The 5 Languages of Appreciation (And Why Words Aren't Enough) (with Dr. Paul White)

Most leaders think they're showing appreciation. But if your go-to is an award, a bonus, or a company-branded mug, you're reaching less than 10% of your team. And if words are all you use, you're missing over half the people you lead every single day.

In this very first episode of the Appreciation at Work® Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Paul White — psychologist, author, and the founder and president emeritus of Appreciation at Work®, and co-author of The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace with Dr. Gary Chapman. Paul is the architect of the entire framework and the MBA Inventory used in 60+ countries.

This conversation covers the origin of the 5 Languages of Appreciation, why recognition and appreciation are not the same thing (and why that difference changes everything), and what the research says about what actually makes people feel valued, across generations, cultures, and remote teams. If you're leading people, this is the episode that anchors everything else.

Books Mentioned

• The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace by Dr. Paul White and Dr. Gary Chapman
• The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman
• Rising Above a Toxic Workplace by Dr. Paul White
• The Vibrant Workplace by Dr. Paul White

To learn more about Appreciation at Work, explore the MBA Inventory, and access Appreciation at Work® training resources, visit appreciationatwork.com.

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway 0:00

People don't leave companies. They leave cultures where they don't feel valued. Welcome to the Appreciation at Work Podcast, where we share real stories from leaders building workplaces that teams don't want to leave. I'm your host, Dr. William Attaway. Welcome to the

Why People Really Leave Jobs

Dr. William Attaway 0:23

Appreciation at Work Podcast. I'm so excited today to have Dr. Paul White for our first episode. Dr. White is a psychologist, author, speaker, and consultant who makes work relationships work. As the founder and president emeritus of Appreciation at Work, he has improved numerous businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Dr. White's the co-author of the book The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, written with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the number one New York Times bestseller of the five love languages. Based on Dr. White's extensive research and expertise, he's developed a unique way for organizations to motivate employees that leads to increased job satisfaction, higher employee performance, and enhanced levels of trust. The motivating by appreciation inventory and appreciation at work training resources have been used by numerous corporations, colleges and universities, medical facilities, schools, nonprofit organizations, and so many others. Dr. White, thank you for being here.

Dr. Paul White 1:24

Hey, I am glad to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Dr. William Attaway 1:28

I'd love for you to share a little bit of the backstory. I hit some of the high points there, but how did this whole thing get started?

Dr. Paul White 1:35

Yeah, it actually started. Uh so I'm a psychologist in mid-career, I was consulting with family-owned businesses, dealing with the family issues intertwined with running a business and passing it on to the next generation. And I was talking to a business owner in

How The Framework Began

Dr. Paul White 1:50

North Carolina and asked him how the transition was going. And he said, it's fine. My son's stepping up, I think it's going to work. I walked across the hall and asked the son the same question. He said, This is a disaster. It's never going to work. I can't ever please my dad. And uh so having grown up in a family-owned business, I could understand that dynamic. And my wife and I, Kathy and I, were reading the five love languages, I think again, or maybe it's a third time. I'm sort of a slow learner that way. And I thought, you know, I wonder if the love languages could be translated in some way and used in work-based relationships. So I presumed Dr. Chapman took me a year to get uh through to him and met with him and pitched the idea and he agreed for us to work together both on the book and then an online assessment, which then also turned into training resources and sort of went from there.

Dr. William Attaway 2:40

My goodness. And now, some dozen plus years later, you've had an impact in a whole lot of different organizations all around the world.

Dr. Paul White 2:48

Yeah, we've been fortunate to, well, you know, the concept works. And we had to think of what's sort of the equivalent of love in the workplace, and we, you know, came to appreciation. And so uh actually started work first on the motivating by appreciation inventory, which the first title was managing by appreciation, because we were focused on managers and supervisors, and pretty quickly got feedback that we needed to include colleagues and and peers. So we changed it to motivating by appreciation and uh worked on that. And that developed from just identifying a person's primary appreciation language to also including the actions within their language because we found that you can get the language right, but the action wrong. So, say, for example, using words, if you praise someone publicly and they really don't want to be praised publicly, it doesn't, you know, land well. So we changed that and included in the inventory individual actions for each language. And then people have said, well, depends who it is, you know, how I want to be appreciated. So we allowed people to choose from whom, their supervisor or their colleagues, what actions, and developed that and ran with that for a while. And then it grew into, you know, people from schools said, you know, an active service, we don't necessarily, you know, help each other build things or whatever. And so we developed and started developing different versions for different work settings. So an act of service in a school is different than an active service in the hospital for a nurse or for a construction worker. And so we specified those. And then, you know, one of the nice things is we've sort of developed over time to keep getting feedback, and we then identified ways that people don't want to be appreciated because you can get the, you know, get it right, but you can maybe include a negative action that they don't want. And so we wanted to help people avoid making unintentional mistakes, included that. And then people from different countries and languages wanted the tool. So we've got it in, I think, nine languages now, and yeah, it's used internationally.

