The Executive Trap - When Leadership Ends, Conspiracy Begins…

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Leadership in Society

I had the privilege of speaking at the Young Inspirators Network (YIN) conference of Sakal Media Group, where I addressed students on the “Society First” approach and leadership.

Leadership is not about titles, positions, or power—it’s about behaviors, responsibility, and the impact we create. True leaders think beyond personal success and focus on how their actions benefit society.

In today’s world, we need leaders who:

Take ownership of problems and find solutions.

Encourage collaboration instead of division.

Empower others rather than just seeking authority.

When we put society first, we build trust, drive positive change, and create a better future for everyone.

I was truly inspired by the energy and ideas of young minds at YIN. The future of leadership looks bright!

I also got the opportunity to facilitate another speaker MR. Mangal Prabhat Lodha, Minister- Skills, Employment and Entrepraunership, Maharashtra State.  

Please watch my speech >>> https://www.youtube.com/live/McTxLJS_k00?si=uvW6I2jY7mJXJlci

Managers, be a coach

Image: Representative image from internet

There are only fours dimensions which keeps employees with the organization and those are 

• Relationship with Managers,
• Culture of the organization, 
• Career opportunities available,
• Fair compensation and benefits,

You go to any organization, any country, every employee engagement survey revolves around these four dimensions. 

First dimension is more crucial as a manager is the person who contributes in the culture of the organization, developing an employee and influencing the management to have better compensation and benefits practices in the organization and explaining the logic behind merit increase every year. The priorities may change as per the age and experience demographics of the organization. Most of the managers except few top leaders, either are not empowered or trained to coach and mentor the team properly. Managers may not have all answers but they can help to reflect and get the answers. This is possible when managers start acting as coaches. As a coach managers can contribute to developing all above four dimensions. Research shows that coaching culture creates better employee engagement, higher productivity and better customer experience. 

Managers become leaders when they start coaching their employees. Coaching styles may be different as per the leadership and personality styles, but it definitely helps. Employees expect that their managers give them the feedback on how they are doing, what their development areas are and how they can do better in their day to day jobs. There are simple coaching tools managers can learn. Coaching is no longer a specialty. In the modern, super technical and competitive business world, forming a high performing team is necessary to be successful in the business. Essential imperative of creating a high performing team is a leader who is an excellent manager and a caring coach. 

If you are a manager, find some time to learn those skills; if you are the corporate leader, invest in managers to develop them as a coach. 

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. You can buy the print copy of Vitality in Human Resources on amazon. Click >> Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes    

Your signature style

The leaders in all spheres have their own unique style. The style of influencing by overall behaviour while interacting with others. In the last blog we discussed gravitas. Gravitas play a significant role in influencing. However, an essential element of gravitas is the unique signature style you have. Every person has the opportunity to demonstrate the leadership behaviour, however if you synchronize this with your signature style, the impact is more.   

Image: Pixabay

While deciding the signature style think about following building blocks,

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• How do you create your impact?

Who are you?

While answering the first question, we need to introspect and decide what leadership style you can adapt depending upon your organization, culture, and circumstances. There is a lot of research and material available on leadership, but still, you can’t decide what works for you. Leadership is about experimentation, exponentiation and learning through the process. You may have your experiences where you have demonstrated those behaviours which had a long lasting impact. Learn from those and decide your signature style based on those experiences. 

Self-awareness is the bottom-line. Assess your leadership style and reflect on those elements of leadership. You may be an authoritative, democratic, coaching, or situational leader. Just think, is that style helping you to create the right impact? If not, start working on those behaviours. There is no right or wrong in leadership styles but it is always good to understand what works for you in a given circumstance.

What do you do?

Just imagine you are observed in a lab by senior leaders, team, peers etc in your organization. You are constantly watched, and your behaviour is recorded, what will you do? Perhaps you will become cautious, perhaps stressful, and maybe you will make some mistakes. This exactly happens in the real world, you are always watched and observed; opinions are made about you by the people. If you have a strong signature style, people will relate your behaviour with your style. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But this will help you how you are able to create an impact on others, positive, negative, or neutral?      

One of the elements of your style is understanding how you are likely to react to and deal with complexity and ambiguity, how you are confident while handling the crisis and difficult situation, identifying situations and contexts in which you are likely to be most successful and where your leadership skills are stretched

How do you create your impact?

