Meghan Kane, assistant professor of management at the Fox School of Business, co-authored a new study that finds gratitude creates a ripple effect in the workplace and builds stronger coworker relationships.
Meghan Kane’s research found that a leader’s gratitude can change what employees notice, which can cause gratitude to spread through an organization and strengthen coworker relationships.
Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg
For leaders wanting to build stronger teams, a new study suggests they should start with two simple words: “Thank you.”
New research finds that when employees see leaders express genuine gratitude, they become more likely to notice acts of kindness, express gratitude themselves and build stronger relationships with coworkers, creating a ripple effect through an organization.
“When leaders express gratitude to employees, it changes the way employees view their world which cascades to everyone they work with,” said Meghan Kane, assistant professor of management at the Fox School of Business. “Essentially, gratitude from someone you may never even interact with three levels above you is actually strengthening your relationships with your coworkers.”
The study, “Grateful leaders and attentive followers: How grateful attention transmits the cascade of gratitude expressions to strengthen coworker relationships,” was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Kane coauthored the study with Lauren Locklear, an assistant professor of management at Texas Tech University, and Mark Ehrhart, a professor in the industrial/organizational psychology program at the University of Central Florida.
The findings suggest that gratitude spreads not simply because employees emulate their leaders or feel the same emotion. Instead, they say that receiving gratitude changes how people look at their environment and what they pay attention to in the workplace, a term the team calls “grateful attention.”
Kane says that once the grateful attention lens is activated, people are more likely to notice the helpful, positive and meaningful things happening around them.
“Imagine you’re at a meeting, and a coworker does something really helpful to you,” she said. “If you didn’t receive gratitude the day before, maybe you wouldn’t notice the coworker was helping you. And now, you notice and that inspires you to go out of your way to express gratitude to them or other coworkers. You now notice more things and see the world differently, even though nothing has changed in your environment.”
“That’s grateful attention,” Kane added. “We like to say you are now wearing ‘gratitude glasses.’”
Kane notes that while a lot of research has examined gratitude and its effect on workplace outcomes, there is not as much literature on the relational aspects of expressing gratitude at work.
“Prior research hasn’t looked at how to foster gratitude at work, what makes it spread or how leaders can foster it beyond just saying to do it more,” said Kane. “It seems fairly obvious to say that gratitude spreads, but why? Why is that happening? Gratitude is relational in a way that other positive emotions aren’t, and we wanted to better understand these coworker relationships and focus on why gratitude spreads. Our big finding is that we are turning on that spotlight in people’s heads to notice the world around them in a more grateful light.”
Kane’s research focused on gratitude expressions beginning at the top of an organization’s hierarchy. When leaders expressed gratitude, grateful attention created a positive spiral as acts of generosity and help become more noticeable in the workplace.
“We found that from this cascading effect, gratitude expressions from top-level management flowed to middle managers down to frontline employees, and then that ultimately has a positive impact on relationship quality with coworkers,” she said.
The team conducted three studies including two field studies involving employees and supervisors in real workplaces, followed by a controlled experiment in which leaders were exposed to either a gratitude-filled or neutral email and then asked to write an email to their own teams. They were not given instructions to express gratitude.
Then, the researchers collected those emails and gave them to another group of participants to read. This group measured whether the initial gratitude expression caused the leaders to express more gratitude themselves and whether that gratitude continued down to the next employee level. The studies included workers in supervisory roles across a variety of industries, reflecting the far-reaching effects that gratitude can have in different environments.
When it comes to putting gratitude into practice, Kane says leaders should be specific and make gratitude part of their regular routines to be effective.
“Instead of just a quick one-off, be specific about what the person did and the impact it made,” she said. “Gratitude is like a muscle, it’s something that you can practice and build, and the more you do it, the stronger the muscle becomes.”
While workplaces are often busy and filled with competing priorities, tight deadlines and budgets to manage, Kane emphasizes that leaders should keep it simple.
“Sometimes we overcomplicate gratitude,” she said. “Don’t overthink it. It is a low-cost, low-time commitment. You’re making an impact on employees you may never interact with directly. Just say thank you. It goes a long way.”