Leveraging the Impact of Grateful Leadership – A Science and Evidence-Based Framework

Contributor: Linda Roszak Burton, ACC, BBC, BS
To learn more about Linda, click here.

 

Photo courtesy of Unsplash/Marcus Spiske

There are different leadership frameworks with which you may be familiar, including Servant and Transformational Leadership, to mention a few. As healthcare systems and their leaders find themselves crossing a threshold from the old way of operating to the new post-pandemic era (Liminal Space), there's an urgency to lead through the current level of disruption and achieve a positive impact and short and long-term results.

“The thinking that got us to where we are is not the thinking that will get us to where we want to be.”
~Albert Einstein

Yes, healthcare has faced disruptions in the past, yet current-day volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), create novel barriers for people, processes, systems, and related capacities. Answering the call for a construct capturing evidence-based best practices essential for healthcare leaders and speaking to the industry's unprecedented challenges is a grateful leadership framework. A strengths-based framework supported by research in gratitude, positive psychology, neuroscience, and positive organizational behavior (POB) offers the most progressive and promising approach.

Another construct, complementary to strengths-based leadership is antifragility, a term introduced in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder."

Antifragility is defined as systems in which an increase in capability to thrive is a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. Antifragility is beyond resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.

A strengths-based leader focuses on identifying and appreciating the strengths of individuals. An antifragility leader helps individuals build on their strengths in the face of uncertainty and volatility. Together they support a healthy and positive work environment and the well-being of employees. And, driven by universally intrinsic human needs for survival and maximizes human potential at every level in any job description.

Grateful Leaders’ Health and Well-Being

A significant difference in incorporating these foundational elements of grateful leadership into your organization is the integration of these best practices first to enhance YOUR health and well-being and identify YOU at your best (i.e., alignment of values, strengths, mental fitness).

As leaders, you know when you’re not at your best. Therefore, leading from a science and evidence-based approach accelerates your ability to bring renewed energy to your work as a leader. That means taking care of yourself so you can take care of others.

As described in our 2019 issue of the Wharton Healthcare Quarterly on “Gratitude: Resilience and Healing for Clinicians During a COVID-19 Pandemic,” having a sustained gratitude practice improves overall health and well-being, including:

  • Fostering higher levels of positive emotions
  • Supporting greater life satisfaction, vitality, and optimism
  • Enabling more hours of sleep
  • Fostering better self-care
  • Strengthening the immune system and lowering blood pressure. 

Grateful Leaders Impact on Their Employees and The Organization

One study reviewed how leaders who express genuine gratitude to employees positively relate to more proactive behaviors, supporting self-efficacy and perceived social worth. According to another study, this aligns well with employees having greater hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism, all components supported by gratitude and its impact on employee engagement and retention.

Additionally, the foundational elements of grateful leadership support the growing urgency for healthcare organizations to adopt the principles of Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance (ESG). In a recent article, social capital is defined as organizational contributions to improving workers' multi-dimensional well-being.

From a cultural perspective and the fields of positive organizational scholarship and positive organizational behavior, studies show institutionalizing gratitude interventions in the workplace to increase job satisfaction, including a sense of belonging to a workplace culture that endorses gratitude.

Representative learning objectives foundational to grateful leadership include:

  • Integrating current research in gratitude, positive psychology, neuroscience, and POB as a leadership essential
  • Enhancing personal physiological, emotional, and mental well-being and, in turn, identifying ways to support employees
  • Developing a sustainable framework and fostering a more grateful, positive, and psychologically safe work environment
  • Creating greater health and positivity in the culture of care

Consider these questions to discover if grateful leadership is right for you and your organization:

  • Is there a numbness in behaviors and interactions preventing accountability, innovation, and inhibiting self-empowerment?
  • Do your days start with the best intentions but quickly lapse into conflict, overwhelm, and self-defeating, pessimistic thinking?
  • Are there employee job functions frequently overlooked that inhibit inclusion, prompting the refrain "I'm just a"…..?
  • Do people follow you because they have to?
  • Are the interactions and behaviors between leadership and employees misaligned in beliefs, values, and strengths?
  • Do you encourage growth and continuous improvement for all employees?
  • Do you celebrate and acknowledge how strong you and your team have become because of the extreme pressures you are experiencing?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, consider how grateful leadership - leading with your strengths - can energize your development as a leader, develop employee strengths, and create a more dedicated, healthy, and energized work environment. What's your level of commitment?


Contact Linda at:
[email protected] or 410.707.3118

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Glossary

Positive Psychology: the scientific study of how strengths enable individuals, communities, and institutions to thrive. Complementary to traditional psychology, it calls on a greater awareness of strengths, relationships, and positive emotions to truly flourish in life. Just as good health is not just the absence of disease, positive psychology is not the absence of pain and suffering or denying the negative.

Leadership Strengths: When we work with leaders, we tap into the research by Don Clifton. His work is compiled in the book Strengths-Based Leadership by authors Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. For leaders, it identifies your top strengths across defined categories – Executing, Influencing. Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking. An excellent way to identify strength gaps and the greatest growth potential.

Gratitude: scientific proof that when people regularly engage in the systemic cultivation of gratitude, they experience various measurable psychological, physical, and interpersonal benefits.

Neuroscience: With the latest neuroscience studies, we have a greater understanding of achieving and sustaining the associated health and well-being benefits across a lifespan. Neuroleadership helps us understand how the brain views the workplace and its relevance to psychological safety and inclusion. Once thought of as a simple emotion, fMRI has clearly shown that gratitude activates multiple regions of the brain, including those for moral reasoning, fairness, economic decision-making, and psychological well-being.

Positive Organizational Behavior: The application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace.

Ask these questions:

  • What makes employees feel like they're thriving?
  • How can I bring my organization through difficult times stronger than before?
  • What creates the positive energy a team needs to be successful?