One of the leaders to whom I worked always emphasized authenticity and he was absolutely right. Your every action and every word has an impact on others. People may not understand your intentions but if you have the authenticity people understand the intentions. Authenticity creates the impact. You can demonstrate that impact by your signature style. If you have leadership differentiators, acumen, ability to define the purpose for the larger group, ability to create the sense of purpose, the impact can be seen manifold.    

Developing your own signature style is an ongoing process, it starts with developing your emotional intelligence, specifically self-realization and social awareness. 

I found following quote very interesting to reflect upon,

“You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression.” Quoted by Meg Wolitzer. 

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. Income from books is used for social cause. 

Gravitas

Whenever I have interacted with leaders who are leading an enterprise, function, or any impactfull social initiatives, one of the common things I observed is their confidence, courage and composure. They have a personality which influences the followers and team members not because of their disposition but because of their ability to create the invisible aura around them.

Gravitas is an important imperative of leadership and executive presence. Most of the leaders failed because of the absence of gravitas. In simple English it is a noun, meaning dignity, seriousness, or solemnity of manner, but it is about ‘how you act’.  It has become a skill which is rarely discussed. If you learn it, gravitas will enable you to command respect and your chances of promotion to leadership roles are higher. In a new way of working the gravitas seems to be formal and may be considered as old age skill, however it is not about the formality of being serious, dignified etc but it is about the authenticity, confidence, influence, and authority by informal ways.   

Simply, gravitas means communication with confidence, influence, and authority. It is one of the elements of executive presence which leaders have to demonstrate. The fact is that people having gravitas are taken seriously, their contributions are considered important, and they are trusted and respected.

People with gravitas lead better, present better, communicate better and network better. In a competitive environment, leaders who have gravitas build stronger relationships, win more business, get promoted more quickly and get better results.

Few aspects of gravitas are as under:

• Confidence, pose and grace when you are under fire.  

• Decisiveness and demonstrating assertive behaviour. Showing you are capable of fighting and defending yourself.

• Integrity and courage to speak the truth,

• Emotional Intelligence,

• Reputation and your expertise 

• Vision and ability to align the team to the larger purpose.    

Can you develop it? And how?

You can earn it.

• As per the saying, “Knowledge is the king”. Learning to convert that knowledge in wisdom is the key step in developing your authenticity. People should feel comfortable to speak with you, come to you when they need suggestions, guidance or directions as a leader. In the modern organizations where authority works seldomly, you need to earn that respect by your knowledge and connections with the team.  

• Decide how you want to be known in professional circles, society, community etc. if somebody asks about you, how will they describe you? 

• Self -awareness is always critical in developing gravitas. Understand your strengths and blind spots and take feedback and be positive about it. 

• Work on the impact and influencing skills.

• Practice the elevator pitch.

• Identify that ‘Uniqueness’ which suits you which can be your signature style.

• Build rapport and trust by demonstrating curiosity about your colleagues’ lives outside of work or sharing something about your own. -Focus on building courage along with confidence.

• Give respect and take respect.

• Work on your overall presence.

Developing gravitas is difficult and it needs continuous efforts but you can get there if you have the right mindset and attitude.

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. Income from books is used for social cause. 

My three leadership lessons in 2020

HRTales asked me my top three leadership lessons during 2020 and I responded as follows. 

Year 2020 was a learning year for everybody. VUCA was the most abused and used jargon in the corporate world.  However, we all learnt the actual meaning of VUCA in 2020. In fact, it was a great leadership lesson.

My first lesson is 

In a crisis situation, leaders are in the line of fire from various key people in the ecosystem, customers, government, employees, stakeholders, society and political leaders. These all people may have unrealistic expectations from the leaders. This brings tremendous stress and possibly the leader may make mistakes. In such a situation, leaders need to be courageous and confident. When your employees and customers are watching you, you need to demonstrate the behaviour where they should feel comfortable working with you. By demonstrating courage and confidence, you drive the right behaviours in your team too. This includes taking a calculated risk, saying no at appropriate time, taking care of employees and simultaneously focusing on the business continuity.

