Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's personal development and leadership lesson. I am your host, Joel Dunn, and today I wanted to start out this Thanksgiving week with letting you know that I am thankful for you. As you can tell, today's topic is leadership and gratitude. So today we're going to talk about the things that you can do to create additional layers of gratitude for you as a leader. Now, why is gratitude from leadership essential? Well, think about this. Think about a time when a leader or a mentor expressed genuine gratitude to you for your work. How did that make you feel? Think about that for a second. Probably made you feel appreciated, made you maybe wanna do more. Maybe it made you feel like finally somebody has recognized what I'm doing. See, the importance of gratitude coming from a leader is it's not just a feel -good concept. It's a leadership strategy that fosters loyalty, productivity, and raises the morale of your team. Research shows that employees who feel valued are more energized and committed to their job and their organization. So you, as a leader of a team, when you show gratitude to the team members that are working underneath you, working for you, it gives them that extra layer of commitment to the organization and to you as a leader. It also strengthens trust and relationships, which as we know, is the heart of being an effective leader. When you have relationships where people are willing to go that a mile for you, your team accomplishes so much more. Simon Sinek said it best, leadership is not about being in charge, it's about taking care of those in your charge.