Science tells us that the practice of gratitude is great for our personal wellbeing as well as for anyone who we give thanks to or show gratitude towards in other ways. This week, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving which is centred on the practice of gratitude so what better time to explore the Gratitude App – Sharetree – and ways that you can use it to support your practice of gratitude.  

Giving gratitude context 

Have you ever had  someone say “thank you” or “great job” or something else that is acknowledging and complimentary and then scratched your head and asked yourself “why did they say that?”  or “what exactly are they grateful for?”

Do you think that, when you express gratitude, it would be helpful both to you and to the recipient to provide the context? For example, instead of just saying “thank you for a great job”, what difference would it make if I say “thank you for doing the research and coming up with  the plan. I really appreciate the work that you put into it and the clarity in your presentation, That made the decision much easier for us to make.” 

It makes a lot of difference, doesn’t it? It is better for both my appreciation of the strengths of that person and for their feeling acknowledged for those strengths and the positive impact that they have had by applying them.

That is just one of the things that the Sharetree App helps you to do.

What is Sharetree?

Sharetree is a platform designed to develop positive workplace cultures at organisational, team and individual level through the practice of gratitude and strengths acknowledgement.

It utilises a strengths framework from the Virtues Project that includes 120 different character strengths sitting in 12 groups – purposefulness, hope, wisdom, truthfulness, trustworthiness, love, compassion, courage, respect, tolerance, mindfulness and self-discipline.

Each of the 120 character strengths has a Character Card describing what it is and what behaviours exemplify that strength in practice. That which helps us to understand the strength and relate it to what we see in the words and actions of ourselves and others…and then provide properly contextualised feedback.

You can download the Sharetree App and access video tutorials ion using it at https://sharetree.org/sharetree-app/

Ways to use Sharetree

There are a number of ways in which you can use the Sharetree platform, the app, the character cards and other programs that Sharetree offers – here are 6  of them::

1. Know your own strengths: learn what your character strengths are by using the Character Self Profiling tool on the app and then explore the ways that they manifest in your everyday life.
2. Undertake the 30 Day Character Growth exercise: build gratitude practice into your daily schedule at a time that works for you. 
3. Journal your daily character experiences: use the Gratitude Journal facility on the App to embed your own gratitude practice and build a record that you can access and reflect on at any time.
4. Acknowledge another’s character strengths in action: send someone a genuine and timely expression of gratitude in the context of the character strengths that the person showed and how they did that to give your feedback powerful context. That leaf when accepted will attach to that person’s personal Sharetree which shows the strengths that others are acknowledging them for.
5. Learn from your own and other’s personal Sharetrees: each individual has their own personal Sharetree which shows the strengths that they have been acknowledged for. Review yours to see what is working well and where you might have opportunities for improvement and review other’s Sharetrees to see haw you might learn from each other.
6. Form a group with your colleagues: by sharing your strengths practices with each other, you can encourage each other’s participation, learn from each other and even start to explore common strengths and opportunities for development for the group.

Sharetree also offers a range of corporate programs which can be used to develop and measure character-centred workplace cultures and psychologically safe workplaces.

PosWork Founder, Peter Maguire, is an accredited Sharetree Culture Practitioner.

If you would like to explore the ways that we might be able to help you to make yours a great workplace centred on gratitude, please call us on 1300 108 488 or email info@poswork.com.au.