Beyond the Paycheck: Why Corporate Recognition Fails and Genuine Appreciation Wins - Dr. Paul White

Hi everyone and welcome to Behind the Numbers. As you know, this is the show where we go beyond the data to explore the people, the stories, and the insights that really drive business success. I'm Dave Bookbinder. I am known as a valuation expert and best-selling author and I thank you for joining me today. We have all heard the old management cliche, I show my staff appreciation by giving them a paycheck every two years. Yet study after study shows that feeling invisible is a primary reason for employees to walk out the door. Today, we're talking about how to fix that broken dynamic, and my guest is psychologist, leadership expert, Dr. Paul White. He is the co-author of the massive bestseller, The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, and has fundamentally changed how organizations function. Dr. White, welcome to the program. Thanks, Dave. I'm glad to be with you. It is my pleasure to have you. Is there anything that I didn't mention in that brief intro that you'd like to share with the audience about who you are? Oh, just briefly, I'm a psychologist that I've done really three things in my career. One is I evaluated students that have learning difficulties, ADHD and dyslexia, so I understand that population. Secondly, I grew up in the context of a family-owned business and mid-career I was asked by some business consultants to help them deal with family business issues. And so I traveled around and worked with the family issues of transferring businesses across generations. And then that led to the opportunity to work with Dr. Chapman in trying to apply the five love languages, which he wrote, to work-based situations and relationships. So I've been doing that the last 10, 15 years. Well, that's really good stuff. And I'm excited to have this conversation with you because in my day job, I am often involved in family-owned businesses and dealing with issues around transitions and planning for succession and things like that. And all of the inherent problems that come along with a family dynamic are just magnified that much more when you add it. So let's jump in here and kind of talk about the backstory, if you will. You alluded to it in your discussion here when you talk about the incredibly famous Five Love Languages framework, bringing it into the professional sphere. So when you and Dr. Chapman first sat down to bridge the gap, what was the most glaring indicator to you that the corporate world was really misunderstanding what it takes to be thinking about human motivation? Well, it actually occurred just before that. I was working with a company in North Carolina on business succession. I asked the father who was the CEO of the company how the plan was going. He says, 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 my wife and I were rereading at that point in time the five love languages. And I thought, I wonder if these concepts could transfer to business settings. So I pursued Dr. Chapman. It took me a year to get to him and pitch the idea. And he agreed that he had been thinking the same and was looking for somebody to work with on that project. Yeah. For those who aren't familiar with the five love languages, maybe do you want to just do a quick debrief on that so we can really get a good context here? Sure. Yeah. And in actuality, the five languages of appreciation in the workplace are same in name. They look differently, but they're the same words of affirmation. So communicating something verbally, quality time, spending time with someone in a way that they desire and prefer. Acts of service, helping them out in a practical way, tangible gifts is the fourth language, and then physical touch is the last one. I appreciate you setting that just for a contextual framework here. And from that, you make a really sharp distinction between recognition and appreciation. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of HR departments conflict the two. So for a manager who's listening right now, how do they distinguish between performance-based recognition and person-based appreciation? And why is mixing them up really damaged culture and organization? Well, you succinctly summarized it. I mean, we believe that employee recognition, which is a good thing when it's done right, which is not always the way it's done, but is largely about performance, that you're recognizing somebody who's done a job well or completed a task. Where we believe that appreciation really is about the whole person and not just performance. And it really, that message rings with younger employees because they really feel like, you know, they are a person coming to work and they have value beyond just what they do. And the other thing is that largely employee recognition is institutionally driven. I mean, you know, from the HR or executive team and they recognize somebody and it's public and all that. And really appreciation is person to person and that people feel appreciated in different ways. And that's why we help educate people and train them on how to show appreciation in a way that's meaningful to the recipient. Yeah. And we're going to bust a lot of myths here and probably have a lot of folks scratching their heads because many of them are really well-intended and don't even know that maybe they're doing more harm than good. And maybe in that vein, you've written critically about, well, in the extensive corporate recognition platform, the ones where the employees accumulate points and buy a gift or a gift card