[UPDATED 11/30/24] A Message of Appreciation for our Readers
[Revised two days later to suck less] I practiced gratitude and expressed it to my subordinates before Thanksgiving. I'd be remiss if I didn't do the same for my bosses (i.e. you).
Today is Thanksgiving in the USA! For our non-American readers, this holiday can be celebrated in many ways1:
An opportunity (or obligation) to gather family members from afar, eat lots of turkey, then watch large sweaty men chase a brown leather object around a green grassy field.
Eating 8,000 calories (33,440 kJ) in preparation for Black Friday, the (unofficial) holiday of American capitalism. It usually involves frenzied shopping, buyer’s remorse, artificial scarcity, credit card debt.
Attending religious services, solemnly praying, and sharing the traditional feast with the poor.
Practicing Gratitude: The Antidote to Despondency
I tend to fixate on problems that need resolving and risks that need reducing. This behavioral quirk leads to rapid growth and betterment, but it also comes with a severe side effect: I easily take my good fortunes for granted. When I spend all day staring at the heavy boulders of things gone wrong, I tend to forget that I’m standing on a mountain of things gone right.
Before I learned how to practice gratitude, frustration easily led to despair, despair to depression, and depression to dark thoughts and self-destructive urges. But once I learned to direct my attention to the mountain of good luck, good genes, good upbringing, and good friends, the dark emotions abated. For years, I’ve practiced gratitude in silence, letting appreciation of my good fortunes buoy my spirit.
If you’re anything like me – stricken with imposter syndrome, frequent self-doubt, perpetual discontent, a restless desire to make things better – I encourage you to practice gratitude too. It keeps my mental health from spiraling into the black abyss of despondency, and I hope it brings you the same tranquility.
Gratitude Never Expressed is a Gift Never Delivered
Imagine you bought a gift for someone, enclosed it in ornate wrapping paper, tied a silk bow on it…then tossed it into a forlorn corner of your closet. There it remains, next to the old pants that no longer fit (too much Thanksgiving feasting), until the heat death of the universe.
That’s what it’s like to silently practice gratitude for someone’s presence in your life. I benefit from the warmth and fuzzies, but the subject of my goodwill doesn’t enjoy the undelivered gift.
This year, I decided to observe the “giving of thanks” part of Thanksgiving by delivering a heartfelt message of appreciation to my colleagues. I prepared my message ahead of time to avoid repeating the platitudes that often fall flat out of CEOs’ mouths. Yesterday, I told my colleagues how grateful I felt for the work that they do, the cooperation they show each other, and the resiliency they demonstrate in the face of adversity.
There was some awkwardness as the austere professionalism of my office melted into the sappy fantasy of a Hallmark movie…but soon my colleagues were reciprocating with their own expressions of gratitude. I’m sure some of them felt peer-pressured to conform with the sudden outpouring of gratitude (and felt pressured to follow the example set by their boss), but most of their words and actions seemed genuine to me.
A Gift of Gratitude to You, the Reader
Update 11/30/24
This is a horribad “gift of gratitude.” I rushed out 1,300 words on 11/28/24 without putting much thought into the message. This section sounds more like an exercise in self-aggrandizement than a tribute to your virtues as a reader.
Here’s an abbreviated version of what I actually wanted to convey:
You could've gone to any of the leadership blogs out there, but you're here instead. Thank you for choosing Adventures in Leadership Land over any other publication, whatever your reasons.
Thank you for trying to be better. No one forced you to spend time your free time trying to improve yourself. You chose the autodidactic path of growth and I applaud you for it.
Thank you for being part of the symbiotic upward spiral. I'm a better leader because of you, and I hope you feel like you're a better leader because of me.
I’m leaving the original message here as a cautionary tale of how NOT to write a message of appreciation.
Thank you for being the boss who helps me work better without yelling at me.
Without you, Adventures in Leadership Land would be nothing more than a collection of scrawled notes in a journal under the header “don’t suck at leadership.” Writing for an audience is very different from writing for my future self; my future self has much lower expectations of me than you do. Whether you knew it or not, you’ve been a boss whose mere presence contributes to quality control. By reading, you’re holding me to a higher standard that I would’ve held myself.
Thank you for being my “student”/partner in two-way learning
The practice of leadership results in tacit knowledge – amorphous blobs of know-how from which insights and intuition emerge as if by divine inspiration. To write Adventures in Leadership Land, I must first translate the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge – orderly concepts that crystallize from the primordial ooze of know-how sloshing around inside my head. A crystal of explicit knowledge is much easier to transfer to someone else than a bucket of tacit knowledge sludge.
That said, both forms of knowledge are important. The two are like bricks and mortar:
Too much explicit knowledge is like stacking up a bunch of facts (bricks) with little connection to each other and hoping they don’t topple over. You’ve seen people like this; they’re walking encyclopedias but can’t seem to execute properly on unstructured assignments.Too much tacit knowledge is like a mud hut: airtight due to lots of connections in all directions, but poor structural strength. These are the people who possess arcane knowledge but are terribad communicators. Like the engineers who know everything except when to shower, or mothers who can cook Michelin-star meals but can’t explain how they did it.
I’m a big proponent of learning by teaching. Richard Feynman, sometimes regarded as “the smartest man who ever lived,” is (apocryphally) credited with saying:
If you want to master something, teach it.
You probably think of a teacher as a fountain of knowledge, and a student as a dry sponge. That model describes a one-way transfer of knowledge, but learning by teaching is a two-way street. As a “teacher,” I benefit from creating explicit (crystalline) knowledge from my tacit (amorphous) knowledge. By being my “student,” you are helping me build strong mental models from brick and mortar inside my head.
Thank you for helping me clarify my thoughts, organize my observations, and deepen my understanding of leadership. Thank you for making the “teacher/student” dynamic a symbiotic relationship between partners. For those of you who have reached out: thank you for teaching me; I hope it has been as helpful for you as it has been for me.
Thank you for your trust
By quoting Richard Feynman (or whoever actually said it first), I’m basically admitting that I haven’t mastered leadership yet. As I stumble my way through the Fog of Uncertainty, I will inevitably make mistakes that I will regret and retract later.
Thank you for trusting me as I struggle my way forward and toil in the Cerebrium mines. I won’t always be right, and I won’t always live up to your expectations, but I will always try to be better.
Happy Thanksgiving/Happy Friday Eve!
And finally, thank you for making the leadership journey more enjoyable (less miserable). Even if you never comment or press the like button, I take solace in knowing I’m not traveling through Leadership Land alone.
Whether you plan to gobble down turkey ‘till you wobble, shop ‘till you drop, or (for non-Americans) just get through a regular Thursday, please take a moment to appreciate everything that’s gone right in your life so far. And if you feel up for it, expressing your gratitude to the people who have touched your life.
This post is not part of the Leadership Land Consistency Challenge, Phase I. We’ll see you on December 20, 2024, as we promised in Why Inconsistency is Worse than Snorting Cocaine. If this surprise post was too short for your liking, you can read our post from two Thanksgivings ago about turkeys, risk, and the Fog of Uncertainty.
Something that even many Americans don’t know: Thanksgiving is a controversial holiday in some subcultures.