Summary
Joe and Brett discuss how to counterbalance the negativity bias that intelligent people bring to team problem-solving. After episodes on functional and dysfunctional teams, Joe addresses the listener who walked away seeing only what’s wrong—noting that this self-critical lens is itself a root of dysfunction.
Joe proposes a concrete practice: three rounds of gratitude at the start of every team meeting, where each person shares something they genuinely feel grateful for. The key requirement is that people actually feel the gratitude rather than going through the motions. When facing a specific problem, directing gratitude toward the problem itself unlocks new solutions—being grateful that customers are telling you what’s wrong, that salespeople are sharing their concerns.
He illustrates with a story from Vietnam: a Save the Children worker with $50,000 solved childhood malnutrition not by importing food but by finding the village where kids were already healthy and spreading their practices. Seeing what’s working—rather than only what’s broken—is what made the solution scalable.
Brett raises the objection that skeptical team members may see gratitude as “positive dissociation.” Joe responds: frame it as an experiment with measurable outcomes over three weeks, make clear it’s about seeing all the data (not being Pollyannaish), and call out anyone half-assing it. If the team doesn’t feel it’s beneficial, find another tool.
Key Concepts
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Find what already works and amplify it rather than importing external solutions
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Find what’s already working and spread it rather than fixing what’s broken
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Happiness feels dangerous to the vigilant—gratitude resistance comes from fear of being unprepared
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Self-criticism intensifies with intelligence—the smarter you are, the more nuanced your inner critic
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See what’s working and grow it, rather than only fixing what’s broken
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Foreboding joy—fear of the other shoe dropping—blocks gratitude
Key Quotes
“There’s kind of two ways to get to solutions. One way is to see what’s wrong and how do you fix it. The other way is to see what’s right and how do you build on what’s right.”
“The most important part of a process like that is you actually have to feel the gratitude. You can’t be like a five-year-old at the table who just wants to eat.”
“If he was just constantly thinking about what he didn’t have and what was missing, he would never have been able to solve that problem.”
“We’re not being Pollyannaish. I want to hear everything that’s going wrong. I just also want to hear everything that’s going right.”
“The real core as to why people resist gratitude is the fact that they’re scared that they won’t be prepared for the inevitable doom that is always around the corner if they are happy.”
Transcript
thank you I would say the real core as to why people resist gratitude besides it’s strange and awkward at the beginning is the fact that they’re scared that they won’t be prepared for the inevitable Doom that is always around the corner if they are happy welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson foreign so I wanted to add a little bit of a bonus episode in here after talking about how to build a functional team and all about dysfunctional teams because I know that the way that I might listen to this if I was a CEO might be to see all the ways that a functional team are not what I am or not what we have yet and that I’m just not good enough and then look at all those signs of a dysfunctional team and just see them everywhere and just get really hard on myself and doubt on myself and down on my team so I want to talk a little bit about that and what would you have to say to somebody listening to those last two episodes and just walking out of it feeling like they just had a one-star meeting with themselves right yeah great question so what I would say is um that’s part of the dysfunction um that kind of self-talk is is probably the the root if if not one of the roots of the dysfunction and it’s also incredibly limiting meaning there’s kind of two ways to get to Solutions one way to get to solution is to see what’s wrong and and how do you fix it and the other way to get to a solution is see what’s right and how do you build on what’s right and most people really focus on the first one because they have that negative voice in the head because what’s been really useful for Humanity up until now is to be able to see what’s wrong more than see what’s right because see what’s right is oh I like that Apple see what’s wrong is oh that snake can kill me and so we’ve learned and there’s all sorts of psychological studies that we tend to look for what’s wrong and especially the more intelligent you are there’s self-criticism is more likely to be heightened um so and more nuanced and more nuanced I believe yeah exactly so I would say it’s really important in any kind of analysis is to really be able to see the data clearly and to see and in this case it means to see the positive stuff clearly and one of the things that I recommend to do that that creates team cohesion is a gratitude process where a gratitude session with a team and uh when I was doing Venture Capital we did that at the beginning of every one of our teams we would have like three or four rounds of gratitude so that we could see what was right and how do we grow it as easily as we saw what was wrong and how do we fix it and so you’re speaking about gratitude in the team gratitude for the the company gratitude and personal lives or just any any form of gratitude so the way we used to do it is that before meeting everybody would say three things that they’re grateful for kind of in a circle so it’d be like one two three so everybody would go one time everybody would go second time the the most important part of a process like that is you actually have to feel the Gratitude you can’t you know you can’t be like a five year at the table who just wants to eat you have to be like really feel into oh this is something I’m really grateful for that’s the key part of the process now if you’re working on a problem it’s really important to see what you’re grateful for around what you think is lack or what you think is the problem so um and that that helps that expedites the process so for instance if you feel like you’re always poor and don’t have enough money to be grateful for the resources you do have is a great way to