Second Learning is

Leaders too have their weaknesses and blind spots. The maturity is when we recognise those weaknesses and blind spots and be vulnerable. During the pandemic we all were struggling to find the solutions to different aspects like, converting the office into home offices, motivating employees, handling infections and health issues of family and teams, customers not honouring the contracts, loss of revenue and poor cash flows. The situation was so unique that there was not one fit all solutions. In this process, i learnt that as a leader, we also have vulnerability and it is okay to admit our blind spots and lack of knowledge in certain areas.

My third leadership lesson is

Purpose, values and creating the trust capital is crucial. We understood the value of relations, human interactions, social life and also understood that we have very little needs, if we manage it properly as we did during the pandemic. Such feeling takes you to the purpose in life. As a leader, one of the imperative is to give the larger “purpose” to the team, work on the values essential for survival in business or in personal life and create the trust capital in the organization. Build the trust during good times, so that you are not alone during a crisis situation. As a leader continuously invest in building meaningful relations with employees, customers and other stakeholders in the ecosystem. You can use this trust capital to set the directions, get the alignment and commitment from employees and other stakeholders. 

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Leadership Behaviours during Covid19

Excellence in Leadership

You can debate that we need different skills while handling the situation like Covid19. Such situations are extraordinary situations. Such an event happens once in a century. VUCA is one of the words which we always use in management jargon. We always thought that we were living in the VUCA world. If you believe this, then you should be able to handle the Covid19 situation also. Has anybody applied for the course to learn how to manage the situation during Covid19? Perhaps not, but there are a lot of webinars and online sessions conducted by different organizations and forums for professionals. When you listen to all this, you don’t get much new idea how to handle the situation. The wisdom shared is about the consequences, impact etc. However, the wisdom shared about behaviours is still we always speak about. This is the same which we are learning from decades.

One of the problems with such events is people's behaviour. This is called “amygdala hijack”. “Amygdala hijack” is a personal, emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and may be out of measure with the actual event because it has triggered a much more emotional threat. In this condition our reasoning, problem-solving and even our ability to “hear” things can be impaired. This creates uncertainty & triggers emotional threat. Further there is a lot of information shared and such information may not necessarily be authentic and true. Fake news spreads like the fire. With social media controlling such news is a bigger issue. This creates further emotional tension and people start behaving weird.    

What are those skills leaders need to have during such times? I personally feel that it is not rocket science. This is a time now to execute and implement what we have learnt over a time. This is a combination of management and leadership. During such periods we need tough leadership where people need to make some tough decisions. It doesn’t mean that you should not consider the human element. During such periods, you don’t need to learn new skills but work on those skills you learned over a period and wait to implement in those.  

Do you think the following skills are new?

• Clarity of thought,
• Courage,
• Analytical skills,
• Strong Networking and influencing skills,
• Communicating difficult messages,
• Empathy,
• Strategic and tactical skills,
• Agility and
• Strong change management skills.

The approach to implement may be different. Only difference is, now it is the time to exhibit behaviours. You have to figure out those behaviours which should be visible. 

Following is the leadership guide which speaks about what you do during normal and abnormal situations. Homework for you is to identify those behaviours and work on that. 

In view of Covid19 situation, it is also a time to reflect that we need to exhibit our leadership qualities (which everybody has) to bring back the business. Please watch the presentation below.

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle; Vitality in Human Resource

Excellence in leadership from Vinod Bidwaik

Make in India… organizations need creative leadership.

Modi government has declared the “Make In India” initiative to attract the FDI in India. This is another way to create the manufacturing base in India. When the manufacturing base is increased,  lot of dependent business start flourishing, employment is generated and it helps economy to develop as spending power of consumer also increases. However this task is not easy.

Is it just making products in India or developing products with global quality? Question still remains unsolved. This question is because, there are no inventions happened in India for last few decades. However we trumpet the old saga of inventions. We call ourselves creative and innovative, but we never think about the future. There are very few innovative ideas which goes in commercialization and end without any results, because these ideas are based on “Jugad” which really is shortcut to get the results.

There are few successes which are copied by others for failures. Just see how many e-commerce companies are there around.   

