Gratitude coaching session by Awa DIALLO

This week's coaching assignment really helped me realised that I have a lot to be grateful for. A part from my mother and the travelling opportunities, I could also be grateful for so many things that I take for granted. Being able to go on holiday every year for example, the opportunity to discover different parts of the world; or just because I have received a personal education good enough to be the adult I am today. My coachees also are grateful for their personal lives and for their educational accomplishments. As you can see in other posts in the blog, we are all grateful for our parents and life partners, as well as the opportunity to receive an international education at Ulaval. Those things we are all grateful for are here, I mean it is normal, natural to be grateful about them without expressing it. Just as Yuchen, we do not express feelings very openly in my culture either. Everyone knows that the feeling is here, like my mother knows that I love her. However, I don’t think I ever told her that I feel very lucky to have her as a mother and I am grateful for that. So, after writing about her in my grateful assignment, I started calling her more often (almost twice a day when I usually talk to her every two days), and it kind of made me feel good. Every time she encourages me into being a better person, to work hard to get what I want… So this week nothing really changed positively, but my feelings were emphasised, and I am grateful for a lot of good factors in my life that I take for granted.

Same goes for my coachees, they are very grateful for what they talked about in previous posts. But writing about it made them realised that there is a lot to be grateful for in their lives after all. Not just family and university or work. We all have the opportunity to study a subject we are interested in, we are all meeting new people that somehow turns to be very good friends; and for some of us who are far from home, those friends are family.

Putting more focus on positive change now, I think it is very important to let people know what you feel about them. In a professional environment, do not hesitate, as a manager, to openly congratulate your employees that perform outstandingly. It is a core motivational factor, and one of the best ways to promote positive change in the work place. Be fair and honest about it. You, the manager, have to be grateful for having great employees, and employees in turn have to be grateful for their work position. To emphasize that feeling, I think it would be great to be able to express one’s feelings.