Why Gratitude Fails
Stop Thanking People and Start Trusting Them
Most leaders think they’re good at gratitude.
They say “thank you” or “good job” in meetings. They send appreciation notes. They highlight wins in team emails. And yet, when you ask their people if they feel genuinely valued, the disconnect is staggering.
That gap isn’t about effort. It’s about misunderstanding what gratitude actually does—and why most expressions of it fail to create the outcome leaders think they’re building.
Here’s the problem: gratitude without consequence is just performance etiquette.
The Gratitude Paradox
Behavioral economics teaches us something counterintuitive about recognition: the more frequently people receive praise, the less weight each instance carries. It’s called hedonic adaptation—we normalize even positive feedback when it becomes routine background noise.
But here’s where it gets interesting: specificity doesn’t solve the adaptation problem either.
You can name someone’s exact contribution, describe the difficulty of their work, and connect it to mission impact—and they’ll still forget it by next week. That’s because our brains don’t encode praise as memorable unless it’s paired with behavioral change.
Recognition becomes meaningful only when it alters what happens next: who gets developed, who gets autonomy, who gets trusted with complexity.
The real question isn’t whether you expressed gratitude. It’s whether someone can see that you value them through what you do differently afterward.
Three Mechanisms That Make Gratitude Stick
Most leaders treat gratitude as output: something you say or write. But the psychology of recognition suggests it’s actually input—it has to feed back into your decision-making to become real.
Gratitude as Information Transfer
Effective recognition teaches people which behaviors matter most—not through words, but through resource allocation.
When a rep solves a complex objection using creative problem-solving, don’t just praise it. Bring them into the next strategic account planning session. Their skill just became a teaching asset.
When a teacher transforms a struggling student’s trajectory, don’t just acknowledge it. Ask them to lead PD on their approach. Their insight just became infrastructure.
Translation: Gratitude that doesn’t transfer expertise wastes the opportunity to scale what’s working.
Gratitude as Trust Signal
People don’t fully believe praise until you demonstrate you’re willing to stake something on it.
That means changing a process because of someone’s insight. Adjusting a strategy based on their objection. Giving them decision-making authority you previously held. When gratitude costs you something—time, control, the comfort of your existing approach—it stops being polite and starts being credible.
Another “great insight!” email is easy to send and easy to forget. Restructuring how your team operates because someone earned your trust? That’s the kind of recognition people remember.
Translation: Gratitude that doesn’t risk anything—your time, your ego, your previous assumptions—registers as hollow.
Gratitude as Cognitive Load Redistribution
This is the one most leaders miss entirely.
Real appreciation means taking work off someone’s plate, not adding more responsibility as a “reward” for excellence. High performers don’t need more assignments. They need protected time to think, create, or recover.
When someone delivers exceptional work, the instinct is to pile on more. But cognitive load research tells us that sustained performance requires recovery intervals. If your gratitude looks like more tasks, you’re not recognizing excellence—you’re punishing it.
Translation: Gratitude that doesn’t adjust workload distribution isn’t gratitude. It’s exploitation with a compliment attached.
The Year-End Test
As you head into the holidays and planning for next year, here’s the diagnostic:
Pull up your calendar from the past three months.
Scan for the people you’ve said you appreciate. Now answer:
Did I create space for their professional development as a result?
Did I change a process or decision based on their input?
Did I protect their time or energy in a way I didn’t before?
If the answers are mostly “no,” your gratitude was transactional. It felt nice. It cost you nothing. And it probably meant less than you think.
Before You Write That Thank You Note…
I’m writing this the week of Thanksgiving—not because the calendar told me to reflect, but because this is when leaders tend to batch-process appreciation. A flurry of notes. A team lunch. A company-wide “gratitude moment.”
None of that is bad. But none of it matters if it doesn’t change what you do in January.
If you’re going to express gratitude this week, pair it with a commitment:
“Thank you for how you handled that difficult negotiation. I want you leading our next RFP strategy session because your instincts are sharper than mine.”
“I appreciate how you’ve mentored newer team members. Let’s build that into your formal role and adjust your individual targets accordingly.”
“You’ve carried an unfair load this quarter. I’m removing X from your plate for Q1 so you have bandwidth to focus on what you do best.”
Gratitude without action is noise. Gratitude that reshapes how you lead is culture.
A Word to You
If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re choosing to think more carefully about how you lead, sell, teach, or build. That choice—to engage with ideas that challenge conventional approaches—is something I don’t take lightly.
Your time is your most finite resource. The fact that you spend any of it here means something to me. Your replies, your questions, your pushback—they’ve sharpened how I think and write.
So here’s what I’m doing differently because of you: I’m investing more time in longer-form frameworks that go deeper than surface-level tactics. I’m bringing in more research and unexpected domains because you’ve shown me that’s what resonates. And I’m being more direct in challenging bad advice because you’ve proven you can handle it.
That’s not seasonal sentiment. That’s behavioral change.
Thank you for making this work better by engaging with it.
Have a meaningful Thanksgiving.
— Dominic