down in Tulum so many years ago with Tiffany and what a wonderful experience that was. So to see it all come full circle is a great honor. That's such an exciting time for you. Oh, my gosh.

I know. Who would have thought that many years later we'd be here on the show talking about gratitude. Let's start by talking about 7:47, your company, what is its mission and how does it infuse your philosophy around gratitude?

Of course. I'll tell a brief story on how we got to our company to begin with. If you looked at my Life back in 2015, you. You would have seen part of the accolades that Susan, you know, Susan just talked about. You'd have seen a guy running a theater company having a good time. Life looked pretty good on paper, but it took, ironically, coming back from a trip producing a Broadway play in Italy. When I got back to New York City and realized, this ain't it. Just because life looks good on paper oftentimes doesn't mean it feels good in the heart. And, you know, I realized that disconnect, you know, Italy had changed a lot of things about me. It was the way they walked and talked and lived and loved and learned and all those kind of things. And when I got back to New York, I realized this really isn't it? I was lonely, unfulfilled, disconnected, insecure. And that wasn't a good look for me. I mean, last time I had felt those four things at once was in my early 20s. It led me down a deep, dark path of suicide, depression, jail, rehab, and I don't want to go back. You know, I went away for a long time and so I knew I had to do something quick. What was it about Italy that changed my perspective on everything? Right. I realized it was the way they ate, specifically pasta sauce. And so back home in our kitchen here in New York City, we started playing around with all these different recipes. Accidentally created a pasta sauce recipe that we thought was pretty good. So we figured we should probably feed it to people to see if it really is good or not good. And a ritual began. Night after night, week after week, month after month, we just started gathering good people. And whether it was inside our home or out on the road, we just found a knack for bringing good people together. But I realized over time that the people weren't attracted to coming to the dinners because of our pasta sauce. Now, it was a pretty decent pasta sauce, as good as it may be, but it's because of the conversations that we were having. And that was the principles of gratitude. And that's where it all began. You know, at that very first dinner, we asked a simple question. If you could give credit or thanks to one person in your life that you don't give enough credit or thanks to, they've never thought to thank, who would that be? And we saw people come out with the most amazing stories humanly possible. And we realized that it was these conversations around gratitude that we're creating these massive transformational life moments. And we realized that's what we would build an entire company around. So six years later, lots of great stuff, and off to the races we go.

Well, what is the company? Tell me a little bit like, so what is the company doing 747? Maybe you could describe that for our listeners.

Sure, yeah. I mean, the problem we see in the workplace is, well, let me paint a picture of wellbeing as a whole. For so many years, people were obsessed with physical health, right? What you're going to eat, how you're going to work out, what that's going to look like. That was a good 40 year chunk of time. And then mental health came on the scene and people started talking about mindfulness and therapy and anxiety and stress. But we believe that the next frontier of wellbeing is in social health. It's in Those social, emotional, interpersonal relationships. You know, the Surgeon General of the United States reported that even pre Pandemic reported that 51% of the American workforce reports being lonely on a consistent basis, which is equivalent to the reduction of lifespan of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, seven years off your life. So this epidemic of loneliness before a raging pandemic was something that was ruining a lot of things.

And then the pandemic comes along.

And then the pandemic comes along. So the problem that we're solving is a massive lack of connection, right? What causes this massive lack of connection and belonging in the workplace? It's the people perceive that we have more things that are differences than in common. I'm right, you're wrong. We all these kinds of things are driving people apart. And so we go into companies and help them solve that. Whether we're producing experiences or we're advising their overall strategy on creating connection internally or externally with their key external partners. That's what the company does. So we produce a couple hundred experiences a year.

What's an example of an experience? Cause I can't imagine, I mean this is needed so badly. You know the CEOs I'm talking to, they can feel the loneliness that people feeling isolated, but they don't know what to do about it.

Shit. I'll give you an example. What's the average size CEO maybe that you work with? And I'll pick a case study from that exact.

I work with all ranges, but I would say middle market is generally perfect scale mode.