Dr. William Attaway 5:01

You know, one of the things that I love about the entire framework is that it is so research-based. This is not just anecdotal evidence. Oh, well, you know, cousin Sally, you know, this is how it works for her. No, this is this is research-based, and it's based on data, not just from one context, but from cultures all over the world.

Dr. Paul White 5:20

Right. Yeah. And, you know, over time, I'm a psychologist,

Research That Proves What Works

Dr. Paul White 5:24

and so I've had the skills and interest to do research. And so we've got at least 15 academic published research studies looking at sort of the um distribution of languages of uh how many people like words versus acts of service or quality time, and then looked at the actions uh that people like, and we've done it generational research over time and found out there are generational diff differences, and then across different industries, different sort of patterns, whether you're work for the government or you're an office worker or construction worker, and then cultural differences too, which it's been interesting that largely the themes are pretty much the same, that words are the primary language for most people, even across cultures and settings, with just a few exceptions. But interesting, sort of a caveat to that is that if you only use words, uh you're gonna miss over 50% of your uh team members because the majority of people choose other languages than words. And so it's it's been fun and interesting to research that and be able to apply that to the companies and organizations that we work with.

Dr. William Attaway 6:41

You know, when I think about cross-cultural applications, I think about the appreciation language physical touch. You know, that is that is so different in different cultural contexts. You know, here in North America, it's such a tiny fraction of the people.

Dr. Paul White 6:58

That is not true everywhere. Yeah, and and in fact, you know, in the inventory, we don't include physical touch because of the feedback we got initially, one of the initial groups that we worked with, some of the women had been unfortunate victims of sexual harassment. And so anything that even looked or sounded like physical touch, you know, they just reacted to. And so, and we found that it was rarely, if ever, less than 1% of the workforce chose physical touch as their primary or secondary language. And so we decided to take it out of the inventory to avoid that negative reaction for people in taking it. And but then as we worked across culturally, we found that that's not the case. It's sort of a US and and maybe Northern Europe-based kind of thing. But for our Latin American friends and Southern European, you know, they often greet with a kiss on the cheek and they're far more physical. And so it's less of an issue for them.

Dr. William Attaway 7:55

So before you entered into this world, before the five languages of appreciation, before any of that, how did you typically try to show appreciation?

Dr. Paul White 8:05

Hmm. Probably words. I mean, you know, compliments, and you know, eventually, you know, over time, maybe uh a raise or a bonus. And so that would be tangible gifts. So I think that's I was doing what our our culture has largely taught us, and I was missing some people for sure.

Dr. William Attaway 8:25

So as you began to understand this, I'm guessing that you began to to test some of this yourself with the team that you were working with. Well, I hope so.

Dr. Paul White 8:37

In fact, I would I would tell uh tell the team, or I I don't know, I'd write occasionally, you know, people actually would call. I mean, that we're inquiring about our resources would call and talk to my staff and say, you know, does Dr. White practice this? And so yeah, I I felt sort of on the hook that way. That's good. And, you know, it turned out it's turned out great. We have a great team and we work together well and enjoy one another, so it works.

Dr. William Attaway 9:03

You know, one of the one of the big things that I see is that this particularly large companies, but really companies of any size tend to focus on tangible gifts. You know, they they focus on the reward and the recognition and these tangible things, you know, the the trophy, the the certificate, the medal, the plaque. Maybe it's if it's a large enough company, the bonus, the trip, things

Rewards Versus Real Appreciation

Dr. William Attaway 9:26

like that. You know, and that is very, very different. That's only one of the languages of appreciation.

Dr. Paul White 9:33

And it's less than 10% of the workforce. And so uh even if you use words and gifts, you're only at about 55% of the workforce. And also the kinds of gifts, I mean, I have numerous negative stories from clients, employees, about the kinds of gifts uh that they've gotten. You know, some larger companies uh use logo wear, you know, for their their company insignia and so forth. And and that's okay, but if all you get is something with the company logo, it feels like there's a secondary motive that you're sort of the walking billboard kind of thing, and people sort of resent that, or everybody gets the same thing, you know, and you know, whether it's pens or you know, uh had people the one company, the the marketing team came back from a a conference where they had been presenting and uh brought back the marketing materials and put them in the break room and said, hey, we've got leftover marketing materials, go get whatever you want, you know, just show appreciation, you know, and you know, that fell flat, obviously. So and it's real one of the things we found is it's not about the amount of money that you spend. It's really about the thought that counts and that you get to know uh your colleagues. And I I think that's been an emphasis that we've grown in is that appreciation tends to be really related to the person, whereas recognition is about performance, which is good when it's done well, but that you know it's person to person versus sort of the institution to the person. And so you find out what that person likes, whether they're kind of coffee or their favorite sports team, and you get something related to that. So really I think that's been a big theme that's continued to drive what the work we do is helping people get to know their individual team members. So we've created group profiles for the results of the NBA inventory so that everyone gets to know what their colleagues like or don't want as far as how to be appreciated.

