Ep. 180: Jim Rafferty - The Business of Gratitude

Contact Jim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimrafferty1/

Full Episode Transcript:
Neha: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Neha Lagoo Ratnakar bringing you episode 180 of our series. In today's episode, our guest is Jim Rafferty. Jim is a marketing and communications consultant and the author of Leader by Accident. My cohost Mitch Roshong, and Jim Rafferty talk about how cultivating a gratitude mindset helps transform leaders and organizations in extraordinary ways. To hear more let's head over to the conversation now.

Mitch: (00:50)
So Jim, in your opinion, what are the most common characteristics of, or needed attributes for effective leadership in today's business environment?

Jim: (01:00)
You know, I think the first word that would jump to mind would be empathy and that's always a quality we've needed in leaders to be sure. I think we need it more than ever before here over these last couple of years as we've all really had to adapt on the fly to a lot of changing circumstances. And all of a sudden your concern as a business leader is, you know, not only what your employee, your team member is doing in the office, but now whether they're also trying to, you know, homeschool their kids and take care of the dogs or an aging parent or whatever, as they're trying to work from home and get stuff done. And I think that's called for an enormous amount of flexibility and empathy on the part of leaders in the business environment.

Mitch: (01:43)
And now oftentimes leaders are looked to for direction, right? They are providing others with information that they will ultimately need to adapt to, but this flexibility and adaptability, agility really is starting to shift into the role of the leader. So, again, in your words, how, or why do leaders need to be even more adaptable today?

Jim: (02:10)
I think the, the sort of 10,000 foot view of leadership and, you know, this predates the pandemic, but maybe the pandemic sort of accelerated it is, you know, however many years ago we wanna look, the leader was the boss and he, or she told you what to, and you did it. And if you didn't, then there were consequences. And I think, you know, in a lot of cases, hopefully it's become more of a two-way thing. So, you know, the leader is not only talking, but listening and, you know, involving and engaging the team members and getting that feedback that ultimately is gonna make it a better place. And it's become less of a, my way. I hope it's become less of a, my way or the highway sort of situation because, you know, the saying that's the same, you know, then or now I think is, you know, people join companies and they quit bosses and they will quit bosses.

Jim: (03:02)
We've seen this in the great resignation here, you know, dating back to, I guess, you know, November we're really the biggest numbers, but, you know, when they feel like they're not being listened to when they feel like they're not being engaged and, you know, in this whole remote work setting, that's become even a bigger challenge because we, we lose is that face to face thing, we lose the nonverbals that we would get if somebody's sitting across a desk from us and it just, it takes a little extra work and to reach a little deeper into the empathy bucket, so to speak if you're a leader.

Mitch: (03:33)
And, you know, once a leader adapts, right. And, you said it, empathy is something that has always been important, but it's more of that adapting and their style, their behaviors, everything you just mentioned. I think one of the most important traits that we discussed previously that I would really like to hear your perspective on a little bit deeper is the idea of gratitude. So from the leader's perspective, again, it's more often, I believe historically, it's the employees that are grateful and express gratitude for the opportunities that are given to them. But from the leader's perspective, what does gratitude really look like?

Jim: (04:15)
Yeah, my book, Leader by Accident, I would say has three main themes. And one is about, you know, challenging yourself and getting out of your comfort zone. Two is about the, the language that we use as leaders and, you know, the impact that that can have on organizational culture. And three is this sense of gratitude that you bring up. And that was a recurring theme in the messages I gave to the young men of our boy scout troop in my five years as a scout master, because, you know, it's hard and we tend as a society to default to the other way, right? If you scroll through your social media feed or you look at anything political, right, it's this relentless stream of negativity that just seems to keep getting worse and worse and worse. So I think, you know, even setting leadership aside just as human beings is so important because it just, it just changes the way we go through our days and it takes a little work.

Mitch: (05:07)
And now, you know, it's a, it's a quality that I think is most valuable when, you know, you mentioned everybody kind of buys into it, right? So in, in terms of gratitude, how do you get people to stop with that negativity, take the step back. How do you cascade this thought process or this feeling, this emotion down throughout the entire organization? So it's much more of a positive culture and workplace for everybody.

Jim: (05:38)
I think being a leader in that sense is a lot like being a parent in that we can, and we do say things and teach lessons and tell people things and hope that the, you know, it will sink in and all but much more than that. They're going to observe what we do and how we comport ourselves and the way that we respond to things. And so if we want to display a sense of gratitude, you know, if we want our employees to display a sense of gratitude, we have to start by doing that ourselves. And a lot of that I think comes in the sense in the way that we respond to things. I mean, how do we respond when things go wrong? Are we the unflappable leader, or do we fly into immediately, you know, end of the world panic mode. And, you know, obviously the former is the preferred choice. If you're leading a team.

Mitch: (06:25)
And now I, I kind of, you know, flip flopped some of the conversation that we were gonna have here. But now that we understand how things kind of get across the organization, we have that buy-in once there is this positive culture and ideally the leader is setting the tone. What are the benefits of a workplace that embraces gratitude? What are, what, what does that look like from a team perspective?

Jim: (06:52)
I think that if we're cultivating a positive environment and gratitude certainly is a big part of that, you know, and sort of what we've already talked about a little bit in terms of, you know, we've adapted as leaders and we are engaging our team members and we're being positive, and they know that a ton of bricks isn't gonna come down on their head with every little mistake they made. In other words, that they are trusted, right. Then what happens typically is they start to do the things we say we want our employees to do, right. They start to think outside the box and they start to, you know, quote unquote, act like owners of the company and think about the bigger picture beyond their own little checklist of things they do. And they stop running to you, the manager or the leader to cross every T and dot every I, because you know, what they're doing is covering their own behind.

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