I'll give an example. So our experiences are, we're proud to say are the only evidence based, guaranteed, proven product in this virtual environment that can guarantee with 99.998% efficacy, a positive emotional transformation amongst the attendees within a 90 minute experience. So our clients will bring everybody into a zoom room. I mean I'm just talking about virtual experiences right now, but into a zoom room. And we'll work them through 90 minutes of conversation, breakout groups, facilitation, writing exercises, all this kind of stuff and, and then pop them out. Feeling grateful, connected, happy, joy. So we use data points at multiple points of the experience to actually measure the transformation. Most groups when they come in are tired, sad, nervous, cautious, anxious. On a scale of 1 to 5, most companies we work with 1 being very negative, 5 being very positive. Most companies start at like a 2.79, so slightly less than neutral. It's been a crazy year. And then we work them through and they ended a 4.52. So a lot of growth is Happening by using the principles of gratitude. You know, it's like a three act play. There's a lot of different parts. There's a music that we follow. And so let's take a CEO who has 500 to 3,000 employees and they are at the top of their game, but they are feeling lonelier than ever. Stressed, nervous, cautious, anxious. What am I going to do tomorrow?

Yeah, because usually it's at the CEO level that you often don't have anyone that you can confide in. Right. The next level down, they can talk to their peers, but you can't really talk about your stresses with your direct reports as much.

So. Yeah, so as an example, and I just had, I, you know, it's, we just, we were just talking about this with one of our clients last week in Omaha and I said, momentum without reflection does not help us achieve our desired result. And so if a CEO is focused so far in the future, and the future is filled with doubt and insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety, stress, what's the polar opposite of that feeling? Taking a dive deep in the past, which is a safe space that's already occurred. Gratitude is the link to get there. And so as an example, if we were to work with the CEO over the course of a year, we would produce a dozen experiences of him coming in and doing a virtual gratitude experience with 10 different teams. Boom, boom, boom. What does that do? It lets the teams know that the CEO is there for them. He's humble, he's a servant, he's open, he's helping create connection. And not only does it feel good to create that space for them, to observe them go through that space, but to go through the experience yourself 10 times over the course of a year. And so that's just an example of one of the ways that CEOs can get a benefit of our experiences.

How do people make a more permanent shift in mental, well, being around gratitude? Because I can imagine that, you know, we've seen it before. I've been in programs where you come out on a high, right. Everything's going to be different. I feel so much better. And then it's sort of next Monday, life as usual, and you're back to where you started with that as a backdrop. I mean, I see consistency, as you said, maybe doing several events over the course of the year, but my gut says that something also needs to shift in how people daily practices that they do on their own and ways in which, yes, we're getting the community together, but they're doing some work to shift their own energy so that it doesn't come back to the set point that it was.

Yeah, yeah. So the good news is in the world of positive psychology, there's only two things that have a lasting impact after a micro intervention. That's mindfulness and gratitude. So the, the, the emotional state or disposition for gratitude is increased after a micro intervention and it stays increased for longer amounts of time than consuming other forms of content for well being. So A, that's a great thing, but B, we go in and teach them different strategies that they can use in their day to day life. For instance, here's one of the homework assignments that we have our clients go out and do. Do you ever read the book the five Love Languages by Gary Chapman?

Yes.

What are those five love languages?

Acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, and I'm blanking on the last one. What's the last one?

Gifts.

Gifts, yes.

So we always say that not all gratitude given is gratitude heard. Gratitude can be a very selfish thing if it's given in the language that's most convenient for you, not given in the language of the recipient. And so one of the first things a client of ours we can work with them on doing is actually understanding taking a fearless searching moral inventory. What is the love language of the people around them?

Well, aren't they all different?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so you have to go on a listening tour. So what this does is it creates a posture of otherness, it creates empathy, it creates the skills of listening and learning and asking questions. And you know, you might be going up to your assistant or you might be going up to your top client and saying, Bob, Jerry, you've meant so much to me in this these last couple of years and the only way that I want to show my appreciation is in the language that you like to receive it. Can I tell you about the love languages and ask you what yours is now? You can set metrics on that, right? That is statistically bringing in greater empathy to your organization. If you're listening to the feelings and perspectives and the love languages of the people you're serving. So that's an idea or an example of one of the things you can do to carry these gratitude principles into, you know, your day to day life. Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean some of the best.

Oh, you go, oh, I was just going to say, I wonder if you could share because you've got a very, I think, interesting take on gratitude and I thought maybe we would dive a little bit into that, you know, I think most people think of the gratitude journal like the practice is. Gratitude journal. Before you go to bed, write down three things you're grateful for, right? Let's take it beyond that.

Good.

Tell me more.

Your gratitude journal is fine, but you're only getting one tenth of the benefit. Now here's what I mean. Gratitude journal. What are some things that people write about in their gratitude journal? What do you think?

