A little gratitude can go a long way.
Just how far workplace gratitude can go is at the center of a new paper by Lauren Locklear, assistant professor of management at the Jerry S. Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University.
Locklear co-wrote the paper with Meghan Kane, her former mentee who is at Temple University, and Mark Ehrhart, her former mentor who is at University of Central Florida.
“We call ourselves “Team Gratitude,” Locklear proudly said.
The article is titled “Grateful Leaders and Attentive Followers: How Grateful Attention Transmits the Cascade of Gratitude Expressions to Strengthen Coworker Relationships,” and it appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Over the course of three studies, the team examines and demonstrates how an act of gratitude from a leader can inspire a middle manager to express an act of gratitude to a subordinate.
“Gratitude has a more systemic impact compared to workplace rudeness,” she said. “It can also act as a kind of antidote to uncivil, gossiping or ostracizing work behaviors.”