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What if the answer to your team’s disengagement, burnout, and turnover isn’t another productivity tool or wellness perk? What if it’s something far simpler—yet somehow harder to implement consistently? Two words that cost nothing but deliver everything: “Thank you.”
Right now, 51% of the American workforce feels disconnected, undervalued, and ready to walk out the door. Meanwhile, leaders scramble for solutions, investing in expensive programs while overlooking the most powerful performance tool already at their disposal. Gratitude isn’t just a nice-to-have soft skill; it’s a strategic leadership practice that rebuilds trust, deepens connection, and transforms workplace culture from the inside out.
In this conversation with gratitude keynote speaker Chris Schembra, we explore how intentional gratitude practices reset burnt-out teams and create environments people don’t want to leave. Chris has spent over a decade helping organizations like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and the U.S. Navy implement gratitude as a core leadership strategy. His approach combines scientific research with emotional intelligence, offering event professionals and meeting planners a practical framework for designing human-centered experiences that generate lasting impact.
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This isn’t about feel-good icebreakers or surface-level appreciation. It’s about understanding gratitude as a leadership tool that builds the foundation for sustainable growth, innovation, and employee engagement. Here’s what we’ll unpack: how gratitude creates psychological safety faster than bonuses ever could, why “chosen surrender” matters more than relentless hustle, and the specific questions that turn strangers into communities. Additionally, you’ll discover actionable strategies to hardwire pro-social behavior into your events and ensure it continues long after attendees return home.
Most organizations treat gratitude like an afterthought—a quick “thanks” in a passing email or a generic shoutout during an all-hands meeting. However, this superficial approach misses the deeper truth about what drives human performance and loyalty. When leaders fail to create cultures of genuine recognition and belonging, they’re not just missing out on engagement; they’re actively contributing to the loneliness epidemic that’s costing businesses billions in turnover and lost productivity.
Chris challenges the prevailing leadership paradigm that prioritizes relentless growth over human connection. He argues that true success doesn’t come from overextending employees but from creating environments rooted in authentic appreciation. The data backs this up: organizations with strong gratitude practices see measurably higher retention rates, increased creativity, and stronger team dynamics. Yet most leaders still operate from a scarcity mindset, believing that recognition diminishes their authority or that employees should simply be grateful to have jobs.
This outdated thinking ignores a fundamental reality of modern work. People don’t just want paychecks; they want purpose, recognition, and the feeling that their contributions matter. When leaders practice consistent gratitude, they signal to their teams that individual efforts are seen, valued, and essential to collective success. This psychological shift changes everything—from how people show up each day to whether they stay or leave when recruiters come calling.
The gratitude gap in leadership isn’t about lacking appreciation. It’s about lacking the systems, language, and courage to express it authentically. Leaders often feel uncomfortable with vulnerability, worried that expressing genuine gratitude might seem weak or unprofessional. In reality, the opposite is true. Gratitude requires tremendous strength because it demands that leaders slow down, pay attention, and acknowledge their dependence on others. That’s where the concept of chosen surrender becomes essential.
Chris introduces a powerful framework he calls “chosen surrender”—the deliberate practice of slowing down enough to hear what your people actually need. In a world that glorifies hustle culture and constant productivity, this concept feels almost revolutionary. Nevertheless, it’s precisely this willingness to pause that separates transactional managers from transformational leaders.
Chosen surrender isn’t about giving up or losing control. Instead, it’s about recognizing that you don’t have all the answers and that your team’s collective wisdom exceeds your individual perspective. When leaders practice chosen surrender, they create space for authentic connection and discovery. They stop dominating conversations and start asking better questions. They shift from telling to listening, from pushing to serving.
The concept emerged from Chris’s own journey hosting dinner parties where he gathered strangers around a table to share gratitude stories. These gatherings taught him that meaningful connection requires intentional vulnerability. Participants who arrived as isolated individuals left as communities, not because of elaborate programming but because someone created conditions for authentic human interaction. The dinner table became a laboratory for understanding how gratitude works as social technology.
