5 Unorthodox Practices for CEOs to Develop a Gratitude Mindset
At Thanksgiving, our thoughts tend to turn to the things we’re grateful for outside of the office: loved ones, good health, holiday travel, and a BIG meal or two.
But CEOs should take some time to appreciate all of the good things happening at their companies as well. Thanks to your leadership and vision, and the hard work of your team, you’ve accomplished some incredible things this year. Adding a couple new activities to your executive routine could help you cultivate a gratitude mindset that will help you keep Making BIG Happen in the year ahead.
1. Create a “Gratitude Jar” for Challenges
Many families keep gratitude jars at home that they use to “collect,” visualize, and reflect on the things they’re thankful for. Writing down a grateful moment on a slip of paper helps us to remember it more vividly. As the jar fills up, so too will your awareness of all your blessings. And on really tough days, you can dip into the jar for an extra helping of gratitude and a more positive perspective.
CEOs can adapt this practice into a leadership exercise by filling their own jars with challenges that they’ve overcome. You’ll feel grateful for the accomplishment, but you’ll also be memorializing the lessons you learned, the trial and error that brought you to the right solution, the team members and mentors whom you leaned on and rallied together.
And if you keep your jar in a place where visitors to your office can see it, there’s a good chance that you’ll soon see other challenge jars filling up on desks all over the building as your employees start to reflect on and celebrate their own wins — and the company’s.
2. Write “Gratitude Letters” You Never Send
No CEO gets to the top of all by themselves. Along the way you had teachers, professional mentors and coaches, colleagues, and family members who supported you, pushed you, listened to you, and helped you to grow.
Likewise, your company couldn’t have hit BIG without its leadership team, its employees, its shareholders, its vendors, and its customers.
Hopefully, you’ve expressed your gratitude to some of these people over the course of your career. But writing gratitude letters — even if you never send them — can help you gain a deeper appreciation for all the people who make your company work. You might find yourself in pen-and-paper dialogue with a teacher or family member who passed before you achieved BIG. Or, if you’ve had a tough year with your board of directors, writing in a spirit of gratitude could help you reflect on the goals you all have in common and how you can all work together more effectively next year.
Remember, these letters don’t have to leave your desk drawer to help you improve your gratitude mindset. But if you do decide to move a couple to your outbox, you could strengthen a personal or professional relationship in really meaningful ways.
3. Host “Gratitude Lunches”
A culture that celebrates wins and recognizes high performance in public ways encourages employees to take more ownership over their work. And when that recognition comes directly from the CEO, your workers will feel more connected to you, the company, and achieving BIG goals.
As you start to block off non-negotiables in your 2025 calendar, consider establishing a monthly or quarterly lunch that’s dedicated to recognizing individuals or team members who are going above and beyond. You could theme these lunches around highlighting your company’s values (Continuous Improvement; Giving Back; Exceptional Customer Service; Doing More with AI), or even schedule one lunch for every department to highlight how each level of your organization makes invaluable contributions to the whole. A surprise celebration after the company hits a major milestone could also boost morale and create momentum toward the next target.
4. Practice the “Gratitude Reframe”
A gratitude mindset can be an invaluable resource during those moments when business looks bleakest.
For example, imagine that, despite your best efforts and most personal outreach, you’ve just lost your most important customer. While you’re taking that long, lonely walk around the block, it would be easy to let nightmare P&L scenarios and panic set in.
Or, you could reflect on what you learned from working with that customer. What was positive about your relationship? What friction points should you have noticed earlier?
If you let gratitude for these learnings guide you instead of fear or scarcity, you might be able to reframe a challenge into an opportunity.
Perhaps it’s clear now that while business was good you weren’t taking calculated risks that would have allowed you to enter new markets and win new business.
Or, maybe losing one customer can help you refine your ideal customer profile for your next marketing campaign.
This could also be the moment to coordinate with your R&D department and plan to roll out a new product or service that will completely transform your company and your path to BIG.
If the CEO faces challenges with calm and gratitude, the rest of the company will too. And when the next potential disruption comes along, your teams will have the confidence to push past fear and paranoia as they focus on solutions and innovations.
5. Reverse Gratitude
As you’re preparing for your annual planning session, you might be focused on the best ways to optimize the assets you have to get what you want for your company.
But have you stopped to think about what your company would be like if you didn’t have an A+ CFO?
Could you have hit your goals for this year without that crucial AI upgrade you greenlit and the team that seamlessly integrated all your systems?
And what about your most passionate customers, the ones who tag their every purchase on social media and send a steady stream of new business through your door? Where would your company be if they jumped ship to a trendy start-up?
Don’t take any of these resources for granted. Respect the people inside and outside of your organization who provide for each other, solve each other’s problems, and help all stakeholders succeed. Stay true to what’s authentic about your business, including your traditions, mission, and values. Learn from losses as much as you do from wins.
And, above all, carry the gratitude you feel for your company into your annual planning session, and the year ahead. You’ll inspire your employees to respect and acknowledge what’s special about your company, and each other. And that spirit of thankfulness and camaraderie will help you all Make BIG Happen together.
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, CEO Coaching International has coached more than 1,000 CEOs and entrepreneurs in more than 60 countries and 45 industries. The coaches at CEO Coaching International are former CEOs, presidents, or executives who have made BIG happen. The firm’s coaches have led double-digit sales and profit growth in businesses ranging in size from startups to over $10 billion, and many are founders that have led their companies through successful eight, nine, and ten-figure exits. Companies working with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have experienced an average EBITDA CAGR of 53.5% during their time as a client, more than three times the U.S. average, and a revenue CAGR of 26.2%, nearly twice the U.S. average.
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