My puppy, Jasmine. And I'm grateful that I have these nice comfy sheets on my bed. And I'm grateful that I connected with a girlfriend earlier today. Glad she's in my life.

Those are great examples. But science will show that it's not good to write down a positive benefit. Science shows that we should ruminate, meditate on positive benefits to keep the narrative circling around our brain. And that once we write out a positive benefit and attach a story to it, we look at it and doubt that we're worthy of its existence. So that's an example of how most people use the gratitude journal. Wrong if is to talk about or write down positive emotions. Here's the thing about reliving positive emotions. It feels good in the moment. It doesn't create lasting, sustainable change. Happiness is fleeting. It's episodic. It ebbs and flows with what happens in life. Most people just use their gratitude journal for that. Now there's another side of gratitude that people don't really write about in their gratitude journals. Science calls it the grateful processing. So, for instance, take my signature gratitude question that we were talking about a couple minutes ago. If I ask you this question, if you could give credit or thanks to one person in life that you don't give enough credit or thanks to that you never thought to thank, who would that be? You could tell some crazy stories, right? You might say that you'd like to give credit and thanks to the third grade teacher who always picked on you in class, the bad boss that made you quit your job, the ex girlfriend that dumped you, and then you met the love of your life. There's a lot of things. And so gratitude is best used to create lasting change. When you use it to address an open, unprocessed, negative experience from your past, you bring it forth in a pro social way and talk it out with others, which destigmatizes the negative emotion, broadens and builds your brain's thought action repertoire. Needed to for hope, pride, optimism, self confidence, self advocacy. Giving gratitude to ways that you've overcome adversity is how you build resilience. And that's the stuff that makes CEOs build great companies. Not reliving positive emotions, that's a momentary feel good thing, but actually rewiring the.

Brain, reframing the story.

Reframing the story.

You know, this terrible thing happened to me, but what was the gift in it? And can you spend some time really finding the gift in it? And that for a lot of people is mental gymnastics, but so needed, you.

Know, now it is tough work, right? I mean, just as an example, one of our prompts in our multitude of experiences is one question that says, what do you regret giving up on too soon in life? Now, that directly approaches some pretty vulnerable stuff. And when you've got 12 senior executives sitting in a room doing that stuff together with me facilitating, whoo, they cry for two hours straight. But what happens is you get out that negative emotion. Regret, guilt, shame, evil. You get it out, you get it out. You get it out in a psychologically safe group of your peers. And then we get them to write down the positive benefits that have come in result of that regret. And then we give gratitude to that regret and what it led to. Right? So this is how you turn something into a moment. See, it's not the perfect moments that create the greatest amount of connection between peers and colleagues. It's when we share our vulnerabilities and we realize we, we have more in common than we know. And so gratitude does that. And people don't give enough attention to, you know, that, that grateful processing side. The industry has promoted a lot of positivity gurus manifesting their destinies, clearing their limiting belief, like all that kind of stuff. That's fine. That only gets us so far. There's no evolutionary benefit to reliving a positive emotion. Makes you feel good in the moment, but then it wears off over time.

It's like a quick hit. But the real work is looking at the boulders that you're carrying from prior wounds in whatever form they showed up in. And how can you reframe the story? I'm all about that work. I mean, I think about, you know, there's an exercise I sometimes take clients through where they tell a story in which they essentially, you know, got screwed, trust was broken. They, you know, they, you know, it was unfair, treated unfairly. And when they tell that story, the emotions that come up associated with that are usually, you know, pissed off, angry, betrayed, sad, all of these types of emotions. And then I force them to tell the story the other way, where the story is, you're 100% responsible for what happened. Can you do it. And usually they can't. Right. But here's the thing. When they try and they try to do it, they tell the story from, let's say, a responsible point of view. Then the emotions that they talk about associated with that, they feel a sense of peace, they feel sense of calm, they feel like they've been learning. And so you look at that and you say, well, why haven't you been telling the story that way? Because look at the emotional benefit you're getting from that and it just warps their head around. So this sounds very familiar in those. But I don't think people have made the link for what should they be doing than on a daily or daily habit basis around that. Because I think it's easier to do in a facilitated session. But if I'm, if my default is to go to my gratitude journal and write three things I'm grateful for. Good, positive. But where, how would you advance that?

