Key Competencies #1: Gratitude

It's no secret that I think that the ultimate key to be successful in everything (especially business) is humility, but of course, humility is nothing if it stands alone. A person can be humble, but if they are quiet and introverted, people will walk all over them.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about my life as well as the lives of other super successful individuals to see other key competencies they all have in common. This post will be the first in a series God-knows-how-many posts where we'll take a look at some key competencies that you may or may not expect a leader to hold, and we'll start with one you might not expect: gratitude.
While many ideas begin from something shared by a titan of some industry, this one actually comes from a faith-based book, and to be honest, I cannot remember for the life of me what the book was or who the author was! Anyway, the author's general idea was that true happiness begins with being grateful about everything. Obviously, the idea was Christ-centered, but I think that gratitude has big implications on everybody regardless of faith.

The one thing I do remember about this guy is that he was eternally grateful about everything. If you think you're grateful for stuff, this guy's level of gratefulness puts everybody to shame. Sure, I'm thankful for things like my house and my car, but this guy was thankful for dust.

Who is thankful for dust??

Anyway, my point of this post is not necessarily that I think we should be grateful to that level but rather that we become better about expressing gratitude.

Why?

Gratitude really goes hand-in-hand with humility. Regardless of scale, showing gratitude is essentially a person's way of telling another person, "Hey, you did something for me that I appreciated, so you should feel good about yourself for doing that." It's encouraging.

Think about it this way: do you thank somebody for doing something you DIDN'T want them to do? No! You don't want to encourage poor behavior, and thanking a person for poor behavior reinforces in that person's mind that they should keep doing what they're doing. This is why people continue to hold doors to this day. The behavior has been reinforced by the simple expression of gratitude in the words "Thanks" or "Thank you".

(Funny side story about that: holding doors can get really creepy if you wait for somebody a fair distance away. Case in point: some of the guys would wait holding the cafeteria door open if they so much as saw a girl come out of the girls dorm. Which, mind you, is a good quarter mile away. If they could see as far as the horizon, they'd hold that door. Girls did not find it as flattering as they did.)

I don't really know how to describe it, but gratitude creates some sort of solidarity between you and another person. I have found that people tend to be more helpful to gracious people time and time again. A good example of this is my wife. People tend to do a lot of stuff for her because she is always super thankful to them. (Granted, she does a lot for other people, too. Check out this former post for more you can learn from her.)

Keep this in mind as you return to work this week. Express gratitude for things others do for you in a genuine way. I think you'll find the reciprocation of kindness to be more than you might expect.