10 to Win: Fresh Start & Big Ideas

The workplace is changing faster than the conversations guiding it. We’re stepping up with a sharper plan for Season Seven: weekly episodes designed to spark action, challenge assumptions, and give you practical tools to build spaces and businesses that actually work.

What if the fastest way to lift performance isn’t a new strategy, but a new habit? Sid takes a hard look at gratitude as a leadership tool and shows why it’s anything but soft. 

Grounded in research from Harvard Business School and Wharton, he traces how consistent, specific appreciation builds psychological safety, strengthens trust, and drives measurable gains in productivity, engagement, and retention.

He shares four simple practices you can adopt today without adding hours to your calendar. 

• Start your day with one specific thank-you to anchor your mindset. 
• Open meetings with an optional moment of gratitude to lower tension and humanize the room. 
• Recognize effort, not just outcomes, to fuel momentum during uncertain stretches. 
• Pause before you react—ask what you appreciate about the person or situation to shift from reactivity to clarity. 

These moves help you uphold high standards while leading with humanity, making feedback land better and hard conversations more constructive.

Sid pushes back on the myth that gratitude lowers the bar. The opposite is true: when people feel seen, they speak up sooner, take ownership, and stay longer. You’ll hear practical phrasing, specificity tips that reinforce the behaviors you want to see, and a simple cadence for weaving gratitude into daily rhythms. 

Fresh starts don’t require reinvention, they require intention. 

Try one habit this week and watch the tone, trust, and results compound.

In this episode: