Thus far, we've talked a lot about the stuff that gratitude can help you with: physical items and demands on your time. But gratitude isn't just about what you have, it's about who you have.
No matter what business you're in, you don't do it alone. You have clients, co-workers, bosses, direct reports—but you also have vendors, bankers, insurance suppliers and other people who touch your business. Remembering and showing gratitude toward them can make a big impact in how you do what you do.
Think of gratitude as a part of building and maintaining your professional relationships. It's one thing to have a contact with someone, but it's a much richer contact if you have a genuine appreciation for what that person does and you let them know how much you appreciate their work.
Most of us have a pretty good crap detector and can tell when someone's blowing smoke up our butts about what a great job we do; we tend to find it off-putting and a little suspicious. By contrast, cultivating a true sense of gratitude for the people around us allows us to be more authentic when we interact with people.
Even contact with people we might not think of being grateful for can be an exercise in gratitude. Think of the last time you had to call tech support for a product that wasn't working correctly. It probably wasn't a completely pleasant experience. However, if you can try to think of how much more unpleasant it would have been to try to figure out the problem (and a solution!) on your own, perhaps you can view the tech support system in a more grateful light. And if you can bring that sense of gratitude to the next such call you have to make, you might find that the experience is a little less unpleasant and that the tech support operator might go above and beyond the usual to help you.
Because everyone loves to be appreciated. Everyone loves to know that what they're doing has some kind of positive impact on the client base they serve, or just on the world in general. When you let someone know that their work has had that impact, you are giving them a beautiful little gift. That gift not only helps strengthen your relationship with that person and probably improves the level of service you're already receiving, it feels really good to give.
Who are you grateful for in your business life? Have you told them lately? Let me know in the comments!
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