or something like that. Why do these massive automated systems fail to make a human being actually feel like they're genuinely valued? you? Well, first, one reason is a lot of people, in fact, tangible gifts. You know, rewards and so forth are chosen. Our research with almost a half a million people shows that it's less than 10. That's how they want to be shown appreciation. So you're trying to show appreciation maybe in a way that's not meaningful to them. Also, it's highly impersonal. I mean, and it does often doesn't cost the giver anything. If they're a manager or supervisor, they have a fund that's been, you know, allocated to them by the company and you have, you know, I'll call it 500 bucks, I don't know, to give to your team. And so you divvy it up. And, and also then often the systems are, you go to a website and there's a catalog and you can either get an item that you want or a gift card. And so it's sort of like, you know, giving yourself a birthday gift, you know, oh, thank you so much, you know, so it doesn't have a lot of relational impact that way. Yeah. And I want to unpack each of the five languages. And before I start with the words of affirmation, you and I were talking before we went on air here today about some things I've talked about in this program before, the work that's been done by Irrational Capital and developing the human capital factor that kind of drives some of the Harvard capital ETFs. And they broke down the components of employee engagement and into the individual component parts. And when we talk about appreciation, they've got real data that shows just how dramatic an impact can be just by literally a manager walking on a production floor and telling people, thank you, I appreciate you. Increased performance in a particular factory by 6% just by saying thank you. Right. Yeah. And I guess a message to leaders and managers is that the goal of showing appreciation in this case is not solely to make the other person feel good or valued. That's one of the goals. But from an organizational point of view, we have lots of research that shows that when team members feel valued and appreciated, good things happen. They show up regularly on time. They don't call in a SIC as often. They stay, and that's a big issue that it reduces turnover because pay and compensation doesn't really keep employees. If you don't pay them well, they're going to leave. But appreciation is really the key factor to keeping people. One study showed that 79% of the people who left the job voluntarily cited lack of appreciation as one of the main reasons they were leaving. So you have those issues that interfere. And then, as you said, productivity goes up, profitability goes up. And in fact, that's why there's a movement in the investment world now to assess and report things that are going on in the human capital world as far as what kind of programs you have and having companies report that to investors. So it's going to become more and more of an issue. That's what I'm hoping for. So let's unpack and let's start with these words of affirmation. And I believe your data shows that words of affirmation are kind of the most common language heard by maybe almost half of the employees. But you also note that the general praise, like the blanket statements, the great job everybody emails, actually feels lazy. What's the functional anatomy of praise that actually hits the mark versus the praise that rings all up? Yeah, first, you know, we're sort of acculturated to praise verbally. And so I think that's part of the reason it's the largest group. It is less than half of employees. So if you only use words, you're missing half of your team members of how they want to be shown appreciation. But we teach a model of using a person's name. We like to hear our name. If you're writing it, please spell it correctly. There are a lot of different ways to spell even common names, but use a person's name, be specific about what you value of either who they are or what they've done. And then third part that's really important is tell them why that's important to you, either to you or the organization or the client. So it might be, I don't know, Steve, thanks for staying late after the meeting at the end of the day and cleaning up, you know, our conference room because we have a meeting first thing this morning and it was good to go. And so I really appreciate that, you know, you took responsibility to do that. And so just that model being really specific, but also telling them why it's important to you or the client. So that's words. And, you know, about half of employees are introverted and introverted people don't like to go up in front of big groups. And we found that 40% of all employees, and it actually breaks down differently according to jobs. Don't like to go in front of a big group to be shown recognition or appreciation. And it actually is a negative. So if you're calling people up in front and, you know, praising them, you're probably not getting the result from them that they would like. Yeah. And this is why it's so important to unpack each of these languages, because not everybody responds to and appreciates the same type of recognition. I remember being in an organization where they really thought that they were trying to do the absolute right thing. And they had a little ceremony where employees would come up and ring a bell and receive an award and things like that. And to your point, the introverts hated that. That was not fun for them. Yeah. And in fact, I'll mention it now, but so along with the book that we wrote, The