The question still remains unresolved because we hardly think innovation and creativity. Students are not allowed in schools think beyond their books. Organizations propagate creativity and innovations but doesn’t give the freedom to think differently. They give the “boundary lines” and employees are expected to think within that “boundary lines.” There are innovation, R&D labs, but I doubt how much new inventions happened in those labs. These are put for branding and getting tax benefits. There are consultants who work for you to get such exemptions. With this all, if any company is really series about innovations, they mislay the focus after 3 -4 years when they don’t get expected results in spite of huge costs.

There is another problem which is related to creative leadership. Leaders need to think differently but they also need to be creative. As creativity is the catalyst for innovation, leaders who wish to promote innovation must embody creativity and create an environment that stimulates people to be more creative and innovative.

There are two approaches to creative leadership:

• To develop a creative approach to problem solving,
• To create a culture of creativity and innovation,

Creativity, however, cannot be left to chance. Much like learning any new skill, leaders need to develop or enhance their creativity skills by learning and trying on new behaviors, and putting those into practice.

I think, we need to take it next level where we don’t only sit on computer and work on simulations, developing some grades in the products or working only on analysis on the innovations which actually is happening somewhere in US or Europe.  

Creativity is contagious. Organizations need leaders who can fire up the imagination of people and create a vibrant work environment, so that people willingly contribute and come up with out of the box solutions. 

What is the source of your energy?

Lots of people ask me the common question, “how do you get the time to write blog, column in newspaper & magazines, going to colleges for interaction. How you do all this stuff?”. My simple answer is “I received the tremendous energy by doing so. This energy is necessary to do my job effectively at office. So by doing this, if I am gaining something, I have to take out some time. Perhaps, I manage my time effectively to accommodate such activities.”

People need energy to live the life fulfilling. Energy doesn't mean only physical energy, it is also related to mental energy. The status of mind created to do the tasks effectively. How many times, we think on our energy source?     

Sources of energy are different for different people. These energy sources may be as under:

1. Goal achievement: Some people are very happy when they achieve their targets /goals in their life or at job. For them this sense of achievement itself is a source of energy. 
2. Hobbies: Some people focus on their hobbies. I know few friends who are pursuing their hobbies further like music, dancing, acting, gardening, tracking, mountaineering  etc. One of my colleagues, teaches Persian Language in Universities. People get the energy by doing this and they are happy to do so. When they come at the office, they equally focus on their tasks.
3. Interacting with people: Some people are very extrovert. They like meeting new people, networking, associating with people. Meeting and interacting people is the solid source of network for them. 
4. Touring, vacations: Some people like to go on vacations regularly. This may be one or two time activity for them, but this lasts for next 6 months for them. 
5. Social Work: One of my friends is associated with NGO. He spends his time with social activities. He usually tells that he gets satisfaction by doing so and whole week he is energized. 

There are people whose energy sources is partying, gossiping etc. This helps them to be energetic during the whole week or month. 

Sometimes, we are not much aware about our energy sources, in that case, it is the time to just relax  and think… “What are that few things… by doing that, I get the sense of satisfaction, rewarding feel and by doing so I get energized?” I am sure you will definitely get some source of your energy… then?…Just do it… 

Organizational Context: In organizations, you will find different people whose energy sources are also different. If they get some energy from something and if it is aligned with your organizational values, you can also design the talent management plan & employee engagement plan as per the energy sources of people. As a line manager, identify energy sources of your team and encourage them to follow the sources… you will definitely get more productivity from your employees.  

Six Thinking Hats

The main difficulty in thinking is confusion. --Edward de Bono

Are we thinking clearly and effectively on how to handle opportunities as well as conflicts? Do we know what form of thinking is the most appropriate in each situation? How can we improve the way we think as a team? There are different ways of thinking that can help us analyse situations and reach decisions in the most productive way and with the least conflict.

We seem to be jugglers in life, striving to handle the information coming to us at an incredible speed. Our emotions are set off by thousands of stimuli. We try to reason logically about what is happening or could happen to us; we have hopeful visions, pessimistic projections and creative ideas. Also, as we face critical situations at work, we may be thinking about our children, our homes and our families. It's often difficult to focus.

The Six Thinking Hats

Developed by Dr. Edward de Bono, the Six Thinking Hats® is a simple and effective parallel thinking process that helps people become more productive, focused, and mindfully involved. You learn to separate thinking into six distinct modes, which are identified with their own metaphorical "hat." By mentally wearing and switching "hats," you change your mode of thinking.