What Chris discovered through thousands of these experiences is that gratitude thrives in environments where people feel safe to be fully human. That safety doesn’t emerge from corporate policies or HR initiatives; it comes from leaders who model vulnerability first. When you practice chosen surrender, you demonstrate that it’s acceptable to not have everything figured out, to ask for help, and to acknowledge others’ contributions without diminishing your own worth.
For event professionals and meeting planners, this principle has profound implications. The most memorable experiences don’t happen when you control every variable but when you create containers for unexpected connection. Chosen surrender means designing agendas with enough spaciousness for real conversations to unfold. It means resisting the urge to fill every moment with content and instead trusting that human connection is the content.
Understanding where gratitude fits in human motivation helps explain why it’s so powerful. Chris references Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to illustrate that recognition and belonging sit just below self-actualization—the highest level of human fulfillment. Once basic survival needs are met, people crave acknowledgment, appreciation, and the sense that they matter to others.
This isn’t abstract psychology; it’s practical business strategy. When employees feel genuinely recognized, they move beyond mere compliance toward genuine commitment. They stop watching the clock and start bringing their full creativity and energy to work. Conversely, when recognition is absent or inconsistent, even well-paid employees experience profound dissatisfaction. Money matters, but it can’t substitute for the psychological nourishment that comes from authentic appreciation.
The challenge for many organizations is that they’ve professionalized gratitude to the point of meaninglessness. Annual awards ceremonies, employee-of-the-month programs, and generic thank-you emails often feel hollow because they lack specificity and genuine emotion. Real gratitude names specific contributions and explains why they mattered. It connects individual actions to organizational impact in ways that help people see their significance.
Chris emphasizes that consistent gratitude practice must become part of organizational DNA, not just occasional events. Leaders need systems and rituals that embed appreciation into daily operations. This might mean starting meetings with gratitude rounds, creating peer recognition channels, or implementing regular one-on-one conversations focused on acknowledging contributions. The specific mechanisms matter less than the consistency and authenticity.
Meeting professionals can leverage this insight by building gratitude moments into event design. Rather than relegating appreciation to closing remarks, weave it throughout the experience. Create structured opportunities for attendees to recognize each other’s contributions, share stories of impact, or reflect on what they’re learning from peers. These moments do more than feel good; they strengthen the social bonds that make communities resilient and innovative.
One of Chris’s most provocative distinctions is between force and power in leadership. Force is what happens when leaders rely on authority, threats, or coercion to drive behavior. Power, by contrast, emerges from influence, inspiration, and genuine connection. Force creates compliance; power generates commitment.
Traditional command-and-control leadership operated almost entirely through force. Leaders gave orders, employees followed them, and the system functioned—at least superficially. However, this model only works in environments where people have limited alternatives and low expectations for meaningful work. In today’s talent market, where skilled professionals have choices and younger generations demand purpose-driven careers, force-based leadership fails spectacularly.
Power-based leadership requires a fundamentally different approach. It means earning trust through consistency, demonstrating care through action, and creating conditions where people choose to bring their best selves forward. Gratitude is central to this model because it acknowledges interdependence. When leaders express genuine appreciation, they admit that success is shared, not solely their achievement.
The pendulum of modern leadership is swinging away from authoritarian models toward more collaborative, human-centered approaches. Yet many leaders struggle with this transition because they were trained in old paradigms. They intellectually understand that gratitude matters but don’t know how to practice it without feeling awkward or inauthentic. This is where deliberate skill-building becomes essential.
Chris argues that gratitude is a creative act requiring practice and intentionality. Just as you wouldn’t expect someone to excel at public speaking without training, you can’t expect leaders to become skilled at authentic appreciation without guidance and repetition. Organizations serious about culture transformation must invest in teaching leaders how to give meaningful recognition, ask powerful questions, and create spaces for genuine human connection.
For event planners designing leadership development programs, this insight suggests moving beyond traditional keynote-and-breakout formats. The most valuable learning happens through experiential activities that let leaders practice vulnerability, recognition, and connection in real time. Transformative speakers like Chris design experiences that don’t just inform but transform by putting gratitude principles into immediate action.
The origin story of Chris’s gratitude work centers on a dinner party that changed everything. Facing creative burnout and personal crisis, he invited strangers to his home for homemade pasta and conversation. Instead of small talk, he asked one deceptively simple question: “If you could give credit or thanks to one person in your life you don’t give enough credit or thanks to, who would that be?”