Five Language and Appreciation of the Workplace, we created an online assessment because we found that just knowing the person's language isn't sufficient to really hit the target for them because in each language, words, time, and I'll explain, people have different actions that they prefer, and so we allow... Individuals to find out what their preferred language is and then identify the actions they want and even from whom they want it because they may want to spend time with one person but not a cellular supervisor and so we've you know had 475,000 people worldwide take that now so well that was a good segue because i want to talk to you about quality time and okay to your point when you talk about the employees who whose primary language is quality time yeah i don't think they necessarily want to spend more time with their bosses. If anything, they'd like to spend more time with their peers. So what does that tell you or tell us about the current state of the workplace isolation? Yeah, and it's been interesting. I mean, our materials have been out 15 years now, and we track generations, and generations differ. I mean, those of us that are older do value time with our supervisor or manager, being able to get input from them or share observations. But younger workers, call it what you mean, well, I don't know, 35 and below, they don't want time. I had rather shout, I got she said, yeah, my supervisor likes time, but you know, it's just, he's pretty intense and it sort of wags me out when we have to get one-on-one. And younger people like to hang out with their peers and their colleagues, and that could either have lunch together or maybe work on a project together, but, or go out, you know, the bar or a sporting event afterwards. So, You know, I was talking to a group of leaders, I said, just because you have a person that has quality time doesn't mean they want time with you. And so you need to figure out what kind of time they want. Yeah, I'd like to ask you about the quality time that they'd like to, because I've seen it so many times throughout my career where, again, well intended, let's put this group together. But you put them in a situation where maybe the activity or the environment isn't really suited to what you're trying to achieve. Like maybe you're going to go off the axe throwing. And the cliques all stay in their own little teams, so they're not really mingling with the other people. Or nowadays, when you talk about going to the bar, many, especially the younger professionals, don't want to drink. And going to the bar is an awkward and uncomfortable situation. And they're torn. I should go because I've got to show my face, but I really don't want to be there. How do you think about the type of activities involved? Well, you know, it's helpful to talk to your team and ask them and say, you know. And and i'm a social guy and i like to hang out with my team but there were times they didn't want to hang out with me you know and so i said all right you guys organize something and and i'll pay for it if you want to go out to to eat or whatever you know go get some ice cream and and they figured out in the midst of covid and shortly after that when we were doing virtual things you know we would have just sort of chat time or we would i i have a team member that really liked trivia. And so they put together sort of a trivia pursuit game for people to do together. It doesn't always have to be about work. It's just fun things that they like to do. All right, I'm going to move on to acts of service. And there's an interesting paradox that you point out because many employees actually will reject help when it's offered. So how can a colleague or a leader offer practical assistance when they're working on a project and make the recipient not feel like they're being micromanaged or even worse, incompetent? Yeah, you know, in much of our country, sort of the work ethic and independence is strong. And if you say, you know, is there something you see the person struggling to get something done in time of a target date? And you say, is there something I can do to help? They can say, no, I'm OK. And you sort of have to push that. You say, no, I know you got a lot to go. I've got a little bit of, you know, free time. What would be the best way to help you out? And so it's more what would be helpful to you and not do you need help? And it can be really we found it sort of goes into two buckets. One is for service-oriented jobs where maybe a dentist, receptionist, you know, a whole bunch of people come in to the office at once and sort of lined up there. You know, maybe another team member or even the office manager, you know, helps process that. Or when you're working on a time-limited project to find out what can be done. And it's important to find out from them because what you think they need help with may not be what they think they need help with, that they want to keep working on this. But if you would handle this little side project part, that'd be helpful to them. Yeah. This next area that we're going to talk about, the tangible gifts language, I think is really going to smack a lot of people out there upside the head. But we're going to have to go there because you talk about the, we'll call it the generic company swag. Everybody's got the water bottles, the hats, whatever it is that's got the corporate logo or the leftovers from an event. Those types of things apparently actually lower morale. Talk about that and what makes a workplace gift meaningful according to your research? Well, first of all, like I said, in