According to Peter Bonanno, director of program development at the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), a non-profit that offers training in mindfulness and emotional intelligence to individuals and teams, Bonanno has found that, to most people, practicing gratitude is appealing, practical, feel-good, and fun.

“I see gratitude as a gateway drug to empathy in that it’s very positive, it’s easy to get started with,” Bonanno says. Being grateful to someone who has helped you means that you recognize the intentions and effort behind their actions, which is good practice for the “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” involved in empathy.

If we continue this valuable theme of gratitude being a gateway – then we’re witnessing not just the immediate short-term effects of being nice, showing appreciation and thanks – but we are cultivating a much greater landscape long-term, as an environment where empathy can grow and flourish.

In an organizational culture where empathy is practiced, the magnitude of happiness, success, job-satisfaction and performance follows. Recent studies using various tools to develop team cohesiveness and bonding reveal that empathy leads to measured enhanced communication.

Can you imagine the benefits of your corporate communication when it is at its best?

When people listen to one another?

Where people understand one another?

Where people genuinely celebrate one another?

If gratitude directly creates empathy than it is an essential component to every company mission.

At Corporate Gift we’ve taken the first step for you - by creating a platform that enables you to translate gratitude into a VERB, not just a noun. Gratitude can’t just be something you feel, but rather it becomes a way of living – something you do.

If you want to create teams and staff that are empathetic, people who function at the highest levels of performance, people who drive change, embrace risks and work so well together, and you know that strengthening emotional intelligence is a fundamental key, gratitude throughout the organization, from leaders to stakeholders, employees to management, customers to clients – at every level, gratitude has the incredible ability to elevate and transform your entire working world. Gratitude becomes the gateway to empathy – which becomes a palace for people to feel fulfilled, achieving brilliantly together, ultimately working with greater purpose and meaning. Lead down this path – you’ll arrive at wonderful destinations!