That single question cracked open the room. Successful professionals who arrived wearing social masks suddenly shared vulnerable, profound stories about parents, mentors, and life-changing relationships. The evening transformed from awkward gathering to intimate community because the question permitted people to be fully human. Chris realized he’d stumbled onto something powerful: a repeatable method for creating authentic connection.
Over the following decade, he refined this approach into what became the 7:47 Gratitude Experience™—an evidence-based framework used by organizations worldwide. The methodology centers on creating conditions where people feel safe enough to share genuine gratitude stories and skilled enough to receive appreciation without deflecting. These aren’t abstract exercises; they’re structured experiences that produce measurable shifts in team dynamics, trust, and psychological safety.
The gratitude question works because it bypasses superficial interaction and accesses something deeper. When you ask people to identify someone they’re grateful for, you’re not asking them to perform or impress; you’re inviting them to reflect on relationships that shaped them. The stories that emerge reveal values, struggles, and aspirations in ways that build understanding and empathy among colleagues who thought they knew each other.
Meeting professionals can adapt this principle by designing program elements around powerful questions rather than just information transfer. Instead of another panel discussion, create structured conversations where attendees explore meaningful questions in small groups. Instead of networking receptions focused on elevator pitches, facilitate gratitude exchanges where people share appreciation for colleagues or industry mentors. These approaches convert passive audiences into active communities.
The beauty of question-based design is its scalability. Whether you’re working with 20 people or 2,000, thoughtful questions create opportunities for genuine interaction. The key is choosing queries that balance accessibility with depth—questions everyone can answer but that invite real reflection. When you get this right, you transform events from content delivery systems into relationship-building experiences that generate lasting value.
One of the most compelling business cases for gratitude is its impact on retention. Organizations hemorrhaging talent often focus on compensation packages and benefits while overlooking the cultural factors that drive people away. Employees don’t leave primarily because of salary; they leave because they feel undervalued, unseen, or disconnected from purpose. Gratitude directly addresses these root causes.
When leaders practice consistent recognition, they create psychological safety—the foundation of high-performing teams. People who feel appreciated take more creative risks, collaborate more openly, and recover from setbacks more quickly. They invest discretionary effort not because they’re required to but because they feel their contributions matter. This emotional investment translates directly into innovation, productivity, and loyalty.
Chris emphasizes that gratitude must be specific, timely, and genuine to have impact. Generic praise (“great job, everyone”) doesn’t register as meaningful recognition because it lacks personal connection. Effective gratitude names exact behaviors, explains why they mattered, and connects individual actions to larger outcomes. For example, “Your detailed analysis of customer feedback helped us pivot our strategy and avoid a costly mistake” carries far more weight than “thanks for your hard work.”
The science supports this approach. Research shows that employees who receive regular, specific recognition are significantly more engaged and less likely to seek employment elsewhere. Furthermore, gratitude has compounding effects—when people feel appreciated, they’re more likely to extend appreciation to others, creating positive cycles of recognition throughout organizations. This pro-social behavior becomes self-reinforcing as teams develop cultures where acknowledgment is the norm rather than the exception.
For corporate event planners, retention challenges present opportunities to design experiences that rebuild connection and appreciation. Consider developing gratitude rituals for annual meetings, creating recognition moments during quarterly gatherings, or implementing peer appreciation ceremonies at team-building events. These programmatic elements send clear messages about organizational values while giving people tools to continue practicing gratitude after events conclude.
The war for talent isn’t won through recruiting alone; it’s won by creating cultures people don’t want to leave. Gratitude is the most cost-effective retention strategy available because it requires no budget—only intentionality, consistency, and courage. Leaders who master this practice build teams that outperform and outlast competitors simply by making people feel valued as humans, not just as productivity units.
Chris makes a fascinating argument that gratitude is fundamentally creative work requiring imagination and skill. Just as artists develop techniques for expressing vision, leaders must develop capacities for recognizing and articulating appreciation. This reframing moves gratitude from the realm of soft skills into the domain of professional competency that deserves serious attention and development.
