The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace

Gary Chapman and Paul White

Who should read: Anyone who works with other people (in any capacity)! 

Favorite quote: “The question is not, ‘Do you appreciate your coworkers?’ The real question is, “Do they feel appreciated?”

Why I feel it is important to veterinary medicine: The burnout and stress rate in veterinary medicine is horrendous (85% AVMA attendees)¹ and the veterinary technician nationwide shortage may get worse (over 50% report they don’t want to stay in the field, and over 50% have worked less than 5 years at their current employer)². The authors frequently interchange appreciation with encouragement. Appreciation and encouragement in the workplace can be pretty hard to come by, and may make a world of difference in staff retention and work culture!

Have you ever felt unappreciated at work? How long did you last in that job? How was your quality of life while in that position? 64% of people self-report that they’ve left a job because they didn’t feel appreciated.³

The thing people rank as the highest factor for their job satisfaction is feeling appreciated at work. When employees don’t feel appreciated they feel discouraged, negative about their work, and a lack of connection. Disengagement ensues. So, if you find yourself disengaged with work, this is one area to examine. For those of you that are employers, if you find you have high turnover or disengagement, this info is for you! 

One of the biggest take-aways of this book is that not everyone feels appreciated in the same way. What may be very effective for one individual will fall flat, or even feel very disingenuous to another. So, even if you are very conscious of expressing appreciation to your employees or co-workers, you are likely missing the mark for a good chunk of them. We usually communicate in the manner that is most important to us, leaving us blind to the other expressions of appreciation that don’t hold value for us.

The authors describe five separate means of feeling appreciated- or five languages of appreciation.

The languages are as follows: 

Affirmation

This language is probably the first that comes to most people’s mind. It’s telling someone they are appreciated. There are different dialects of this. Some people respond much better to a written thank you note, whereas some are most honored by being recognized in front of their peers with an award. Other people who feel most appreciated by affirmation might actually feel terrorized by being publicly recognized, and prefer a quick, private and spontaneous acknowledgement. The tricky caveat to this language is understanding what method of expression is most meaningful to your coworker, and speaking that dialect. 

Quality Time

This language is about personal attention, not just proximity. For some, it’s about having a supervisor take the time to listen to their ideas or thoughts. For others, it’s about spending time together outside of work. And for still others, it’s having small group dialogue about projects or the work goings-ons. The challenge here will be finding a strategy to regularly express this language in the busy workplace. 

Acts of Service

This language is providing assistance to the individual. Do not mistake this for doing someone else’s job for them. This is helping to ease other people’s burdens and workload. The trick here is being humble and caring enough to ask if you can help, helping only when accepted, and then helping their way. You can actually damage the relationship quite severely if you assume you know where and how to help, and especially if you insist on doing it your way. This feels the opposite of helping to people that speak this language. 

Tangible Gifts

This is probably the second most commonly utilized means of showing appreciation in the workplace. Tokens of appreciation are certainly appreciated by some individuals, but not uncommonly, the mug or gift certificate at the awards ceremony may completely miss the mark, even if this is the primary language for the individual. The challenge with this language is that the gift needs to be meaningful to the particular individual. This might mean tickets, a gift card to a favorite place, or a trinket pertaining to their hobby. This does NOT have to break the bank, and probably shouldn’t in order to be fair to other coworkers. 

Physical Touch

This obviously is likely to raise alarm bells, but not discussing it could be eliminating appreciation for a vital employee. Appreciation shown by touch in the workplace should always be appropriate and welcomed by the individual. Appropriate and welcomed touch in the workplace is typically a handshake, or a pat on the back. It’s always safer to ask someone than experiment or assume if you don’t know for a fact it would be welcomed. This is a rare primary language, so if in doubt, don’t forget many people have a secondary love language that may be valuable to them. 

There is great benefit to learning and implementing this knowledge to influence your environment. Spreading some appreciation around can be something you can do to create a positive environment, even if you aren’t the boss! There is also personal benefit, as you can raise awareness of your coworkers as to how best to appreciate you. If this feels like an area of growth you’d like to pursue, the book is a great place to start for learning more about changing your strategy for appreciating colleagues. If you want more specific strategies and information, there is an assessment, called The Motivating By Appreciation Inventory you can take on-line which provides your primary and secondary language, as well as your weakest- your blind spot. (Please note, Physical Touch is not assessed in the Inventory assessment, for reasons. Discussed more in the book.) Each book comes with an access code that allows you a free assessment. If you’d really like to take the bull by the horns, and try to implement a culture change in your place of work, you can work with a Certified Facilitator of Appreciation at Work to coach and educate on-site (including yours truly!!:)  
A quick word to the wise though- this is not one of the situations where “fake it till you make it” is a good idea! If you aren’t legitimately feeling the appreciation, don’t pretend- people can smell insincerity a mile away, and it will damage the trust in your relationship!

So, now that you’ve read about the languages, which do you feel most personally speaks to you? Can you recognize other languages in your coworkers?