Yeah, it's, you know, we want to be careful not to get people turned off to a daily gratitude practice because even just a great daily gratitude practice is amazing. But you know, it's, it's, I'm going to say we haven't, we haven't figured that out yet. You know, it's, you know, there, we haven't, we haven't gone towards a daily habit building practice yet. In our work we've been so focused and so good at just the micro intervention. You know, oftentimes we rely on other partners to come in and build out like what that daily habit is going forward. I mean, the main stuff that we're brought in is we're on the front end of a conference, front end of an off site, front end of a merger, front end of this, this, this. So it's just over the last couple months that we've built out these multi part series and ongoing programs. So we're just figuring that out over time.

I mean, couldn't you also have as a question for your gratitude journal, what's something that troubled you today? And you kind of write what that is and then do the same process where you say, and what's a gift in this situation to the best of your ability? And you may not see it at first, but if you keep working it.

Eventually you can, I don't know, you know, it's. Susan, here's why it's so interesting that you asked that. I actually come from the motivational day planner space. I actually was born into the space of day to day day planning. We've been writing life learning Material that comes in the form of eight and a half by 11 day planners. For my entire life we've sold over a million copies of 8 and a half by 11 day planners. So I am, I am used to thinking about what's the 365 day to day. I guess, I guess there's some limiting belief inside of me that says, oh, I don't have a, I don't have the wisdom inside of me or the right questions inside of me needed for people to keep coming back to on a day to day basis in which I actually do. You do, But I guess that's, I guess that's my own limiting belief.

Yeah. I think you just take your same process and you turn it into a daily practice. I think it's possible. It doesn't mean it's easy for people, but it's a muscle, right, that you have to develop. And so the more you work, it just like going to the gym, right? You're not going to be able to lift, you know, 100 pounds right away if you haven't done any lifting. But you keep working at it and working at it and, and it eventually gets there. Well, tell me about your belonging and diversity three part program that you recently launched.

What we realized was that diversity is just a language. What people are really craving is belonging. And what the three part series does is first helps us acknowledge we have more in common than we think. It's a three part series. So first experience is just on that. The second experience is celebrating our differences is about overcoming the knowledge that you got a story and I got a story and our stories are different but that's cool, we should give gratitude to that. And the third experience is about coming back together and finding unity and really creating belonging and all the action steps. And so it's just a really neat thing that it just elevates our work one step more. It gets us into the, you know, actual space of leading by saying, you know, we produce three part series. You know, if you want to produce 200 experiences in a year, to have a really good year, you'd rather that be from 20 clients instead of 200 different clients. And so it just gets us along down that path to create longer, more sustainable programs with homework assignments in between and all that kind of good stuff. But what we're really finding is, you know, the statistics that show that connection to others, a sense of belonging is what makes talent stay at a company more than connection to the product or connection to leadership. And so it's this peer to peer type of gratitude and belonging to that is really, especially in a talent crisis.

Absolutely.

Helping companies, helping companies retain their top talent.

Yeah. I think that the work on belonging and diversity is so important because as I've been talking to leaders, there's a whole generation that's joined during the pandemic and they have no real strong affiliation to the company in a virtual setting. And so how can you create that sense of belonging? Otherwise, it's just transactional. I work. That's why I'm going to le. It's transaction. I work for you, I work for someone else. Whoever pays me the most. Like, there's no. It's only through a sense of belonging and commitment to the mission and a sense of belonging and caring for my colleagues that creates retention. Like, I wouldn't want to leave this, try this group. And that's how we're hardwired as human beings.

I. Yeah, it's, it's. I don't want to let down Susan, my coworker. It's, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to let down the penis.

I love the people. Can you let people know how they can learn more about your experiences if they'd like to follow up?

Of course. You could just go to747club.org either email in or fill out one of the forms and our team will reach out. Um, yeah, look, you know, from a business side, obviously, great. You know, love onboarding new clients and bringing these experiences into companies. But if there's anything you just connected with today and you know, someone who's feeling lonely, unfulfilled, disconnected, insecure, have them reach out. Right. We, in addition to the client experiences we produce, we still host our own community experience for our community once every couple months. And so if, you know, if you are feeling any of these kind of stuff, we'd love to have you there as our guest for sure. But you know, Susan, thanks for having us on and thanks for asking the tough questions that you did around the, you know, the subject of gratitude. It's everything that we believe in. It's what we're dedicating our entire life to. And so to be able to spread its message that makes the heart happy.

Yes. Well, thank you for joining and if you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Dr. Amir Kathir who helps us understand how unraveling deep rooted conflicts will improve your company culture. Let's lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.