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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