Viewing gratitude as creative practice means accepting that you’ll be bad at it before you’re good at it. Early attempts at expressing appreciation might feel awkward or forced. You might struggle to find the right words or worry about sounding insincere. These challenges are normal parts of any creative learning process. The solution isn’t to avoid gratitude but to practice deliberately until it becomes more natural and authentic.
One powerful technique Chris teaches is the art of asking better questions. Instead of “how are you?” which prompts automatic “fine” responses, try “what’s been the highlight of your week?” or “what challenge are you working through right now?” These questions invite more substantive sharing and signal genuine interest. They create openings for recognition by revealing contributions you might otherwise miss.
Another creative gratitude practice involves storytelling—sharing narratives about how specific people or actions made a difference. When leaders tell these stories publicly, they do several things simultaneously: they recognize individuals, they illustrate organizational values, and they create models others can emulate. Story-based appreciation sticks in memory far longer than generic praise because humans are wired to remember and repeat compelling narratives.
Meeting professionals should approach gratitude design with the same creativity they bring to staging, content, and logistics. Think beyond standard award ceremonies to design unexpected appreciation moments. Perhaps participants receive handwritten notes acknowledging their contributions. Maybe you create a gratitude wall where attendees post appreciations for colleagues. Or design closing sessions as gratitude circles where everyone shares one thing they learned from someone else.
The creative dimension of gratitude also means customizing approaches to fit different personalities and contexts. Some people appreciate public recognition; others prefer private acknowledgment. Some respond to verbal appreciation; others value written notes or tangible tokens. Effective gratitude practice reads the room and adapts accordingly, which requires the same kind of situational awareness that marks any creative excellence.
Chris offers fascinating historical perspective on ingratitude, noting that lack of appreciation has always corroded human relationships and communities. Ancient philosophers wrote extensively about gratitude’s importance to social cohesion. Religious traditions across cultures emphasize thanksgiving as spiritual practice. This isn’t new wisdom; it’s ancient knowledge we keep forgetting in pursuit of efficiency and scale.
The rise of industrial capitalism created organizational structures that treated people as interchangeable parts rather than unique individuals. This dehumanization made gratitude seem unnecessary—why thank someone for doing what they’re paid to do? This transactional mindset persists in many workplaces despite overwhelming evidence that it undermines performance and wellbeing.
Modern neuroscience reveals what ancient wisdom intuited: human brains are fundamentally social organs wired for connection and recognition. When we receive genuine appreciation, our brains release oxytocin and other neurochemicals associated with bonding, trust, and wellbeing. Conversely, when we feel unappreciated, our threat-detection systems activate, triggering stress responses that impair cognition and collaboration. Biology itself demands gratitude.
The digital age introduces new challenges to appreciation practices. Email and messaging platforms make it easy to fire off quick thanks but hard to convey genuine emotion and specificity. Video calls offer more personal connection than text but still lack the full presence of face-to-face interaction. Leaders must work harder to ensure appreciation registers as authentic in virtual and hybrid environments.
Understanding this historical and biological context helps event professionals design experiences that counteract isolation and disconnection. In an era when many interactions happen through screens, gathering people physically for shared experiences becomes even more valuable. Live events offer opportunities to practice embodied gratitude—looking someone in the eye while thanking them, sharing meals together, or creating moments of collective appreciation that tap into deep human needs for recognition and belonging.
The lesson from history is clear: cultures that practice systematic gratitude thrive; those that don’t fragment and decline. Organizations and events that embed appreciation into their operating systems gain competitive advantage simply by meeting basic human needs that others ignore. This isn’t complicated, but it requires commitment to prioritizing people over pure productivity.
One crucial question emerges when discussing gratitude and service-oriented leadership: how do you maintain boundaries while practicing generosity? Chris addresses this directly, acknowledging that givers often struggle with burnout when they over-extend themselves trying to serve everyone.
The key distinction is between martyrdom and sustainable service. Martyrs drain themselves completely, ultimately serving no one effectively. Sustainable givers establish clear boundaries, practice self-care, and understand that their capacity to serve others depends on maintaining their own wellbeing. This isn’t selfish; it’s strategic. You can’t pour from an empty cup, as the saying goes.
