No business can afford negativity in the workplace. As small businesses it is even more important that negativity isn’t given a foothold. Negativity can erode away at the foundation of the best businesses out there. It often sneaks in and infiltrates your midst and before you know it, negativity has set up camp and is planning an extended stay.
The question is…How do you get rid of negativity once it’s reared its ugly head? Usually by the time everyone is aware of it as a problem it has established deep roots and the job of addressing it has become exponentially harder. About four years ago our office and the office of our, then sister company, had a lot of negativity in the workplace. Not that the overall environment was negative but there just seemed to be so much attention and focus on negative aspects. The negative was spotted and commented on from the client who "just didn’t get it” to in-house communications with each other. Admittedly some of the negativity was caused by staff that has since left our employment.
As the CEO of the company, both of them at the time, I felt it was absolutely necessary to alter the negative mind-set that had somehow taken hold. Telling everyone to quit being negative was simply not going to work, if anything it would just create more. I’m a firm believer in the theory that what you focus on grows. I didn’t just want everyone to quit being negative I wanted to replace it with something that would re-energize us and create a positive mind-frame, thus the birth of our Gratitude Journal.
I decided that when our team came back from holiday vacation that following January I was going to require a new document, the Gratitude Journal, from each employee at our Monday weekly staff meetings. That first Monday in January came and I read this quote from Melodie Beattie to the staff, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order and confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” It embodied the goal of the Gratitude Journal idea and became the foundation for change.
Each employee in our company has a standard 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper with the universal symbol of gratitude shaded into the background like a watermark and a simply numbering of 1-5. Each week the employees are to write out 5 things they were grateful for the previous week. The idea is for them to be thinking and looking throughout each work day for what they are grateful for. The start of every staff meeting we go around the room and read our gratitude’s out loud for the previous week.
Reading the Gratitude Journal entries out loud to each other has helped us become a stronger team and understand each other better. It has brought up many discussions that might not ever have happened without the open reading and we are all genuinely happier and well balanced at work. Often employees have more than five things to be grateful for and at the start of this year we added our Weekly Intention to the bottom of the journal entry. Announcing our intention for the week helps us stay accountable to each other and fine tune what our focus needs to be on for the week.
Over the course of the last three years I’ve seen some amazing changes in our team due to this process. Looking for things to be grateful for has shifted everyone’s focus to a positive outlook on life and business. Each individual has gained the skill of turning negatives into positives and finding the thing to be grateful for in any situation. This is not to say we aren’t human, we all have our negative moments still but we don’t camp in negativity and we are much faster at helping each other pull out of those moments when they come instead of just joining in.
Everyone has something to be grateful for and the more you focus on what you are grateful for the easier it is to focus on the area in your life or business that needs to become more positive. It was a simply change that was easy to implement and we found it effected every aspect of our lives. Try it….you just may develop an attitude of gratitude and transform your life and business.
Learn more about the author, Trina Bol.
Great article and good idea, Trina. I am a very small company of one person. Last night when I was labeling product, I was grouching to myself about how long it was taking. When you turn it around, my product is selling which is the reason that I was labeling new. I am going to start a gratitude journal right away.
The first thing I am grateful for this week, is this article!
Thank you.
This article makes me want to get a staff, just so we can enjoy each others joy!
Hi Trina - what a great way to use a Gratitude Journal! Each night I do my own personal gratitude journal and it has made a huge difference in my life.
Recently, I at the end of my work day, I think of the most challenging event of the day, and then ask myself why I am grateful that happened. I always find a huge learning buried there. Now I will start to use the gratitude journal to capture those thoughts.
Thanks again! Jen
Trina, Honestly the gratitude paper seemed a little 'fluffy' to me for the workplace... but if it's working... it's working so congrats!
You are right, what you focus on does grow. Attitudes are catchy. Having negative staff people, and even negative clients can somehow darken the overall atmosphere.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Krista
Hi Trina,
I agree, we should be careful the way we talk and treat each other within a company. Being negative doesn't stay hidden. It comes across to customers, vendors and anyone that has contact with the company.
I think it's very important that this change comes from the top down. The president must be involved and be fully supportive of this change.
I believe you get more out of life if you have a positive attitude and are willing to help others.
Kirsten
Thanks for all your comments. I think the biggest lesson we learned regardless of how we did it was that once you start looking for the positive things going on around you the more you find.
Loved the article. I am an author and the marketing is a lonely job..mostly on computer and searching for speaking gigs... However I know from experience the act of doing does pay off.
carol stanley author of "For Kids 59.99 and Over"
Trina, this is a wonderful read. It has inspired me to blog today about gratitude. Looking forward to finally meeting you! Lori
Trina,
I remember when you first told me about just initiating this new weekly ritual, and it's so exciting to hear about the results years later!
I love that this simple action has also spilled over into other parts of everyone's life, and the staff is accountable to each other.
As a coach and HR professional, I often hear people talk about whether or not spirituality and business can coexist. Since gratitude is really a spiritual practice, you've illustrated that the answer is YES.
Thank you for sharing this. Whether we are a company of 1 or of many, all of us can make a deliberate practice of being grateful and looking for what's going right in any given experience or situation.
It is truly amazing to me so how quickly the practice of gratitude can change a person's outlook on life - and business.
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