Ways to Cultivate Gratitude at Work

Indeed, you have summed up a huge problem with SF area culture: many people think that these fake-nice platitudes are meaningful, and also use them against others on a large scale in their daily life as a form of pervasive emotional manipulation -- often to avoid paying someone money.

I'm moving towards a lead dev role, running a small group (3 other devs). I always try to thank people, and include enough specific detail that it's plausible. One dev, fresh to a problem, recently identified a place where if we used a multi-map instead of a map, it would solve problems that had plagued us for months. My response was "Fuck yeah, we've been trying to figure out how to work around that for months. Good catch." I praised another dev who just joined for getting a whole lot more done in her first two weeks than I expected. Entirely new language and tech stack on a sophisticated application. It's impressive. I said so.

Remuneration aside, they're humans who benefit from positive validation. It seems well recieved. Maybe an important point is I actually am grateful that they're good at their jobs. Man, working with competent people who aren't phoning it in is a pleasure.

And yeah, in the abstract, my position with my employer is basically "fuck you, pay me." But that's just a sine qua non. Whether or not I like being there is contingent on how I'm treated.

First, I'll state the obvious: It's not an either-or.

Second, if you look at research on incentives, I think you'll find reducing everything to money tends to backfire, where people who used to go the extra mile in the past stopped doing so because they knew the amount of money they would get would be little.

Think of this scenario some of us have been in. A friend of mine who's big on cars insisted he change my oil for me. He insisted paying Jiffy Lube is a big ripoff. So he did the work, and then I tried giving him some money. He got very offended.

I needed to visit a city for some personal work for a few days, and stayed at a friend's place while there. I tried paying him a nominal amount for his hospitality. Result: He was offended.

However, in both cases, if I repay them by buying them coffee or a lunch, there would be no offense. From my perspective, the outcome is the same: I lose the same amount of money. But on their side, the response is drastically different.

I won't get into which approach is "correct" or "better". The reality is that, in most societies, including the US, the majority behaves this way.

Dan Ariely in one of his books talks about the research involving what he calls "social" vs "market" contracts. The former is usually non-financial, and often involves favors we do for friends. The latter is usually precise and monetary.

Now of course, it depends on the type of work you do, but for most salaried positions, it is a mistake to assume that only market contracts apply ("I do work, and I get paid for it"). What Dan Ariely's chapter shows, is that when companies do lean towards mostly market contracts, bad things happen: Poorer productivity, fractious work environments, etc.

Even if you're getting paid, there is a place for both types of contracts. If you're one of those who care only for the amount you get paid, you're definitely not someone our team wants to hire. I've seen this even within my company - one org takes care of both contracts, and another doesn't. I used to be in the latter and I'm glad I left for the former.

In my company, we have a tool where any employee can thank any other employee with a greeting card. The recipient's manager is notified. The "thanker" can attach company money to it (almost always do) - a nominal amount. Anything over about $30 needs to be approved, but anything under is provided without managerial approval - the company just provides a fund for this.

I think it works well, and in my department, we are frequently encouraged to thank others using the tool for both big and small things.

It doesn't impact your annual review at all. You still have the usual process to get a raise, promotion, etc.

You're pretty close here.

I've been at places where there was no thanks, no money, no nothing, but I was empowered and left alone enough to get things done. That was okay, but it still felt a little thankless (obviously).

I have been at places where there was little empowerment, but where there was monetary rewarding of people who somehow still managed to achieve things by working outside of the box. That was even worse; they recognized we did a good job, but didn't actually translate that to "let them be empowered to make decisions".

People aren't dumb. They can tell when they're actually appreciated. It's a combination of things. If an employer truly respects and appreciates an employee, the employee knows they will respond with verbal thanks, some sort of gift or reward (often limited by corporate, but could be something as simple as buying lunch, if that's an infrequent thing), and look to empower the employee further to continue their good work. Dropping the ball on any of these will leave it feeling disingenuous.

I thank everyone for everything they do for me - not because I should but because I'm genuinely grateful whenever someone does what was requested of them.

I've not found that it's something that's repaid. If anything, folks are more motivated by the guy who shouts at them and never thanks them, because they want his impossible to win approval. The thankful person gets ignored.

There's probably a happy medium to be had somewhere.

My old boss had the motto:

  "Treat the cleaners like they're The Queen; treat The Queen like she's a cleaner"

I took this to mean: treat cleaners with respect & appreciation; do not fawn and scrape to your bosses.

Similarly: "grief travels up, praise travels down" and "be nice to those you meet on your way up as you may well meet them again on your way down".

I use all of these mantras on a daily basis and I believe they work. I can't guarantee my food is spittle free but I have never had reason to believe otherwise.

I confess I have been known to break this rule with phone spammers.

To add onto this, I remember explaining the idea of our devops team to my non-technical/muggle coworkers at one point. Explaining how "the cloud" and "servers" are really just OPM (other peoples' machines) and that you need entire teams to orchestrate those servers (among other things) opened their eyes to how comparable IT teams are to civil engineers.

I like to think they enjoyed learning about the process and will appreciate it more in the future.

I am similar but even more wide spread. Receptionist, anyone. I also try to do the same for anyone I deal with in a customer service role out in the world. Even the smallest thing really can make someone's day a little better, and isn't that worth the insignificant effort to do it?

I think I read this on HN long time ago, and it stuck with me - do you know the name of the cleaner working in your office? Why not?

I always try to learn it (by asking directly, but I'm a bit shy so it takes some time), and to show the appreciation for their work. It feels like a right, human thing to do.

I agree - this matches my experience too. Americans are blunt but that goes both ways. They appreciate a good deed while at the same time make their disapproval heard too.

That's cool! Which bot?

Rather, it encourages people to become good at simulating gratitude in a plausible manner.

It devalues the entire notion of gratitude to engage in that sort of petty manipulation. Gratitude is rendered into a base and superficial thing.

It's not "fake gratitude", it's "verbalizing real gratitude". The article is about cultivating an environment where gratitude is known.

The article had a point about not overdoing it, and, to consider specifics of things that actually helped, which would sound more sincere if mentioned. You have to remind yourself that people actually are helping you.

(skip the joke about faking sincerity)

Some fake it because it works. They use it as a cheap way to hack the superior primate's reciprocity schemas.

> I see ton's of people in daily life who have cultivated modesty (eg: politicians, ceo's ect) . It is so obvious that its fake,

No. You have seen tons of people who have cultivated modesty-signalling. Signalling is cheap, but it stops passing for the real thing when overused. That's where the fakeness feeling comes from.

The more advanced manipulators are already practicing anti-modesty-signalling: Open disregard for courtneousness, plus some other subtler signalling that people subconsciously correlate with real modesty. Onces these tactics get widespread, they will feel fake too.

But all this does not mean you cannot practice the actual thing. Being mindful, thankful, etc does require practice... and it is harder than just signalling for it. It does not come naturally to human beings, at least not in our culture, but it does not make it worthless.

>Is it really gratitude if you cultivate it? Can you really become mindful/thankful/x via pure practice?

Yes (if done well) and yes.

>If it makes sense and is logical why can't you instantly become thankful, why do you practice?

For all the same reasons that other things that make sense and are logical do not instantly transform you.

Various studying habits make sense and are logical. Knowing them does not instantly change you.

Same with eating habits.

Heck, I do not know your age, but I'm old enough where it's easy for me to find things in my life where I knew the "correct" approach, but it took me years to change my behavior to be consistent with what I knew.