Practicing gratitude for yourself matters as much as expressing it toward others. Self-compassion and self-recognition replenish the emotional resources required for generous leadership. This might mean celebrating your own wins, acknowledging your growth, or simply treating yourself with the same kindness you extend to others. Leaders who master this balance model healthy relationships with work and achievement.
Chris also emphasizes choosing where to invest your energy carefully. Not every request deserves yes. Not every relationship warrants equal attention. Strategic givers focus their generosity where they can create the most meaningful impact, which often means saying no to good opportunities to preserve capacity for great ones. This discernment separates effective leaders from exhausted ones.
For event planners who often work in high-stress, service-intensive roles, this message is particularly vital. The events industry glorifies self-sacrifice—working impossible hours, managing crises with smiles, prioritizing attendee experience above personal health. While dedication to excellence matters, chronic burnout helps no one. Building gratitude practices that include self-recognition and boundary-setting creates sustainability.
Organizations can support this balance by normalizing rest, celebrating realistic workloads, and recognizing that sustainable excellence requires recovery time. When leaders model healthy boundaries, they give permission for others to do likewise. This cultural shift from burnout-as-badge-of-honor to wellbeing-as-prerequisite transforms how people approach work and ultimately delivers better outcomes.
Throughout the conversation, Chris emphasizes the importance of staying curious about where inspiration might emerge. Some of his most powerful insights came not from business books or leadership seminars but from chance encounters, creative pursuits, and willingness to explore unfamiliar territory. This openness to serendipity is itself a form of chosen surrender—trusting that valuable learning can come from unexpected sources.
The dinner parties that launched his gratitude practice weren’t planned as business ventures or professional development. They emerged from genuine curiosity about human connection and a desire to create meaningful experiences. Only in retrospect did Chris recognize that he’d developed a methodology with broad applications. This pattern repeats throughout innovation history: breakthrough insights often come when we stop trying so hard and simply pay attention to what’s actually happening.
For meeting professionals, this principle suggests approaching event design with more experimentation and less rigid formulas. What if you tried something unconventional? What if you created space for unscripted interaction? What if you borrowed ideas from entirely different industries? The most memorable events often break conventions rather than following them.
Drawing inspiration widely also means paying attention to the people around you. Chris talks about learning from dinner party guests, audience members, and workshop participants. When you approach others with genuine curiosity—asking about their experiences, challenges, and insights—you access distributed wisdom that no single expert possesses. This collaborative learning accelerates innovation and keeps approaches fresh.
The practical application for gratitude practice is this: appreciation and inspiration feed each other. When you genuinely recognize others’ contributions, you often discover ideas, perspectives, and approaches you’d otherwise miss. Gratitude becomes not just an expression of past value but an invitation to future learning. This reciprocal dynamic enriches everyone involved.
Event planners can foster this by designing programs that surface participant wisdom rather than just delivering expert knowledge. Create forums where attendees teach each other. Facilitate story exchanges that reveal lessons from the field. Build in reflection time where people process learning with peers. These approaches position events as discovery platforms rather than just information delivery systems, which generates deeper engagement and lasting impact.
Chris’s work bridges emotional intelligence with rigorous science, particularly research on social health and its impact on wellbeing. Studies show that loneliness and social isolation carry health risks equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes daily. Conversely, strong social connections predict longevity, happiness, and resilience more reliably than most factors we typically track.
The act of sharing meals holds special significance in human connection. Across cultures and throughout history, breaking bread together has marked important relationships and negotiations. There’s neurological basis for this: eating together triggers neurochemical responses that increase trust and bonding. The combination of shared sensory experience, face-to-face interaction, and mutual vulnerability creates ideal conditions for relationship building.
This is why Chris’s gratitude dinners proved so effective. They weren’t just conversations with food as backdrop; the meal itself was methodology. Preparing food for others is an act of service and care. Eating together creates shared rhythm and ritual. The dinner table setting encourages eye contact and attention in ways conference rooms often don’t. These elements combine to create environments where authentic connection becomes almost inevitable.
For event professionals, this research validates investments in hospitality and dining experiences. Meals aren’t just logistical necessities; they’re strategic opportunities for relationship building. The quality of food matters, certainly, but the social design around dining matters more. Are people seated strategically to encourage new connections? Is there enough time for real conversation, or are meals rushed? Do facilitated discussions leverage the bonding power of shared meals?
