Gratitude in leadership allows you to be a more conscious and fulfilled leader, delivering better and higher quality results.
One of the benefits of gratitude is that you are not always focused on what is going wrong. The human mind seems to be wired to focus on the negative in any situation, especially at work. This could be because of biological history and keeping us safe, or socially where we are always taught to be focused on risks. This is especially true of leadership positions where we have a fiduciary responsibility to monitor risks.
However, such a focus means that we are often fear driven. This is not great for our personal health, and even more than that it can have the effect of shutting down our creative faculties.
By having gratitude we can bring balance to this constant sense of fear. It can bring energy to our bodies and our selves and allow us to get to higher levels of productivity.
When I work with clients in leadership coaching in London, what I find is that leaders who cultivate more gratitude are more creative and fulfilled in their pursuit of their goals. They work just as hard and are clearer and more focused.
Gratitude as a balance to fear also brings clearer decision making. By being able to focus on positive things and not being fear driven, we do not exaggerate the negative aspects and the unconscious attachments that we then make based on our own limiting beliefs. For example, if we thing that underperformance in our company for a year will look badly on us and we have an unconscious belief that looking bad is shameful and means we will be rejected, then we will not make calm clear logical rational decisions around the potentiall for underperformance. We may take suboptimal decisions, such as selling assets too quickly, in order to boost numbers. This may get the short term result but doesn’t get the best strategic decisions for the company.
Ultimately conscious leadership is about being aware of our own biases, limiting beliefs and fears, and not being driven by those in the pursuit of the organisation’s objectives. Even better, your own higher objectives.
In the best leadership book there is a chapter on the power of gratitude in leadership. Gratitude is one of the three main tools that allow you to move past all the biases and limiting beliefs and move into a more creative and present space which in turn allows you to more calmly and in a more focused manner move towards your higher goals.
