Dr. Paul Zak
March 5th, 2025
4 minute read
Pizza, pretzels, soda and beer. The food was delivered for the celebration after Barbara and her team completed an intense nine-month project.
Barb also loves great coffee so I also got her a gift basket with fancy coffee, biscotti, and a couple of mugs. After handing Barb the basket, I asked her to describe how she finished this project on time and on budget.
And that's when I noticed there were no "I's," only "we's." When Barb shared how her team had wrestled this project to completion, she gave credit to each team member with details.
Barb's use of "we" is a sign of a high-performance team. Barb did little by herself. Instead, she coached her team towards victory. They won as a team and then shared what they learned with the rest of the company while we devoured dinner.
Peter Drucker famously said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." A culture of appreciation recognizes that all employees voluntarily choose where to work. That choice commits people to expend cognitive and emotional labor to contribute to the organization's objectives. In every competitive industry, that is a significant commitment. Since the choice to work for an organization is voluntary, leadership should regularly say a "please" and "thank you" when talking to employees, while at the same time holding them accountable to meet milestones. Gratitude is an essential aspect of appreciation.
But, Drucker could have been wrong so let's take the opposite view. People get paid and should do their damn jobs and do them well, full stop. Plus, appreciation is so weird, just cut it out. That's what I've heard in companies that micromanage employees. For example, some police departments.
Through an unusual set of connections, I have helped measure and evolve the cultures of several police departments and have published our findings. The analysis shows that departments with high trust in both sworn officers and nonsworn staff objectively outperform their peers. In this peer-reviewed research, the correlation between appreciation and organizational trust was near-perfect, a 0.82. A culture of appreciation matters. We also demonstrated that organizational trust was strongly associated with greater engagement by colleagues, more enjoyment at work, and a substantial decrease in chronic stress. To be clear, appreciation in police departments is not just awards for extraordinary service, but consistent recognition that all staff have difficult jobs and can go elsewhere to work, or even drop out of the labor force. In the narrowest sense, organizations should establish cultures of appreciation because appreciation improves performance. Taking a broader view, I think it is also the right thing to do.
I extended this research to a nationally-representative sample of working adults in order to examine how culture affects performance more broadly. As I described in my 2017 book Trust Factor and as reported in a Harvard Business Review article I wrote, for-profit companies in the top quartile of organizational trust, compared to those in the bottom quartile, have 50% higher productivity, 22% higher innovation, employees report 56% higher job satisfaction and have 106% more energy at work, and these companies cut their job turnover rates by 50%. Culture affects how people work with each other and this directly affects both individual and organizational performance.
Unconvinced? Here's another take on the business case. There are no more babies. The US has the lowest unemployment rate in 55 years and we have been below replacement fertility since 2010. Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and many other countries are not making enough babies to supply their employment needs either. Unquestionably, the war for talent is over and talent has won. Long ago. Replacing a professional employee costs between one to one and a half times his or her annual salary. Appreciation--it cost so little. I may have spent $200 to celebrate Barb. And a "thank you" costs nothing but sincerity. Employees are how organizations create value and these valuable people need to be nurtured and appreciated.
Without a great culture, and especially a culture of gratitude and appreciation, employees at your business may soon be employees at another business and you'll be left in the lurch. So how can you be sure your culture enables colleagues to thrive? Pulse surveys? Seriously?
The SIX app from Immersion Neuroscience is the only employee benefit that recognizes that a company that celebrates hard work and accomplishments also sends employees home energized rather than burnt out. This is how sustainable businesses are built. By giving employees a tool to continuously measure how well they are thriving neurologically, the importance of appreciation can be quantified. A thank you or a party to celebrate a team's accomplishments will nearly always produce a Key Moment. When people have six or more Key Moments a day, they build emotional fitness and are truly thriving. At work, and at home.
Here's the secret: any experience that includes a social component adds to its neurologic value. When I presented Barb with her gift basket, my SIX app showed that I had two high-value Key Moments. When I asked Barb about her SIX data the next day, she had four Key Moments at our party!
We should appreciate all those around us. Most especially, employees. Celebrate wins regularly and offer employees the SIX app so they can curate their work and home lives to thrive. SIX objectively proves to employees that their effort is important to others and also creates value for themselves. They will appreciate your care for them!
Sign up below for more information about the SIX app and you will be entered in a drawing to receive one of five signed copies of my book "Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness" which has much more information on how to build high-performance cultures.