5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace - review

The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace: Empowering Organizations by Encouraging People by Gary Chapman and Paul White.  

I've been a fan of Chapman's 5 Love Languages and often thought about how those principles translated into the workplace.  This book answers that question and provides an excellent insight into the hows and whys of expressing appreciation to those with whom we work.

The authors set the stage with something we each know on a deeply personal level: "...each of us wants to know that what we are doing matters.  Without a sense of being valued by supervisors and colleagues, workers start to feel like a machine or a commodity.  If no one notices a person's commitment to doing the job well, that person's motivation tends to wane over time."  I know this is personally true for me.  While there are a lot of different ways to express appreciation as a supervisor or a colleague, Chapman and White suggest that each of us has a preference for how we would prefer to receive that expression of appreciation; in effect a "language" which would truly communicate appreciation.  They identify five different "languages" of appreciation, each with different dialects, to follow the analogy, which make the communication even more meaningful.

For some, an emphasis on appreciation seems too soft and fuzzy to be given serious consideration by a business, particularly one focused on the bottom line.  This would be a mistake.  According to the authors, "Gallup reports that almost 70 percent of people in the United States say they receive no praise or recognition in the workplace."  Add that to the statistic that "...88 percent of employees state they leave (quit) for reasons other than money.  In fact, the reasons most often cited by departing employees were more psychological in nature - including not feeling trusted or valued."   The result is a huge part of corporate culture which deals constantly with staff turn-over, with the expenses of hiring and training, along with low productivity.  The cost of these factors, taken for granted by most companies, can be debilitating and increases the driven nature of corporate executives who feel they have even less time for the soft and fuzzy.

How wrong they are.  I encourage you to get the book and learn about the different languages.  Included in the book is a survey code which identifies your own language(s).  Let's begin to create the type of workplaces we would love to work at and where others can thrive.