Most organizations treat gratitude as a soft add-on to leadership development, a nice-to-have that is folded into a module on recognition or culture. The data says otherwise.
New research from The Grossman Group, conducted in partnership with The Harris Poll and surveying 2,206 employed Americans, identifies gratitude as the single greatest differentiator between good leaders and exceptional ones. Not strategic vision, and not operational rigor — gratitude. Exceptional leaders are 2.3 times stronger on this dimension than good leaders, making it the largest performance multiplier in the entire study.
The cost of underinvesting in gratitude compounds: Employees who receive specific recognition at least monthly are over two times more likely to report being highly engaged than those recognized annually or less, according to the Achievers Workforce Institute.
The Uncertainty Problem
When high uncertainty meets good leadership, the outcome isn’t always crisis. More often, it’s something quieter — a slow rise in anxiety, a sense of complacency or gradual organizational drift. In this equation, uncertainty combined with good leadership can still lead to stagnation. But when that same environment is met with exceptional leadership, the results shift dramatically, giving way to resilience, confidence and trust.
What separates those two outcomes, more than anything else in the data, is gratitude.
When people feel uncertain, the brain’s threat-detection system activates and begins scanning for danger while assessing safety. Gratitude short-circuits that response. Expressions of gratitude trigger the release of oxytocin, which strengthens social bonds and lowers perceived threats. Leaders who express genuine appreciation are actively moving their teams from survival mode into the focused, creative thinking organizations need.
The Gap That Stays Hidden
With good leaders, 35% of employees feel valued and appreciated. Good leaders do recognize contribution, and that’s real. Only 16% of those same employees, however, feel that what is important to them is valued. That’s the largest gap of any dimension measured in the study.
Feeling valued is about recognizing what someone does. Feeling that what’s important to you is valued means a leader understands who someone is, including their aspirations, concerns and what makes the work feel worth it beyond the next deadline. Those are two very different things, and most leadership training only gets to the first one.
What This Looks Like in Practice
In 2001, Campbell Soup Company’s stock had lost one-half of its value in a year. Employee engagement scores, as measured by Gallup, were among the lowest it had ever recorded. Incoming CEO Doug Conant walked into a company that had run out of wins to celebrate, yet he still picked up a pen.
Each morning, his team prepared a short list of things that had gone well in the previous 24 hours. During his commute, Conant reviewed the list and wrote handwritten notes — 10-20 a day, six days a week — to people at every level of the organization. By the end of his tenure, he had written more than 30,000 notes.
What made the notes meaningful wasn’t the handwriting. It was the specificity. These weren’t generic messages saying “great quarter, team.” Instead, they told individuals exactly what he had seen them do, why it mattered, and what it revealed about their character and contribution. Conant’s leaders began noticing what he was doing and asked him the same question: “Do you expect us to do this too?” His answer: Not necessarily this, but find your own way to recognize the work your people are doing that matters.
By 2010, Campbell’s engagement had flipped to among the highest Gallup had ever seen. Under Conant’s leadership, the company outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 50%, according to the book “TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments” by Douglas Conant and Mette Norgaard.
The method was a pen and role-modeling. The principle was seeing people.
Monday Morning Actions: Training Leaders on Gratitude
1. Start with the mindset shift: gratitude is a cast iron pan, not fine china.
Most leaders treat gratitude like fine china — something reserved for special occasions and quickly put back on the shelf. It makes an appearance during annual reviews, launch celebrations or quarterly town halls, then disappears again. The shift training needs to spark is this: Gratitude should function more like a cast iron pan — used often, built into daily routines and strengthened over time. Build this into training explicitly before any skills practice begins. If leaders still see gratitude as something to deploy strategically, the behaviors won’t stick.
2. Train the language shift from generic to specific.
The single most trainable move: Replace “great job, team” with language that names the behavior and the impact. “I noticed what you did in that meeting. Here’s why it mattered.” Role-play this in training until it becomes instinctive.
3. Help leaders learn each person’s “I Want” song — and connect it to recognition.
In every great musical, there’s a moment early on where the main character steps forward and tells the audience what they truly want. Ariel wants to be part of a different world. Hamilton doesn’t want to throw away his shot. Every employee has a version of that song: a direction they’re building toward, the kind of work they find meaningful, a goal that matters beyond the next deliverable. Most leaders never hear it because they never ask.
This is what addresses the blind spot leaders have in not recognizing who their people are and what’s important to them. Most leaders are reasonably good at the first kind of recognition, acknowledging what someone did. Where they fall short is the second: knowing who someone is — their aspirations, what drives them, what they’re building toward — and reflecting that back. When a leader learns someone’s “I Want” song and then connects it to recognition by saying, “I know this project connects to what you care about. Tell me how it’s going for you, not just how the work is going,” that is the move. Train leaders to ask: “What matters to you beyond this project? Where do you want to be in two years?” Then practice using those answers.
4. Teach leaders to recognize how each person wants to be recognized.
Some people like public acknowledgment, while others prefer a quiet, direct word because public praise makes them feel uncomfortable. Generic recognition programs ignore this entirely, which is why so much of what passes for gratitude lands flat. Train leaders to learn recognition preferences for each direct report and apply them. Ask the question directly: How do you like to be recognized? Most people have never been asked.
5. Make it a daily practice.
The research from the Achievers Workforce Institute found that monthly recognition produces over two times higher engagement than annual recognition. Train leaders to identify 3-5 opportunities for specific appreciation every day. This practice should be built into the rhythm of the workday, rather than saved for formal moments. A useful framing for training is what some call “reverse gossip,” which redirects the same instinct that notices what went wrong toward noticing what went right.
6. Model it from the top and watch the cascade.
Conant’s leaders didn’t need a mandate. They saw what he was doing and started asking how they should do it too. Train senior leaders first and connect that modeling explicitly to what’s expected at every level below them. Culture travels through what people watch their leaders actually do every day, in the small moments, long before it shows up in any engagement score.
Why This Belongs in Every L&D Curriculum
9 of the top 10 attributes separating exceptional leaders from good ones in the Grossman Group with The Harris Poll research are relational and emotional. Google’s Project Oxygen reached the same conclusion more than a decade ago: 9 of the 10 top behaviors of effective managers were people skills, not technical ones. And organizations are still not investing in it at the level the data warrants.
Ultimately, gratitude is about being effective. It’s teachable, it’s measurable and it’s one of the highest-leverage places L&D can invest in right now.
