Getting Unstuck: Leading with Gratitude – a Conversation with Chester Elton
“We found through our research that when people felt valued and celebrated, engagement went up, retention went up, productivity went up. We also found whether it’s in schools or business or NGOs, if you don’t get the culture, right, the recognition doesn’t matter. And from there, our transition was from recognition to gratitude. And gratitude, we found, is more of an emotional connection. World class leaders lead with gratitude– it’s caring about their people and their customers.”
Today on Getting Unstuck
It’s our pleasure to welcome Chester Elton back to Getting Unstuck. Chester is co-founder of The Culture Works, a global training company that helps create organizations where engaged employees have a strong commitment to help drive real outcomes.
He is the co-author along with Adrian Gostick of multiple award winning bestsellers, All In, The Carrot Principle and The Best Team Wins, What Motivates Me – Put Your Passions to Work, and now Leading with Gratitude: Eight Leadership Practices for Extraordinary Business Results
“One of the one of the most powerful ways you have to communicate what you value is expressions of gratitude.” — Chester Elton
The Essential Point
The thematic river that runs through Chester’s books, coaching and consulting is staff engagement and its impact. His research shows that performance and results improve when leaders authentically and purposefully engage their staff whether it’s in business or education. And the expression of authentic gratitude is one key way to engage staff.
Listen for:
Why providing authentic gratitude is such a critical leadership behavior.
How leaders can recognize what holds them back from giving authentic expressions of gratitude.
How leaders can overcome those obstacles and express gratitude meaningfully.
“One of my favorite gratitude practices is assume positive intent. So often, whether you’re a teacher or you’re a manager, something goes wrong, and your first reaction is, “Oh, this is going to ruin my day. How could you do this to me?” Right? Hubert Joly took BestBuy from a billion dollar deficit to a billion dollar surplus, and how did he do that? He said, “We focused on making work meaningful. I may be naive, but I assume people come to work wanting to do a good job. And in trying to do a job, they make mistakes, and you know what, that’s okay. Just tell us what the mistakes are. We’ll fix mistakes and we’ll move on” — that as opposed to a culture where you assume negative intent.”
Could a book on how to effectively lead change in schools be more timely?
We’re pleased to announce …
…that our book Shifting: How School Leaders Can Create a Culture of Change is now available from Corwin Press or Amazon. If you purchase from Amazon, please consider leaving us a rating and review. Thank you!
From our publisher:
In Shifting, educators and leadership experts Kirsten Richert, Jeff Ikler and Margaret Zacchei empower educational change leaders to proactively and coherently navigate complex change in schools to achieve the desired outcomes.
Using a three-part framework—Assess, Ready, Change—this book leads educators to examine a school’s imperatives and readiness for change, identity the tools and abilities required to manifest change, and take action by defining the roles and processes necessary to effectively implement both sweeping change and smaller day-to-day adjustments.