NOTE: This message was emailed to all Ballad Health team members on Tuesday, Nov. 18.
Dear Colleague,
As we move through November, the month where we traditionally pause to reflect on thankfulness, it’s the perfect time to focus on how gratitude strengthens high-trust, highly reliable teams. Gratitude helps us build meaningful connections, work through challenges with less friction and bring out the best in our teams.
It supports our High Reliability journey by reinforcing two essential behaviors: valuing every voice and building trust. And at its core, gratitude is a powerful expression of Caring, one of our foundational values at Ballad Health.
This week’s Better Begins With Us tips
- Gratitude Tip #3: Being Grateful for Your Teammates
This tip explores how gratitude toward the people you work with strengthens relationships and creates an environment where everyone feels valued. You’ll learn three strategies for expressing appreciation in meaningful ways:
- Acknowledge the strengths of your teammates
- Value their perspectives, ideas and input
- Integrate gratitude into your everyday workflow
Call to action: Take a moment this week to write a note to a teammate. Be specific about what they do well and why you’re grateful for them. How did it make them feel? What did you notice about the impact on your relationship?
- Cultivating a Culture of High Reliability: Psychological Safety that Powers Improvement
In this tip, Ballad Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Amit Vashist, shares practical ways to strengthen psychological safety – an essential component of high reliability and high-trust teams:
- Valuing all voices
- Demonstrating approachability
- Developing trusting relationships
The tip further addresses role-specific near-miss scenarios and emphasizes the value of a low-blame, improvement-oriented mindset in fostering team learning and development.
Call to action: Tell one colleague who may not know it that their voice matters. Write a personalized note or simply offer a heartfelt comment. Take note of how expressing this sentiment impacts your colleague and your relationship with them.
Both of this week’s tips highlight one simple truth: gratitude and psychological safety build stronger, safer, more connected teams. When we take the time to see the strengths in our colleagues, appreciate their ideas and affirm that their voice matters, we reinforce a culture where people feel safe to speak up, collaborate and support one another.
As we continue our B Excellent journey and move deeper into the season of gratitude, let’s look for opportunities to express appreciation in meaningful and impactful ways.
