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Ken Clark, the founder and practice director of Chenal Family Therapy of Little Rock, delivered a timely talk Nov. 16 to the Rotary Club of Little Rock. His topic: gratitude, and how daily expressions of thanks can overpower feelings of fear and anxiety, leading to creative thinking and overall better performance in the workplace and our personal lives.
Clark said there are many things to be afraid of in our current business and political environment, putting our brains in a “constant state of measuring risk.”
He said that when we’re afraid, the fight, flight or freeze part of our brain takes over, overriding the prefrontal cortex, the place where we create, strategize and conduct complex thinking.
“We know that when that front part of the brain gets knocked offline, we lose out on the best part of who we are,” Clark said, and whatever we can do to mitigate fear will leave us better prepared to confront the challenges we face in our business and home lives.
I interviewed Clark last year to talk about the enormous stress executives and business decision-makers were under in the early days of the pandemic.
At the time, our fears were existential, both in terms of our businesses — will it survive? — and our personal health — will I survive?
Business leaders at all levels were faced with unprecedented leadership challenges, having to make quick decisions based on fast-changing and incomplete information — and manage employees dealing with intense personal stresses outside the workplace.
Many leaders weren’t up to the task. Some were overwhelmed and paralyzed. Some downplayed the threat of the pandemic. Others were bad communicators or willfully opaque when dealing with employees.
In our interview, Clark was clear about how good leaders should confront fear in a time of crisis by explaining four simple things to employees:
- What we know.
- What we don’t know.
- What we’re doing about it right now.
- How I — as your leader — am doing.
Clark said No. 4 is often neglected but important. In times of crisis and fear, employees are seeking credibility — truth — from their leaders. And one truth is, “I’m worried. I’m scared, too.” A leader who expresses those fears tells her team that she’s right there with them, building credibility and showing them that they are not alone.
Things have improved since 2020. The fear we felt then was immediate and all consuming. Now we live with fear of a different kind — not so immediate but ambient, a dull ache in the background. At Rotary last month, Clark said that since the pandemic, 40% of us feel clinical anxiety or depression over any given seven-day period — an increase from the 25% to 30% pre-pandemic.
That’s a drag on businesses trying to make it out of the pandemic fog. To executives and managers, a leadership team that lives in fear is one that’s less creative and doesn’t take chances, leaving a company or an organization without the very thing it needs in uncertain times: innovative thinking.
Clark believes deliberate, daily expressions of gratitude are key to combating fear because they make us and those around us feel better about themselves and more secure. And that allows us to re-engage with the prefrontal cortex, the source of our most important thinking.
From that standpoint, Clark believes there’s real ROI in the act of expressing gratitude. These expressions can be private — writing them in a journal or contemplating them silently — or shared — a spoken or written expression of thanks to a mentor, colleague or direct report. Private thankfulness can be a comfort, but the real return is in those shared expressions. Clark said that when people know we’re thankful, they tend to pay it back — a boomerang effect of gratitude and goodwill.
Clark challenges business leaders to practice deliberate gratitude among their leadership teams, with vendors, with employees. In doing so, we can quell the fears that stifle “the best part of who we are.”
It’s worth a try. We need the best now more than ever.
You can watch last year’s interview with Clark at arkansasbusiness.com/gratitude.