Melinda French Gates’s 1-Word Response to Her Divorce and Departure From the Gates Foundation Is a Lesson for Every Leader

Before I wrap up my last day at the foundation, I wanted to reach out to thank each one of you for the role you played in my time here and for all the work we did together.

As you might imagine, I’m holding a complicated mix of emotions today. I’m sad to be saying goodbye, proud of all we accomplished, energized by what’s ahead, and excited to see what you do next. But the emotion I feel most strongly right now is gratitude.

Reading through those paragraphs, it seems like what you might expect French Gates to say. I’m not at all surprised that she wanted to take the time to thank the people she has worked with closely for so long. And, it’s not at all surprising that French Gates is experiencing a “complicated mix of emotions.”

I imagine that French Gates has been through many different emotions over the past few years. Divorce is one of the most life-altering traumas anyone can go through. Leaving an organization you helped to start–and then led for a quarter century–is probably pretty high on the list of grief experiences as well.

The last sentence, however, says a lot. “The emotion I feel most strongly right now is gratitude.”

Actually, it’s that single last word that sticks out. Gratitude. It’s not necessarily the word you might expect. It caught my attention because it’s a powerful lesson for every leader. You see, gratitude is a choice. It’s a decision you make about your perspective, regardless of the circumstance. It is an intentional effort to recognize the good despite the fact that life is complicated and hard.

It’s not always a given that we will be able to see that good, especially if we’re not looking. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the complicated parts of our lives or jobs. It’s easy to just want to quit when things get hard. But gratitude is an intentional shift in how we view all of it.

For French Gates, a lot of that seems to come down to the people. “Most people never in their lives get to work with a group of people like this one–as talented, as brilliant, as caring, as visionary, as thoughtful, as driven,” she wrote. “So I recognize what a gift it is that, for the past twenty-five years, you’ve been such an enormous part of my life. I’m incredibly impressed by you and so glad to have had this chance to work with you.”

I think the lesson here is pretty simple: Even when we don’t get to choose our circumstances, we do get to choose our perspective. Too often, we allow our emotional response to a situation to dictate our perspective. We become consumed by anger or grief or disappointment, and that becomes our outlook. We let our emotions determine how we see our situation.