What does gratitude mean as a company value?

Naming, in public and soon after the event, what somebody did for you. As a value it is a habit rather than a feeling: the people who practise it thank upward, credit the absent and say it in the channel rather than by direct message.

How do you recognise gratitude in a colleague?

By recognising the act of thanking. The colleague who credits somebody who has left, or who thanks the on-call engineer by name in a customer update, is shaping how the team treats work, and that deserves the same public notice as the work itself.

Why is gratitude rarely recognised?

Because it is treated as a personality trait rather than a behaviour. Saying thank you well is a skill with a technique, and skills are what recognition is for.

Is gratitude the same as a recognition programme?

A programme is the tool; gratitude is the habit that makes people use it. A team with the value and no tool still says thank you. A team with the tool and no value has a channel nobody posts in.

Company values

Gratitude

Gratitude is the one company value that a recognition programme is literally made of, and it is still rarely recognised in the people who practise it.

A behaviour with a technique

Companies put gratitude on the wall as a mood they would like the office to have. The version worth recognising is a behaviour with a technique: name the thing, say it soon, say it where others can read it.

The people who do this are easy to find. They are the ones whose thank you appears in the channel while everyone else is still composing theirs.

Credit the absent

The least self-interested form of gratitude is credit to somebody who has left. There is nothing to gain from it, which is exactly why it tells the team how their own work will be remembered after they go.

Recognise the colleague who does it. They are setting a standard nobody asked them to set.

How you would know

Thanks upward: Tells a manager which decision helped, rather than leaving that to the leaving message.
Credits the absent: Names the person who wrote the document or set up the system, even when they have left.
Says it in the channel: Puts the thank you where the team can read it instead of in a private message.
Thanks the ordinary week: Recognises the quiet, uneventful stretch as well as the launch.

6 messages that name it

You thanked the finance team in the all-hands for a close nobody else had noticed was hard. They talked about it for a week.
Manager
Recognises the act of recognising, with its effect.
Thank you for crediting Marta in the launch post. She left in March and half the design was hers.
Peer
The credit to somebody absent is the behaviour.
You are the person who writes the thank you in the channel while the rest of us are still thinking about it.
Manager
Names timing and publicness, which are the two hard parts.
Thanks for telling me which of my decisions actually helped this quarter. Nobody does that.
Manager to report
Gratitude that travels upward is rare enough to be noticed.
You thanked the on-call engineer by name in the customer update. He had never seen his name in one before.
Peer
Specific, public and to somebody who is not usually visible.
Sofia sends a note every Friday to one person on the team about one thing they did. Three people have told me it is the reason they stayed.
Manager
A habit, and a measured consequence.

What its absence looks like

Where gratitude is absent, good work is followed by the next request, the people who left are never mentioned, and thanks arrives, if at all, in the leaving message.

Recognising it well

Recognise the recogniser. The person who consistently thanks others is doing culture work, and they are almost never thanked for it.
Watch for credit to the absent. Naming somebody who has left is the least self-interested form of gratitude, and it tells the team how their own work will be remembered.
Value the timing. A thank you the same afternoon changes behaviour; the same words in a quarterly review are a record.

Questions people ask

What does gratitude mean as a company value?: Naming, in public and soon after the event, what somebody did for you. As a value it is a habit rather than a feeling: the people who practise it thank upward, credit the absent and say it in the channel rather than by direct message.
How do you recognise gratitude in a colleague?: By recognising the act of thanking. The colleague who credits somebody who has left, or who thanks the on-call engineer by name in a customer update, is shaping how the team treats work, and that deserves the same public notice as the work itself.
Why is gratitude rarely recognised?: Because it is treated as a personality trait rather than a behaviour. Saying thank you well is a skill with a technique, and skills are what recognition is for.
Is gratitude the same as a recognition programme?: A programme is the tool; gratitude is the habit that makes people use it. A team with the value and no tool still says thank you. A team with the tool and no value has a channel nobody posts in.