The Six Thinking Hats will help you increase the constructive output from meetings and decrease meeting duration; explore each situation or problem and generate alternatives that go beyond obvious solutions; and use "parallel thinking" techniques to avoid adversarial thinking and encourage ideas.

To Ensure the Method Works

For the method to work, intentions must lead to performance. In one of my workshop for my employees, I share with my learning partners the phrase “intention without action does not create transformation.”
No matter how great our intentions are, if we don’t move in the right direction, our best aspirations to improve our ways of thinking are useless. De Bono asserts that intention is the first step, but we need structures to carry that intention into action and transform it into results. We need structures for our thinking process to be become as productive as possible. That’s where the six "hats" come in:

White Hat – Information: it is neutral and objective. It deals with objective facts and figures. “Do not interpret. Consider only the facts, please.” It's "pure intellect."

Red Hat – Intuition, emotions, feelings: it suggests rage, fury, passion. It provides the emotional point of view, what the person wearing this hat feels about what is being analysed. “I don’t like what I'm seeing.” “Why?” “It doesn't matter, I just don’t like it.” It's the "beating heart."

Black Hat – Criticism, carefulness, pessimism: it is sad and negative. It covers the negative aspects of why something cannot be done. “This doesn't fit. This won’t work because…” It's the "devil’s advocate."

Yellow Hat – Benefits, values, profits: it is happy and positive. It optimistically covers hope, stimulating positive thought, finding the advantages of the suggested idea or situation being analysed. “I like this because…” It's the "bright sun."

Green Hat – Creativity, alternatives, and possibilities: it is vegetation and fertile growth. In our Indian culture, it is hope and abundance. It suggests the creativity and new ideas about the situation being analysed. “What if we…” “Hey, let’s do this!” It's the "fertile tree."

Blue Hat – Control of the process: it's cold and, like the sky, it's over and above everything. It deals with control and organization of the thought process, as well as the use of the other hats. “Hey, let’s take it step by step. Let’s not get confused.” It's the "orchestra conductor."

The Six-Thinking-Hats method can help you develop your personal thinking processes. However, it is particularly useful to ensure your team becomes more productive when analysing and deciding strategies and possibilities.

Use these ideas to ensure your thinking and the thinking of your team become increasingly clear, creative and productive.

(For more details please contact Edward de Bono's authorised certified trainer)

Guide for Excellence in Leadership

Leadership Guide from Vinod Bidwaik

Uncommon in common man….

In one movie, actor Shaharukh Khan says, “don’t underestimate the power of common man.” However in reality common man was always underestimated till common man find extraordinary in him. One extra-ordinary common man come forward and made other common people joined him uncommon by throwing the ruling party out from the power. Yes, I am speaking about, the down to earth leader, Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.

The story of Mr. Arvind Kejriwal is really inspiring. His story is not different from the action and thrilling movie story.  Few years back Anil Kapoor starrer movie “Nayak” was a big hit. Mr. Kejriwal’s story is similar to the “Nayak”. People had lost the trust on political parties and they were hopeless from corrupt and bullied political parties till Mr. Kejriwal gave them hope & trust.

Ruling party and opposition party were so arrogant that time, that they were making the fun of Mr. Kejariwal. His way of working is also criticized by them, but common man have the trust on him and there is huge flow  of people joining him. People are leaving their job and joining him. Aaam Adami Party (AAP) is growing by every day. This is an example how common man can make the difference.

But the question is how common man becomes uncommon. What are their unique characteristics which makes them uncommon? Everybody knows that Mr. Kejriwal is IIT graduate and left is high earning job from IRS. What makes him to leave the job? And what makes Mr. Kejriwal successful.

Vision and systematic goals to reach at Vision: Mr. Kejriwal has a clear vision, “Corruption free India”. He formed the NGO, “India Against Corruption”. However he had clear goals in his mind. He knew that for reaching to the vision, he need to work on short term goals and he worked. Initially he worked on “Right of Information Act.” He was also awarded “Ramon Magsaysay  awards for his work in Right of Information. From the amount he received as an award, he formed the NGO, India Against Corruptions.