Corporate events often treat networking receptions and banquets as afterthoughts—necessary evils to be minimized or optimized for efficiency. This misses tremendous opportunity. When designed thoughtfully, dining experiences become the most valuable program elements because they create conditions for the human connection that participants crave and organizations desperately need.
The science also reveals why virtual events, despite technical sophistication, can’t fully replace in-person gatherings. You can’t share a meal through a screen. You can’t read body language and micro-expressions through compressed video. You can’t experience the serendipitous hallway conversations that often generate the most valuable connections. Understanding what’s lost in virtual translation helps planners advocate for appropriate use of each format.
One of the most practical questions for event professionals is how to ensure that gratitude moments during conferences translate into sustained practice afterward. Chris emphasizes that one-time experiences, however powerful, rarely create lasting behavior change without deliberate follow-through and system support.
The solution lies in what he calls “hardwiring” pro-social behavior—creating structures, rituals, and accountability mechanisms that keep gratitude alive beyond the initial experience. This might mean establishing peer recognition channels, scheduling regular gratitude check-ins, or creating ongoing communities where participants continue practicing appreciation together.
During events themselves, designers can plant seeds for continued practice by teaching specific techniques participants can implement immediately. Rather than just facilitating a gratitude exercise, explain the methodology so people can replicate it with their own teams. Provide tools, templates, or frameworks that make ongoing practice easier. Create accountability partnerships where attendees commit to maintaining practices together.
Post-event communication should reinforce rather than abandon these intentions. Send follow-up resources that remind participants of commitments made. Share stories of others who’ve successfully implemented practices. Create online spaces where the event community continues connecting and supporting each other’s growth. These bridges between event and daily life dramatically increase the likelihood of sustained behavior change.
Organizations commissioning events should think beyond standalone programs toward integrated culture initiatives. A keynote on gratitude creates awareness; monthly gratitude practices create culture. A team-building experience plants seeds; leadership accountability ensures they grow. The most effective transformation happens when events serve as catalysts within larger change strategies rather than isolated interventions.
Chris’s work demonstrates that gratitude becomes hardwired when it shifts from special occasion to daily discipline. Leaders must practice appreciation consistently enough that it becomes automatic—a reflexive response rather than something requiring conscious effort. This automation only happens through repetition, feedback, and gradual skill development, which is why sustainable change requires systemic support beyond individual willpower.
Perhaps the most powerful application of Chris’s work for meeting professionals is understanding how gratitude transforms audiences into communities. Traditional events treat attendees as consumers of content—passive recipients who arrive, absorb information, and leave. Community-building events recognize participants as co-creators whose interactions with each other generate the most valuable outcomes.
Gratitude practices accelerate community formation because they establish psychological safety and mutual recognition quickly. When conference attendees share appreciation stories in small groups during opening sessions, they establish connection that makes subsequent interactions richer. When plenary sessions include gratitude moments where participants acknowledge others’ contributions, they reinforce belonging and collective identity.
The shift from audience to community changes everything about event design. You stop optimizing for information transfer and start designing for relationship building. You create more time for conversation and less for presentation. You measure success not by content covered but by connections made. You recognize that the most valuable outcomes often emerge between scheduled sessions rather than during them.
This approach requires courage because it means ceding control and trusting the community’s capacity to create value. Planners accustomed to scripting every moment must learn to create containers and frameworks that guide without constraining. They must develop comfort with emergence and uncertainty, which can feel risky when clients expect predictable outcomes.
Yet the payoff is worth it. Communities generate loyalty, learning, and innovation that audiences never do. People return to conferences not primarily for content but for relationships. They implement learning not because they were told to but because peers they respect are doing so. They become advocates who recruit others because they’ve experienced genuine belonging rather than just attending another corporate event.
Booking keynote speakers who understand this community dynamic becomes crucial. The most effective speakers don’t just deliver information; they facilitate experiences that bring people together around shared purpose. They create moments that attendees will remember and discuss long after the event ends. They model the vulnerability and gratitude that make authentic community possible.
