If you’re listening to this around Thanksgiving, you’re probably hearing the word gratitude everywhere. For many people, gratitude is a journaling prompt, a list of three things before bed, or a pretty quote on Instagram.
But for leaders, gratitude can be something much more powerful.
Gratitude isn’t just a feeling you jot down in a notebook. It’s the way you show up for yourself. It’s how you show up for others. It’s how you carry yourself at home, at work, and in every tough moment you navigate.
Gratitude can actually change your leadership identity—your energy, your presence, your self-awareness, and your capacity to lead over the long haul.
In this post, we’ll explore gratitude as a leadership advantage and walk through four ways it reshapes:
- Your state (survival mode vs. grounded)
- Your awareness (how you see yourself as a leader)
- Your presence (how others experience you)
- Your energy and output (what you can truly sustain)
The Thanksgiving Story You Didn’t Hear in School
Most of us grow up with a simplified story of Thanksgiving: Pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a peaceful meal one day and calling it good.
But there’s another layer to how Thanksgiving became a national holiday—and it holds a meaningful lesson for leaders.
Sarah Josepha Hale, an author and editor of one of the most influential magazines of the 1800s, spent 17 years campaigning for a national day of gratitude. She wrote letters, published articles, and lobbied politicians nonstop because she believed that a day dedicated to gratitude could bring the country together during a time of deep division.
In the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln finally agreed. In 1863, he issued a proclamation declaring Thanksgiving a nationwide holiday.
Why does this matter for your leadership?
Because meaningful change often happens because one person is willing to advocate for unity, consistency, and connection long before anyone else sees the value.
If you’re the kind of leader who hears “gratitude” and leans in to learn how it can help you, your team, and your family—you are that person.
You’re doing the slow, steady work of shaping your leadership from the inside out, even if no one else fully understands the value yet. And that work will change things—for you, your team, and the people closest to you.
What Most People Get Wrong About Gratitude
When most of us hear about gratitude, we think:
- Gratitude journaling
- Writing three things we’re thankful for
- Using gratitude as a self-care or grounding practice
And that can be helpful. Gratitude journaling has become a common recommendation in personal development and leadership circles, and there are plenty of studies to back it up.
But maybe you’ve tried it and felt stuck.
You sit down with your notebook and write:
- “I’m thankful for my husband.”
- “I’m thankful for my kids.”
- “I’m thankful for my home.”
And then you write the same kinds of things tomorrow. And the day after that.
It gets repetitive.
So you try getting more specific:
“I’m grateful my family of four sat down and played cards and no one fought.”
“I’m thankful that one beautiful tree on my walk made me smile.”
“I’m thankful every sunset reminds me of my mom.”
That’s deeper and more meaningful… but for many leaders, even that isn’t where the real transformation happens.
From Journaling to Active Appreciation
There’s another layer of gratitude that hits differently:
Active appreciation.
Active appreciation is when you don’t just think about what or who you’re grateful for—you actually tell them.
- You think of someone on a random Tuesday.
- You smile because they crossed your mind.
- And instead of overthinking it, you text them.
“Hey, I was thinking about you today and I’m so grateful for you. Here’s why. Happy Tuesday.”
Almost every time, they respond with something like:
“You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that today.”
Because most people don’t hear how much they’re appreciated. We don’t say it, and we don’t often get to hear it ourselves.
That kind of active appreciation isn’t just “nice.” It’s one of the most impactful, immediate ways to practice gratitude as a leader—and it sets the stage for how gratitude shifts your state, awareness, presence, and energy.
1. Gratitude Shifts You Out of Survival Mode
Every leader knows what survival mode feels like:
- You open your inbox and your shoulders tense instantly.
- You snap or speak too sharply because you’re stretched thin.
- You tell yourself, “I just need to make it through the day.”
That’s survival mode.
Many leaders live there for so long that they don’t even realize they’re in it—until they start to break down. That breaking point? That’s often what we label burnout.
Gratitude interrupts that cycle.
Not in a cheesy, “write three things in a journal and everything’s fixed” kind of way—but in a real, nervous-system-level way.
How Gratitude Helps Your State
Gratitude:
- Pulls you out of the “everything is urgent” mindset
- Gives you a second to pause, breathe, and reset
- Helps you assume positive intent instead of taking everything personally
- Reminds your brain: not everything is falling apart
When you practice active appreciation consistently—especially toward your team, your partner, your kids—it compounds.
You begin to:
- Appreciate your kids for being smart and healthy, even when they’re arguing (and maybe even see it as them practicing conflict).
- Appreciate your spouse for what they do for you, even if their love language isn’t yours.
- Appreciate your team for showing up, learning, and trying—even when things aren’t perfect.
Over time, gratitude gives you space to think instead of react.
It moves you slowly out of survival mode—not into perfection or permanent calm, but into a steadier state where you’re less likely to crack under pressure.
2. Gratitude Increases Your Self-Awareness
Self-awareness doesn’t happen in stillness for most leaders. It has to happen in motion—in the middle of decisions, deadlines, and family life.
Leadership moves so fast that many leaders completely stop noticing themselves. You’re:
- Reacting
- Answering questions
- Keeping your team, family, and health on track
And in the process, you lose track of:
- How empty your own tank is
- What you actually need
- What you’re proud of
- Where you’re struggling
Gratitude helps you slow down just enough to notice.
