Nothing impacts the wealth, health and happiness of others more than leaders. Do you agree? Do you really agree?It’s something we’ve said to thousands of leaders around the world and no one ever disagrees. Being a leader directly impacts the wealth, health and happiness of employees.
For example: A bad leader causes stress. Stress can lead to a poor home life, which causes even more stress. Added stress can lead to poor performance. This leads to long hours, with less sleep, less exercise, and poor eating choices. It’s a fact that stress causes your body to switch into fight or flight mode and hold on to the fat in your body. Stress causes weight gain. Gaining weight leads to more unhappiness and even more stress. The cycle is vicious – and real.
The great news is there is a simple, quick and free solution to become a better leader: gratitude.
This short podcast explains the powerful concept of using gratitude to upgrade your leadership using The Leadership Gratitude Journal.
Listen to more Leadership Podcasts on the For You Leaders Podcast.
Gratitude Podcast Transcript
Kirk Dando: Whatever you’re doing right now. Whether you’re driving working out. Maybe you have this morning on the background. Whatever. It is. I want you to do something for me. I want you to just take a quick moment and reflect on something that you are truly grateful for. I know that may sound funny. It could be something big or small. Maybe it’s personal or professional.
But just take a second and think about something that you are grateful for. For example, I had a conversation with my daughter this morning where we were having a conflict that didn’t seem like it was heading in the right direction, but we both stepped back and took a moment to really listen and understand what the other one was saying and we were able to get through what was looking to be a build up to a big conflict. And we got on the other side of it, and we’re really able to encourage each other, and I was truly thankful for her willingness to step back and listen. So what are you grateful for?
Go ahead and think about it for a moment. We’ll wait.
Did you think about it?
Chip and I are going to talk to you a little bit about gratitude. It’s a short podcast. You may be thinking like, “why gratitude? Why are you talking about this? Where are Kirk and Chip heading with this?”
Well, think about it for a moment: nothing impacts the health, the wealth and the happiness of others more than leaders – nothing impacts the wealth, health and happiness of others more than a leader.
Do you agree with that? Maybe you disagree? I can tell you this: I have made that comment in opening leadership keynotes to thousands of leaders around the world. I’ve never had anybody disagree, and I can only imagine that they’re reflecting on leaders in their life and thinking about the health, wealth and happiness that they had under that leadership.
Think about a bad leader. A bad leader causes stress, stress that can (and usually does) lead to poor home life.
Which causes even more stress. Added stress can lead to a poor personal lives and our professional lives. This leads to long hours with less sleep, less exercise and even poor eating choices. It’s a fact that stress causes your body to switch into a fight or flight mode and you hold on to that fat in your body.
I sure know I don’t need extra fat, so I do not want to be stuck in that that cycle. You know stress causes that weight gain and it’s a vicious cycle. It’s real. Don’t you agree, Chip?
Chip Hanna: Yes. A team of British researchers followed a group of employees who work for different supervisors on on different days some of the supervisors had a really good relationship with the employees some of the supervisors had a really bad relationship with the employees and the leaders that did not have the good relationship with their employees.
Literally made their blood pressure rise a longer study the took over 15 years again pleat found that employees who had a difficult relationship with their immediate leader were thirty percent more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease is literally as serious as a heart attack.
Kirk Dando: We’ve seen a study for the Mackenzie did where they discovered we spent last year in the United States, we spent fourteen billion dollars on leadership development. And as part of that same study, they found close to forty percent of people would forgo would give up a substantial raise improving their lifestyle improving their ability to take vacations, maybe pay for college.
They would forgo raise to see their leader fired, which is just astounding.
Which tells me that: leadership development isn’t working. Is there a secret sauce? Is there a magic pill out there? Is there one thing? Probably not, but we’re spending fourteen billion dollars, and not getting the kind of results we want.
There is science that proves the gratitude. It is the jet fuel that helps cause great leaders to develop happier healthier and wealthier employees.
This may all sound, you know, overly obvious and embarrassingly simple, it may sound a little soft, but the truth, is the single best way to turn around this trend is to practice gratitude.
We instinctively know that we should be more grateful for what we have, but we rarely intentionally practice in a disciplined way that actually brings more happiness and healthiness and wealthiness to our lives. What do you think, Chip?
Chip Hanna: Yeah, Kirk, the simple fact is that life gets really busy really quickly and we’re just focused on that fire in front of us, but that’s why we’re both really excited today to announce a new project that we’ve been working on called The Leadership Gratitude Journal.
Kirk Dando: You know I’m super excited. I’ve been hounding you about this daily and you’ve done a phenomenal job helping co-author this book and really you know bringing it into reality, and I you know I want to tell you I’m, this isn’t convenient, I mean this was very sincerely: I’m very thankful that you did this.
We were sitting here a couple weeks ago, and had this idea and really, it’s a Valentine’s gift that we wanted to get out to the people that are in our lives that we are thankful for in love. It was a short fuse on getting this done, and it is a powerful, powerful tool. It came together very nicely.
The Leadership Gratitude Journal is a simple tool, really, to help you be intentional about practicing gratitude. It doesn’t take more than 5 to 10 minutes a day, and the results will literally rewire your brain to perform better, to be happier and for those that are in your life.
I don’t know what else you can ask for, Chip. What do you think?
Chip Hanna: Yeah, you know if you’re listening to this you probably think that sounds just way too good to be true. But in The Leadership Gratitude Journal, we filled it full of different studies that show just how powerful practicing gratitude is. If gratitude was a pill that you could buy on a late-night infomercial, you probably would think it was snake oil, but there’s so much science around gratitude and the science shows how it can make you healthier, happier and wealthier. Now you can get a digital copy of the Leadership Gratitude Journal today.
Kirk Dando: Chip, you and I both know this to be true: any new habit is really really hard to. So the key is just getting started. If you followed what we talked about at the beginning of this podcast where I asked you to take a moment and think about something you’re truly grateful for, you’ve already started the habit. And so we want to help make sure that you’re able to do that tomorrow and the next day and over the next 90 days. It will help rewire and build the habit and you will just become something that you do all the time.
I promise you that this will make a difference in your home and your office and in your life.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this podcast and I’m thankful that you took the time to listen.
I hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.