figure out how more resources come to you quickly so that’s a great example where if you like the biggest issue right now is that like your product isn’t selling then it would be really it’d be great to spend gratitude around this is difficult for people around your product not selling because then you can start seeing all the opportunities in it like oh wow I’m really grateful that our customers are telling us what they don’t like about the product I’m really grateful that the sales people are are telling us their concerns about what makes them not be able to sell the product I’m really grateful for the learnings of that before we create a product next time we should make sure it sells before we create it and so doing all that really helps you see what’s right and how to fix it and it gives you all new solutions to the problem um so it’s it’s doing three rounds of gratitude it’s making sure everybody feels grateful if it’s a neutral kind of time then I often would do it around the team like what are we grateful for around the team so that we could continue to become more and more functional and I think there’s a great story about this and I’m not sure if I’ve shared it but I’ll share it which is the story I read about a guy who went to Vietnam and he was like with save the children or some such thing and he was supposed to with fifty thousand dollars stop malnutrition in kids um in this County which just seems like a completely impossible task and then you’ve got met at the airport by some officials like if you don’t do this in six months we’re kicking you out like any and he’s got like fifty thousand dollars so he goes into the first Village second village and and he finally finds a village where the kids aren’t malnourished and he’s like oh what’s what’s happening here and he found out that instead of the same amount of rice and two meals it was in three meals that they took this weed out of the garden and they out of the rice paddy and they chopped it up really finely put it in and then they took these like little microscopic shrimp and put them in and so they had it was just all right there available so he saw this he’s like oh my gosh and so what he did was he took that fifty thousand dollars and he took the moms from all the other Villages brought them in with some kids and said look if you do this this is measurably what your kids will be different as if you compare to do this and all of a sudden all the whole County changed their way of feeding their children any and he solved the problem if he was just constantly thinking about what he didn’t have and what was missing he would never have been able to solve that problem it has to come from a place of of gratitude and seeing what’s functional yeah I could imagine an alternate story where he tried to use it 50 000 to purchase food and bring it to the kids and all those other communities and that the scalability of that with that money just wouldn’t have wouldn’t have done it yeah yeah like that whatever there’s I think hundreds of billions of dollars used that way in Africa and didn’t work so something really interesting about that example is that he didn’t go straight to the to the problem and where the problem is and a lot of a lot of the wisdom and Leadership is where there’s a problem look directly at that what you’re kind of saying here is some form of that but also look for what’s working in the problem and I think that there’s people can have an allergy to something like you know gratitude in a meeting when they are feeling angry before the meeting even begins as that that’s just some sort of positive scanning or positive dissociation from what’s real and they’ll bring in well I’m just being realistic and showing what’s real here and this is broken that’s broken that’s broken yes what would you say to those people to help them see both the truth in both and look to the positive in a non-dissociative way but see it as a as a the fertile ground to grow from yeah what I would say is um because the people who are going to do that particular thing are usually very intellectually based and so what I would say is let’s just do the experiment so for the next three weeks we’re going to start our meetings this way and we’re going to note how our decision making changes and if it’s effective if it’s ineffective then we won’t do it also because we’re being positive we’re not being pollyannaish we’re I want to hear everything that’s going wrong I just also want to hear everything that’s going right and if you can convince me that hearing all the data is a bad idea we can stop it right now so I I approached that very intellectually I would approach that very intellectually and also make it experimental because if the team doesn’t feel like it’s a benefit then why do it it’s far more productive to have the team know that what they’re doing is beneficial and so you can find another tool if that one doesn’t work and it’s critical that they actually feel the Gratitude so that person who you’re speaking to would probably most likely also be the person in the room is like I’m really grateful that I got a paycheck um instead of instead of oh I’m really grateful that this team is uh working together in such a way that allows us all to be paid and allows me to take care of my children and really feel the gratitude and so I would also be quick to call that out like hey you’re either running the experiment or you’re not running the experiment if I don’t like don’t half-ass it because it’s like if the experiment isn’t clean you’re never going to learn anything yeah and that would be dysfunctional wouldn’t it yeah so the the simple practice is and this works with your husband and wife and kids and it’s just an incredibly useful really just beneficial thing and Doom that is always around the corner if they are happy if they are content if they’re looking for something good to happen and so having empathy and compassion for that perspective is also really important yeah foreboding Joy exactly that’s you know for many people Joy is just the signal that the other shoe is going to drop because it is I mean you don’t you’re not enjoy forever it does it doesn’t work like that everything is fleeting so every up comes down or at least even your your nervous system will regulate back to it being normal yeah exactly yeah so but that’s no reason that’s like saying I’m I’m not gonna eat this beautiful bowl of food because at some point it’ll be gone you know it’s just it’s silly but it is the way our nervous systems respond right yeah thank you so much yeah great idea for this uh bonus episode yeah thanks Brett see you all right bye thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com