the United States, in Canada, Western Europe, less than 10% of people choose tangible gifts as the way they want to be appreciated. Interestingly, you know, we do work internationally and in South America and Asia, it goes down to 2%, 3%. And in Singapore, it was 1%. So, you know, sort of what we've been doing for decades doesn't really work. By the way, words is about 44% of the population choose words as their primary language. Quality time is 25%. Acts and services is 20%. And they're an important group because they sort of live by the mantra, don't tell me you care, show me. And so that's one out of every five. So you got to hit them. And then tangible gifts is about 9%. And what we find is that it's really not about the monetary value. you. It's about that you are getting to know them as a person and what they like. It sort of emphasized appreciation is person to person. It's not according to the org chart. It's not just from managers to whoever there is on their team. It's one of the key things is we found that we train colleagues how to show appreciation to one another because when somebody's having a bad day, who's the first one to know about? It's usually somebody that's working alongside of them and that's how you can encourage them. So tangible gifts. It's really about their favorite snack, bringing in their favorite kind of coffee, maybe something about a sports team that they follow and you found an article or a magazine about that, or just maybe a hobby that they're starting to do a garden for the first time and are sort of trying to figure out and you get them a resource. It doesn't have to cost anything. Lots of times it could be an online resource. Let's say a dad is starting to coach a soccer team for his kid and, you know, does sort of first time and, you know, the website that has good training activities and share it with them. So it's to show that you're getting to know them and thinking about them and tell you who they are. Yeah. Last but not least, physical touch. In the workplace, that can be an absolute compliance minefield. But, you know, some employees like to get a high five or give a high five occasion. Yeah. Talk about the aspects of physical touch in the workplace. You know, it's interesting with our sort of ethnocentric blinders in the U.S. That we think everybody's like us. We found, especially as we work in different industries and across the world, that in the U.S., physical touch is like, oh, don't touch. But there are some people that, you know, touch is an important thing. We found that it's really a high five a fist bump maybe a congratulatory handshake but there's also situations where something serious is going on like their spouse who was in a car wreck they're going to the hospital you know and just a hand on the shoulder or something like that but in other cultures like our uh hispanic friends and in latin america and europe you know they greet with a kiss on the cheek often and not having any physical touch feels very sort of distinct and cold. And so you have to be aware. It's always the recipient who gets to define what's appropriate. But, you know, I think Americans overreact a little bit, but, uh, you know, New York or, or Jersey, you know, you, you know, it's, you sort of nod your head and say, Hey, versus, uh, you know, a high five or something like that. Yeah. It's all localized for sure. Um. I want to talk to you about the excuses that leaders often give, because this is what you're talking about here is really time consuming. You're talking about really getting to know everybody and having to talk to all your people. And I was in a meeting yesterday and to say this, but the folks in the room said people suck. I like the numbers, but working with employees, man, that's difficult. But that's where the magic is. So how do you how do you coach these types of people? Well, you know, we work with a range of types of organizations from, you know, let's say hospitals, schools, but accountants, computer programmers, you know, engineers who are pretty heady, intellectual. And we went them over by showing them the data first, the importance of it, because when people don't feel valued and appreciated, they're at risk for leaving and big time risk. And that's a big issue in a lot of industries right now. And so we try to make it practical. And also, I mean. I was working with a hospital and this nurse manager said, how do I do this with, I got 80 people that report to me. And I'm going, you don't, yeah, but you don't really supervise 80 people. You know, you have to sort of break it down and maybe get a colleague who will take five or six people and relate to them and you take another five or six. And the reality is it doesn't take a lot of time. It takes a little bit of mental energy and emotional energy to interact and relate to people. But it's sort of self-rewarding because when people feel valued, they're less touchy, they're less irritable, they're more willing to do an extra task. And so work gets done quicker and you reach your goals. And customers observe sort of the interaction style. And when people don't feel valued, team members, it gets communicated to customers. And when they do feel valued and like where they were, then customer relationship improves as well. Yeah, it's all connected. So if someone's out there listening and they're in one of those situations where maybe their leader doesn't give them the appreciation that they feel that they deserve, can their colleagues, their peers, can that type of peer-to-peer appreciation, not only save their sanity, but