Planning & Connect: Anna Hazare is a mentor of Mr. Kejriwal. He persuaded Anna for going on hunger strike. What we witnessed in 2012 was the huge success at Ramlila Maidan. Mr. Kejriwal was the brain behind every move at that time and we know how Congress government came on knees. Kejriwal and his team did the huge planning and connected with the people through multiple media. Anna and Kejriwal actually were speaking the language of common man. Even during recent Delhi elections, he was on ground and was speaking the language of common man. People elected him because they found that Mr, Kejriwal have something for them.

Use of technology: He used the technology very wisely. Web, mobile, social networking site, everything available is used effectively. He marketed his brand very well.   

Democratic way of working:  When he had to take the decision to form the government, he went back to the people. His style is truly democratic. Whenever possible he went to the people, get consensus and he delivered.           

Mr. Kejarwal is a wise man. Congress initially thought that AAP will refuse their support and hence they extended their support to save their skin. But Mr. Kejriwal form the government. Now Congress can’t withdraw the support. If they do so, Congress will lose their (remaining) credibility.

I personally feel that clear vision, speaking common man language, connect, his democratic style and branding made him successful.   

Power of appreciation

During my school days, Once, I was travelling with my teacher to the nearby district city for attending scholarship examination. It was almost 40-50 km travel by state transport (ST) bus. My teacher had taken the responsibility to guide us in preparations & to take us at the examination center. He took extra efforts on us for this exam.

Anyway, the bus was fully crowded. The conductor of the bus got irritated with people. This was his daily job to handle passengers mostly from villages, sometimes passengers without tickets. 

Conductor gets a sigh of relief after all passengers settle. My teachers leans towards the conductor and starts the conversation…

“It must be difficult to manage such crowd.”

“Yes, but what to do, this is the life for me.” Conductor responded.

“I must tell you; you are doing a great job, it is very difficult to handle this big crowd. It is very difficult job. After all, you also have to prepare the accurate account statement and reconcile your ticket sell. Though this is your routine job, you do it well. I appreciate you. ”

Conversation continued, however I decided to take a nap.

After getting down, I gave my unwarranted feedback to the teacher, “Sir, you were speaking with the conductor and I heard you were appreciating him. I thought, what he is doing is his job, what’s great in it?”

“Yes child, but you see the difference after that. He pull the bell to stop the bus at next stop, somebody at that stop must have needed to get in the bus to reach the office on time; he helped one old lady to get in the bus; next to that he was cool and cracking some jokes. His gestures has resulted into the chain of reaction, positive reactions. The person who needed to reach office on time will be on time in office, his boss would be happy. That old lady would be be happy. The atmosphere in the bus was happy. Further it must have positive impact on all. Just imagine the next positive reactions of people….”

“We should not forget the small gestures. I have not spend anything, only few words for appreciating that conductor, but I made his day, he made others’ day… see the difference” he continued.

In our traditional culture, we don’t appreciate frequently. Even in families and relations, we just ignore this appreciation. Our families do lot many things for us; they live for us, however we never say   “thanks you” to them. If you drop something on the floor and somebody helps you to get it back, we mechanically say, “thanks, thank you” to that somebody, who may be the stranger. 

However your wife daily makes food for you, give everything to you when you drop something, you would not say thanks to her. Parents give your everything, they work hard so that you get good education and be on your own in your future life, you don’t appreciate their efforts. Your children bring happiness in your life, still you don’t say, thanks to them.

We just assume that that is their duty. What’s the big deal in that. Not necessary you have to say it verbally, however do we recognize them through some gestures?

Appreciation has its own power. 

Appreciation has different meanings. Commonly it means recognition.

Dictionary meaning of appreciation is “recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something.” 

Another dictionary meaning of  appreciation means, “increase in monetary value.”

And both meanings are interrelated. By giving appreciation, you recognize good qualities, but you also increase value in relationship. It may not give the monetary benefits, but creates more value in relationships which has worth than monitory benefits.  

Everyone wants to feel appreciated and everyone values a simple ‘thank you,’. This doesn't happen enough in the workplace or in families, but showing simple forms of appreciation can really go a long way in motivating people to work harder and be more productive.

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them”. JKF Kennedy.