Dr. William Attaway 11:39

Yeah. So often I see people feeling like it's a tension, like an either-or. Like either we can do recognition and these tangible things, or we can we can show appreciation. But you have a different perspective on that.

Dr. Paul White 11:51

Well, I've developed a different perspective. Initially, we sort of had to come at recognition and rewards fairly hard because it was so institutionalized that we had to say, you know, this isn't working because while companies were spilling, spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on rewards, employee engagement wasn't growing and job satisfaction wasn't growing, and it's like, you know, this isn't working. And so had to sort of differentiate initially, but then over time we have, and you know, people know about appreciation now where they didn't 15 years ago. And, you know, just recently had research come out from Asia internationally that showed that recognition is an extrinsic, meaning outside of you reward and helps towards task completion and job performance and motivate that. Whereas recognition is internal and personal and has to do with sort of relational support and continuing through difficult times, and that the two they found work together to create greater benefit than either individually. And so we now work with companies to add appreciation programs and resources to their recognition programs so that they can get more benefit. And being forthright, I mean younger employees for me, I mean anybody under 40, which is not that young, really. But uh but the younger employee, the more it is about the person-to-person kind of thing. And that actually quality time becomes more of a desired appreciation language, but not as I tell bosses, it's not that they want time with you. Uh, they want the time with their colleagues. So yeah. It's fun to learn along the way, both about generations, work, workplaces, and different cultures.

Dr. William Attaway 13:42

There's a lot of conversation in business circles around building a healthy and sustainable culture for your business. Every business has a culture. You either have one you designed on purpose and you meant to have, or you have one you didn't mean to have, but you have a culture. What what role does appreciation play in building a healthy culture in your business?

Dr. Paul White 14:03

Well, I I think it'd

Building Culture And Handling Toxicity

Dr. Paul White 14:05

be really difficult to have a healthy culture without people feeling valued and appreciated. And so I think it's uh sort of a ground level piece that that goes together. You know, along the way, early on, probably the first two or three years when I would be speaking, people would come up and start telling me stories about how nasty their workplace was or what a jerk their boss was. And it kept happening. And so it's like, okay, this is something we need to think about. And so we did research and then wrote a book called Rising Above a Toxic Workplace and created resources in a in a training kit around that because you can have positives, but if you've got a lot of negatives going on at the same time, there's sort of, you know, it's not as healthy as if it was just the positive, right? And so we've helped companies and organizations identify toxic patterns, ways of relating toxic individuals, what they look like, and how to deal or manage them or help them find a more exciting job for themselves elsewhere.

Dr. William Attaway 15:05

So I love that. I think that's really speaking into what a lot of people are experiencing or have experienced, you know, this toxicity. You've also got resources on the flip side about creating a vibrant workspace.

Dr. Paul White 15:19

Yeah, that book, the The Vibrant Workplace, came about uh as a as a result of having worked in the field for five or six years and learning lessons about some common challenges that organizations have in applying the five languages of appreciation and addressing those, whether that's pushback from supervisors that they feel like you know already got enough to do and they can't add another task on, which is a real thing. And so that's why we don't focus on just teaching supervisors to show appreciation, but we teach the whole team how to do it. Or difficult to appreciate colleagues, how do you manage those? Some people are sort of prickly and are negative a lot, and you know, you can do positive things and it just seems like it's going into a black hole. What do you do about that? Cross-cultural issues. So, yeah, we've dealt with sort of the 10 most common ta challenges of applying appreciation within workplaces.

Dr. William Attaway 16:14

I love that.

Dr. Paul White 16:15

I love the practicality of that.

Dr. William Attaway 16:17

You know, pre pre-COVID, and and so much of our lives are pre-COVID and post-COVID, right? Pre-COVID, there was a rise in the number of remote employees and remote workplaces. COVID accelerated that pretty dramatically. And on the on this side of COVID, with even with the return to office mandates that we've seen among many large corporations, there is still a significant

Remote Appreciation That Feels Human

Dr. William Attaway 16:40

number of people who are working remotely or who are leading remote team members. How do you navigate appreciation in that type of an You know, it's interesting.

