Move Over Bitcoin; Gratitude is the New Currency

Just before the holidays, I received a gift and a beautiful handwritten note of gratitude from a colleague. The gift was a keepsake. The note touched me immeasurably. I was moved by the words of appreciation and the perspectives on my contributions. I wrote two statements from the card on my gratitude board and will hold dear the shared messages.

At the Partnerships Incubator, we’ve worked together to reinforce a culture of gratitude and appreciation. There’s energy, feeling, and accountability involved in creating an environment where team members feel valued and honored for the talents and skills they bring. We proactively explore and catalog each individual's strengths and provide opportunities for each person to express those strengths.?Building on and accessing our strengths is an effective path to our success.

Gratitude in our setting is an informal and important medium of exchange, a currency that influences our organizational culture, strengthens our engagement, breeds enthusiasm, and creates an environment where team members feel valued.?

And when team members feel valued, that’s when the magic happens.?

In The Currency Of Gratitude: Turning Small Gestures Into Powerful Business Results, Michelle Bailey explains that most organizations don’t fully understand the power of gratitude to create a high-engagement culture and positive momentum that can influence creativity and excellence.?

She makes the case that the practice of gratitude is at the core of every truly great organizational culture. Small gestures of gratitude can produce big results and impact engagement, focus, and productivity. Organizations need to understand the power of gratitude and prioritize its use as a bridge to heighten collaboration, communication, and creativity.

When gratitude is at the heart of interactions, it can catalyze change and stimulate energy for new ideas and innovation. People leave organizations that forget to show gratitude and appreciation.?They inherently want to be in a culture that values gratitude and appreciation. They want to know why they matter.?

An environment based on gratitude and appreciation can ignite a person’s energy, help relationships to thrive, and create long-lasting connections.?

Leading psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, the founding father of positive psychology, conducts research that focuses on human strengths and virtues—those things that are life-giving rather than life-depleting. He notes that gratitude affects performance, mood, and well-being.

Gratitude cements connections in our personal and professional lives. I will work for, gravitate toward, and go the extra mile for anyone who expresses a modicum of gratitude for the talent, skills, and abilities I bring. They instinctively know the power of appreciation and gratitude and its ability to buoy dedication to making great things happen. Their actions:

• Fuel a feeling of abundance and positive energy
• Create the environment for you to bring out the best version of yourself
• Stimulate a drive to accomplish and achieve more
• Contribute to emotional well-being

One other aspect of the experience working with people who express gratitude and appreciation involves the concept psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiof describes as "flow"—a state characterized by a particularly intense focus and great concentration, where you lose track of time for hours and come to experience the activity or situation as intrinsically rewarding.

Each of us has a finite amount of time and energy to devote to the things important to our lives. I am a firm believer that the presence of gratitude influences our choices. When we feel appreciated and valued in a setting, we will gravitate toward that setting.

What does gratitude mean to you? How are you tapping into the power of gratitude for your organization?

In my next article, I will feature a “hero” exercise that we used to create a more formal circumstance where team members got the chance to express their gratitude. We explored the study of appreciative inquiry and its application in high-performing organizations and devised a fun team exercise that contributed to optimizing our success.??

Project Director Donna Vincent Roa leads USAID's Partnerships Incubator, a $47M global service hub and project of?Kaizen, A Tetra Tech Company,?set up to expand the agency's capacity for partnerships, diversify and strengthen its partner base, and build the capacity of partners who have received an award from USAID. The Partnerships Incubator's mission is to help USAID engage new and local partners and catalyze innovations that advance development impact.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of and should not be attributed to USAID or the USG.