The practical question becomes: how do you start implementing these gratitude principles in your next event? The answer is simpler than you might expect. Start small, start specific, and start now.
Begin by identifying one element of your upcoming program where you can integrate authentic appreciation. Perhaps it’s opening the event with a gratitude question that participants explore in pairs. Maybe it’s creating a recognition wall where attendees post appreciations throughout the conference. It could be designing closing remarks as a structured gratitude circle rather than just logistical thank-yous.
The key is making gratitude experiential rather than performative. Avoid hollow gestures that feel obligatory. Instead, create genuine opportunities for people to connect around appreciation. Give them enough structure to feel safe but enough freedom to be authentic. And most importantly, demonstrate through your own modeling that vulnerability and recognition are valued.
As you design these elements, remember Chris’s principle of chosen surrender. You’re not controlling outcomes; you’re creating conditions. You’re not forcing connection; you’re inviting it. This mindset shift from event producer to experience curator changes how you approach every design decision.
Consider how gratitude might thread through multiple program elements rather than appearing as isolated moments. Perhaps each session begins with speakers acknowledging influences or collaborators who shaped their thinking. Maybe breakout facilitators are trained to surface and amplify participant contributions. Perhaps your event app includes features for attendees to send recognition to speakers, exhibitors, or each other.
The most important implementation step is moving from intellectual agreement to actual practice. Everyone nods along when hearing about gratitude’s importance, yet few organizations practice it systematically. The gap between knowing and doing is where transformation dies. Your role as meeting professional is to close that gap by making appreciation so easy, so rewarding, and so integrated into the experience that it happens naturally.
Ultimately, gratitude in leadership is about creating organizations where people choose to stay, grow, and contribute their best work. It’s about transforming corporate cultures from transactional environments focused solely on output into human communities where people feel genuinely valued. This isn’t just morally right; it’s strategically essential in a world where talent has options and younger generations demand purpose-driven work.
The 51% of American workers who feel disengaged represent a massive opportunity for leaders willing to prioritize connection and recognition. These aren’t fundamentally bad employees or uniquely demanding generations. They’re humans responding predictably to environments that treat them as resources rather than people. When leaders change the environment through consistent gratitude practice, engagement, creativity, and loyalty follow naturally.
Chris’s work proves that culture transformation doesn’t require massive budgets or complete organizational overhauls. It requires leaders brave enough to slow down, humble enough to express genuine appreciation, and consistent enough to make recognition a daily discipline rather than an occasional gesture. These aren’t particularly complex practices, but they do require intention and courage.
For event professionals, this translates into an elevated sense of purpose. You’re not just planning meetings; you’re designing experiences that could fundamentally change how organizations operate and how people experience work. When you integrate gratitude practices into corporate events, you’re planting seeds that might bloom into transformed cultures. That’s work worth doing with excellence and care.
The path forward requires both individual commitment and systemic change. Leaders must personally develop gratitude capacities while also building organizational structures that support and sustain appreciation practices. Events can catalyze this process by demonstrating what’s possible and equipping people with tools to continue the work. But the real transformation happens in the daily discipline of recognition that follows.
If you’re ready to transform your organization’s culture or design events that create genuine human connection, you don’t have to figure it out alone. The strategies Chris Schembra teaches have been proven across thousands of organizations and millions of participants. His approach combines scientific rigor with emotional intelligence, offering practical frameworks that generate measurable results.
Meeting professionals looking to incorporate gratitude into their event strategies can benefit from working with speakers who understand both the theory and practice of appreciation-based leadership. The difference between generic motivation and transformational experience often comes down to selecting presenters who’ve done this work themselves and can guide others authentically.
Whether you’re planning a leadership summit, annual meeting, team retreat, or industry conference, gratitude practices can elevate your event from information delivery to culture-shaping experience. The key is approaching this work with the same seriousness you bring to logistics, content, and production while maintaining the warmth and humanity that makes gratitude powerful.
Learn more about transformational keynote speaker Chris Schembra in his keynote speaker profile
Explore how gratitude keynote speakers transform corporate gatherings
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The most powerful tool for transforming your organization might be simpler than you think. It starts with two words—“thank you”—spoken with intention, consistency, and genuine care. Everything else builds from there.
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