“When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I learned to survive through everything.” — Waymond Wang, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
There’s a scene in Everything Everywhere All at Once that has quietly lodged itself in the minds of anyone who caught it, and it’s not one of the wild multiverse action sequences. It’s a quiet moment with Waymond, the seemingly bumbling husband who turns out to be the most philosophically sophisticated person in the entire film. His philosophy isn’t passive or soft. It’s a deliberate, practised choice to look for what is good, even when everything around him is unravelling. And if you work with people, as a manager, a leader, an HR professional, or simply someone trying to show up well in a team, then that philosophy hits closer to home than you might expect.
Gratitude isn’t about pretending everything is fine at work. It’s a communication skill, and like every other communication skill, it can be learned, practised, and coached.
The Numbers Are Hard to Ignore
Before we get into the ‘how’, let’s sit with the ‘why’ for a moment, because the research on gratitude in the workplace has become compelling in recent years.
A 2025 survey of 1.3 million employees by Great Place to Work found that when people have the opportunity to receive recognition for their work, they are 60% more likely to give extra effort. The same data identified recognition as the second biggest driver of productivity and discretionary effort across organisations. And employees who feel recognised are 2.2 times more likely to drive innovation, which is a remarkable return on something as simple and low-cost as expressing appreciation.
Yet despite all of that evidence, a 2025 Calm Health study found that only 23% of workers say they feel meaningfully recognised at work, and just 15% say their manager regularly thanks them, down from 20% the year before. There is a widening gap between what we know gratitude does for people and what leaders are actually doing about it.
Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant has suggested that part of the reason gratitude is so underused at work is that people don’t like to admit they needed help in the first place, and thanking someone is a tacit acknowledgement that you couldn’t do it all alone. That’s a communication and culture problem, not a personal one, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that great training addresses head-on.
What Gratitude Actually Does to the Brain
This isn’t just about feeling good in the moment. Gratitude has measurable neurological effects that matter in a professional context.
When we practise gratitude regularly, the brain increases its production of dopamine and serotonin, the chemicals most associated with mood regulation and emotional resilience. Studies using fMRI brain scans have shown that gratitude activates the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for decision-making, emotional regulation, and empathy – three qualities that sit at the very heart of effective leadership and courageous conversations.
A 2024 meta-analysis of 145 studies across 28 countries confirmed that gratitude interventions produce measurable increases in wellbeing, with participants who scored higher on gratitude showing significantly better mental health outcomes. And for those working in high-pressure environments, a 21-day gratitude journaling intervention studied in healthcare professionals showed that stress significantly decreased after the programme and remained lower twelve weeks later. The participants who had reported the highest levels of work-related stress at the start were the ones who benefited most.
Gratitude as a Leadership Communication Skill
This is where it gets interesting for anyone thinking about leadership development, team coaching, or communication skills training. Gratitude is not simply a mood or a mindset. It is something you express, and how you express it changes everything.
Research consistently shows that generic recognition doesn’t land in the same way that specific, timely, personalised appreciation does. Telling someone “good job” is not the same as saying “I noticed how you reframed that difficult conversation with the client on Tuesday and turned it around – that took real skill.” The second version requires you to have been present, to have paid attention, and to have taken the time to communicate what you actually saw. That is a skill. It sits alongside feedback skills, courageous conversations, and presenting with impact as one of the core communication capabilities that separates average managers from genuinely great leaders.
The art of feedback and the practice of gratitude are more closely related than most training programmes acknowledge. Both require specificity, courage, and the willingness to make someone feel genuinely seen. And both can be rehearsed, refined, and made into habits through the right kind of experiential learning.
How to Actually Build a Gratitude Practice at Work
Knowing gratitude matters and actually doing something about it are two different things. Here are some approaches that research and experience suggest genuinely work.
Start with yourself before you try to shift the culture. Leaders who adopt a personal gratitude practice first are far more credible and consistent when they model it for others. Whether that’s a brief journaling habit, a weekly reflection on what went well, or simply a conscious pause during team meetings to notice what you appreciate, the internal shift comes before the external one.
Make recognition specific and timely. The research is clear that vague appreciation has a fraction of the impact of specific recognition delivered close to the moment. Think about what you actually observed, name it clearly, and say it directly to the person. This is courageous communication in its simplest form, and it’s a skill worth practising.
Build it into existing rhythms rather than adding something new. Start team meetings with a brief round of appreciation, not as a forced ritual, but as a genuine cultural habit. Create a dedicated channel in your team’s messaging platform for recognition. Acknowledge effort alongside outcomes, not just results. These small, consistent habits compound over time, and the research is clear that gratitude practices are most effective in workplaces where appreciation is already embedded as a norm rather than an occasional gesture.
Use role-play and rehearsal to get comfortable. One of the most common barriers to expressing gratitude or giving positive feedback at work is simply not knowing what to say or how to say it without it sounding awkward or performative. Practising these conversations in a safe, coached environment – the way actor coaches work with leaders to rehearse high-stakes scenarios, removes the hesitation and replaces it with genuine, natural expression. The same applied improvisation techniques that build agility and team trust in workshops also loosen the social rigidity that stops people from saying what they actually appreciate about each other.
Personalise how you recognise people. Not everyone wants public praise. Some people find a private, handwritten note far more meaningful than a shout-out in front of the whole team. Getting to know how each person on your team prefers to be recognised is itself an act of leadership presence and empathy, and it signals that your appreciation is genuine rather than formulaic.
The Ripple Effect Nobody Talks About Enough
One of the more fascinating findings in the gratitude research is that its benefits extend beyond the person giving and receiving appreciation. A study found that people who simply witnessed someone being thanked became measurably more helpful and collaborative themselves, which means that a single act of genuine recognition in a team meeting can shift the energy and behaviour of everyone in the room.
This is why gratitude isn’t just a personal wellbeing strategy. It’s a team culture lever. When recognition is the norm rather than the exception, employees are seven times more likely to report meaningful workplace connections, and up to ten times more likely to say they feel a genuine sense of belonging. Those are the kinds of numbers that show up in retention data, engagement scores, and the quality of the imperative conversations teams are willing to have with each other.
Gallup research found that well-recognised employees were 45% less likely to have left their job two years later. In a labour market where replacing a good person costs an enormous amount in time, money, and momentum, that is a genuinely significant business case for building gratitude into your leadership communication training.
The Strategic Choice
Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once doesn’t choose to see the good side of things because life is easy or because he’s naive about the chaos around him. He does it because he has decided, deliberately, that it’s the most powerful way to influence what happens next. That’s not passive. That’s an active, practised, strategic orientation.
The same is true in the workplace. Leaders who build gratitude into the way they communicate, give feedback, run meetings, and develop their people aren’t wearing rose-tinted glasses. They are making a conscious investment in the conditions that allow their teams to do their best work, have their most honest conversations, and stay engaged through the inevitable hard stretches.
And, like every other communication skill, it doesn’t require a personality transplant. It just requires practice, good coaching, and the willingness to start.
At Peers and Players, we work with managers, leaders, HR professionals, and presenters across Australia and the USA to build the communication skills that matter most – from the art of feedback and courageous conversations to presenting with impact and individual coaching. If you’re thinking about how to build a more connected, communicative, and grateful team culture, book a free consultation and let’s talk about what that could look like for your organisation.