“I’m Proud of Myself” and “I Need Help”
Gratitude, practiced intentionally, helps you:
- See your own patterns
- Acknowledge when you’re struggling
- Acknowledge when you’re proud of how you handled something
And here’s the important part:
You can say “I need help” and “I’m proud of myself”
without judgment, guilt, or shame.
That’s mature self-awareness.
Appreciative Inquiry: Stop Competing With Your Past Self
There’s a concept called appreciative inquiry woven through this conversation: instead of looking at your past and saying “it was better then,” you ask:
- What made that season feel easier?
- What habits, people, or structures supported me?
- What pieces of that can I pull into my life now?
Instead of competing with your past self (“it was so much easier to keep weight off back then” or “that job was better”), you use gratitude to mine your past for usable insight.
You’re not trying to recreate identical circumstances—that’s impossible.
You’re asking:
“What can I be grateful for from that season, and how can I bring parts of it into my present?”
That’s gratitude strengthening your self-awareness in a grounded, practical way.
3. Gratitude Strengthens Your Executive Presence
We talk a lot about executive presence, but it’s not always clearly defined.
At its core:
Executive presence is how people feel when you walk into a room.
And gratitude plays a bigger role in that than most leaders realize.
Without Gratitude, Your Presence Feels Heavy
If you’re not practicing gratitude, your presence might be shaped by:
- Resentment about “yet another meeting”
- Frustration that decisions aren’t going the way you want
- Overwhelm that leads you to skip networking, mentoring, or connection opportunities
People can feel that.
They pick it up in:
- Your tone
- Your body language
- The way you talk through decisions
- Whether you show up at all
With Gratitude, Your Presence Becomes Grounded and Confident
When you lead with genuine gratitude—not performative positivity—you:
- Remember you’re thankful to even be in the room
- Feel grateful for having a seat at the table
- Appreciate the chance to influence others as a mentor
- Appreciate that you’re worthy of your mentor’s time and energy
- Feel grateful for people who think differently than you and balance your fast decisions
That internal gratitude quietly shifts everything:
- You show up calmer.
- Your energy feels more stable.
- Your presence becomes more confident and grounded, not rushed and frantic.
Gratitude doesn’t mean pretending things are easy. It means recognizing the privilege and opportunity embedded inside the hard.
4. Gratitude Expands Your Leadership Energy and Capacity
Leadership requires a level of energy most people never see.
As Desiree says at the end of every episode:
“Leadership is a privilege, but it’s also a really big responsibility.”
You don’t always have someone to vent to.
You can’t always disappear on the most important days.
Your attention, emotional bandwidth, patience, and decision-making capacity are constantly being used.
And many leaders don’t realize how drained they are until they’re running on fumes.
When your energy is depleted:
- You become short with people.
- You rush conversations to move on to the next thing.
- You avoid decisions that need to be made.
- Delegating feels hard because trusting others feels harder when you’re exhausted.
And none of that requires some big tragic event—it’s just the accumulation of unrelieved leadership pressure.
How Gratitude Supports Your Energy
Gratitude brings together all the earlier pieces:
- It stabilizes your nervous system.
- It brings your stress down to something you can manage.
- It reminds you: you’re not behind, not failing, not alone—you’re showing up and trying.
When your energy is more grounded rather than constantly bracing for impact:
- Hard conversations become less terrifying and less draining.
- You have more capacity for strategy instead of just firefighting.
- Your patience lasts longer.
- Your team and family get a steadier, more consistent version of you.
Gratitude won’t give you more hours in the day.
But it will give you more capacity inside the hours you already have.
How to Actually Practice Gratitude as a Leader (Without Journaling)
Here’s what this is not:
- It’s not about forcing a gratitude journal if it doesn’t work for you.
- It’s not about pretending everything is fine.
- It’s not about using gratitude to cover up hard things or bypass real emotions.
You’re allowed—and encouraged—to feel and express the hard things.
Instead, start with this:
One Moment of Real Gratitude Per Day
Just one moment. That’s it.
It might look like:
- Noticing: “I’m so grateful I got off the couch, put on my shoes, and caught that sunset on my walk.”
- Appreciating someone on your team: “I really appreciated how calm you stayed in that conversation. It wasn’t easy, and it could have gone very differently. Thank you.”
- Appreciating your own growth: “I’m grateful I handled that better than I would have six months ago.”
- Acknowledging contribution in a meeting: “Thank you for asking that question—it made the meeting more interesting and made the decision easier.”
- Telling yourself the most important sentence of all: “I’m proud of myself for how I showed up today.”
And when someone comes to mind:
Text them.
Tell them you’re grateful for them.
Give a specific reason.
It doesn’t have to be long. It just has to be real.
The more you practice, the more natural it becomes—and the more impact it has. Gratitude compounds.
A Final Word of Appreciation
Gratitude isn’t just a habit.
It’s a leadership advantage.
It shapes:
- Your state (out of survival mode)
- Your awareness (seeing your patterns with compassion)
- Your presence (how others experience you)
- Your energy (what you can sustain as a leader)
And it starts with one small, intentional moment at a time.
So this week, pick one moment:
- Acknowledge something really good in you.
- Appreciate someone else.
- Or honor the effort it took to get through a hard moment.
You might be surprised how quickly that tiny moment of gratitude begins to shift the way you lead.
You’re the boss now.
So what are you going to do with it?