Dr. Paul White 16:52

And I feel sort of proud that we actually saw that need and trend before COVID and did research on remote employees and how they like to be shown appreciation prior to COVID. And then it obviously sort of flourished, if you will, during COVID and then post-COVID, both with remote and hybrid workers. And, you know, the languages still are the same. The actions look different. And there's some practical challenges that you have to go through. Like if you want to, you know, check in with somebody or spend quality time, how you do that remotely. Well, you know, we found the best thing to do is send somebody an email or a note and say, hey, I'd like to check in with you for 10 or 15 minutes and see how you're doing and set up a time because you don't want to interrupt them. That's sort of a barrier there. And then talk about them, not just work, how their projects are going, but talk about them as a person. And one of the interesting findings we found that actually comes out of some neuroscience research is that there is a qualitative difference between interacting online, whether it's one-on-one or in a group, and interacting person to person. Um, and that, you know, sort of funny stories that, you know, you've met with somebody for months online and then you meet them, and they're either significantly taller or shorter than you thought because you only saw them in the chair. But also, people interact differently in person and in groups and small groups. Uh, some are more comfortable, some are less. And also the neuroscience has found that our brains interact differently that when we're in close proximity, there's actually sort of a sharing of brain waves and responses that doesn't happen online. And so I've come to the conclusion, and I encourage companies to try to have their team members get together at least once a year, if not twice a year, in person, because that creates the environment for building a trusting relationship that's going to carry over.

Dr. William Attaway 18:50

That's good. I love that. You know, I think a a lot of leaders look at this and they say, oh, this is nice. This is nice. I'm not sure it's necessary. I'm not sure I've got time for this. If somebody is across the table from you and they're expressing that type of a sentiment, what would you say? How would you speak into that and talk about how this actually impacts performance?

Dr. Paul White 19:13

Yeah, well, first of all, I would say, well, the

The Business Case For Appreciation

Dr. Paul White 19:15

Securities Exchange Commission and the European Union disagree with you that it's not necessary because they are now implementing rules and regulations about publicly traded companies reporting what they do towards workplace culture, employee engagement, recognition, appreciation, because they found that two companies that are in the same industry and one is focusing on their employees and recognition and uh appreciation, the other isn't. The one that is paying attention that outperforms the one that isn't. And so that's an important piece of information for investors, right? And we found, you know, there's we've got, you know, 10, 12 years of research that we cite, and they're in our book, the citations. But, you know, when people feel valued and appreciated, attendance is more consistent, and there's less tardiness, there's less conflict at the work, there are less on-the-job accidents reported, there is increased compliance to procedures, there the productivity increases and profitability increases largely because people resigning is this uh single non-productive cost to businesses of losing people. And we clearly impact that significantly. That's probably one of the biggest impacts we have is that people stay. Because people don't stay at jobs just for pay, uh except in you know dire situations. But if they have options and they don't feel valued, they're looking around and they're also being recruited. That's a good word. Last question I've got for you today, Dr.

Dr. William Attaway 20:56

White. You know, 15 years ago, as you started this journey on appreciation, you have gone from that point to now being one of the recognized experts in the world around this topic. How has your understanding of appreciation shaped you, not just as a as a professional, but as a person?

Dr. Paul White 21:17

Well, I'm more aware of the people that I interact with on a day-to-day basis as a consumer and and as a client, that uh when I go to the grocery store, you know, I try to uh call attention to some little thing uh with the cashier, or when I'm talking to people, find out a little bit about them as a person. You know, every employee is is first of all a person, and they're gonna be a person after they're an employee. And we think about ourselves first as a person, you know, as people versus just employees that we have strengths and abilities that are outside of. of our job responsibilities and we value those whether we're musical or athletic or artistic or funny. I always hire funny people, you know, that's gonna I want to laugh, you know, rather than some sour puss that can get the work done, you know, so uh it's and you know that's why we work together. I love your laugh. So you know so it's it's just you can bring a little bit of uh joy and light to people's lives with not a lot of effort. It takes a little intentionality but not a lot of effort and very little cost to you as an individual. That's so good.

Dr. William Attaway 22:38

You know, at Appreciation Network we are now rolling out some new resources, you know, one of which is the certified workplace where companies can say hey we want to take this what we've learned through the assessment, what we've learned through the framework. We want to be intentional about making this a part of our culture. And we provide weekly training, we provide resources to help the people leaders, the team leaders in the organization

Resources And Final Challenge

Dr. William Attaway 23:01

to begin to get to know their team members, to understand how they are wired so that they can show them appreciation in a very specific way and in a very authentic way. And I'm so grateful for the for the framework that you've shared today. And I would challenge any of our listeners who are listening to this if you are not familiar with this framework, you can go to appreciationatwork.com. You can find out more about what we're doing. And if you have already been sold on this and you're like man we need to we need to implement this, I would challenge you to take a look at the certified workplace. We'll have links to all of this in the show notes. Dr. White, thank you so much for your time, your expertise and the wisdom that you've shared today.

Dr. Paul White 23:41

You bet. Glad to be with you, enjoyed the time