can that keep them from parting the organization? Yeah. You know, one of the things we've learned over time is that starting at the top, whether it's a C-suite or the owner and working down is really the minority of the time of how we enter organization. We're often found out by a supervisor or even a team member that tells other people about it. And then we work with either a department or maybe a division. And what we do is we set it up as sort of a trial and say, hey, what? Let's give this a go and see how it goes. And fortunately, we've developed a system that works and that's genuine. We tell people, don't try to just look like you appreciate somebody. If you don't appreciate somebody, let's work on that and help you figure out something you appreciate about them. And then what's happened is then when this group is showing appreciation to others, they hear about it and it sort of creates a positive peer pressure. And we went all the way across Miller Coors, DirecTV. We're doing Caterpillar now, Capital One. Really, what's been interesting is the industry. It doesn't matter. We have an article in the New York Times about our work with a mining company in South Dakota. And you wouldn't think miners and truck drivers and concrete guys would be big about this, but they valued the genuineness of it. They actually took it. We have little symbols for each language, and they got a symbol, put it on their hard hat, and it's gone well. Yeah, that's brilliant because I wanted to ask you, and you're like a mind reader here, but I wanted to ask you about for those people who maybe didn't like being invited up to the ring the bell ceremony that I talked about before, and instead they would prefer the water bottle or vice versa, in the absence of that sticker on the hard hat for your leader to know what you value in terms of how you want great permission, should employees actually advocate for themselves and let their leaders know, hey, I really didn't care for the corporate logo on the bottle. That's not really what drives me. And what are the risks and the rewards of doing that? Well, I think it depends on the context of the organization and the relationship. When I first started talking about appreciation, often at breaks and afterwards, people would come up and tell me examples of how toxic their workplace was and what a jerk their boss was. And we wound up doing research and wrote a book on toxic workplaces and how to survive those. So if it's, you know, trust isn't well established, you know, you got to be careful about it. But you say, you know, it's always nice to at least show a little appreciation. I say, you know, I appreciate the effort and the idea that you want to, you know, show me some thanks. But just to let you know, you know, a physical item doesn't do it. If I could get, you know, five or 10 minutes with you, you know, every couple of weeks just to sort of give some feedback or hear from you, that would be meaningful to me. So sometimes you have to risk a little bit, but, you know, I'd start small. I wouldn't say, hey, we need to do this thing and, you know, bring the book and, you know, do it across the organization. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I want to emphasize that for the folks out there that are doing these things that you and I are kind of soiling on here, they're well intended. They're trying to show appreciation to their employees. We're trying to help folks understand a little nuanced way of thinking about these things or rethinking. Yeah, but the problem is organizations waste a lot of money. I mean, millions of dollars. And our system doesn't cost very much at all. And so you can get the value without spending a lot of extra money. Yeah, so important. You alluded to your assessment, so motivating by appreciation. Talk to me a little bit about the leaders that have taken this assessment. And what's the aha moment or disconnect that you've found that happened between the CEO and your executive teams? Well, yeah. So we have a general version, but we found that the actions within each language differ according to the culture or the setting of the job. So we've developed versions for medical settings, financial institutions, school, government agencies, because an act of service looks different in a trade. Say, you show up at the end of the day, help clean up the job site versus in a setting where maybe it's office work. And they're surprised at. Sort of the variety and how low gifts really is. And that a little bit of intentionality about giving a person a praise about what they've done. And by the way, it's not always about work, right? I mean, again, the issue is that people have lives and you maybe have a team member that's training to run a half marathon and comment on them saying, man, that's really cool that you have the self-discipline to do that. And let me know how that goes. So that it's not just about, hey, thanks for getting that, you know, quarterly report done to me on time. That's helpful, but, you know, more about the person. And the same thing, like, let's say you've got a single mom working for you and say, man, I'm just, I'm really impressed with how committed you are to your kids. And I know they've got a, I don't know, a music thing Friday afternoon. Why don't you take the time off to do that? And so you can be there for your kids. Yeah, I've shared this story before, but I was a single dad for more than a decade and working for leaders that understood that I had a special set of circumstances and maybe needed to leave work, take up a sick kid at two o'clock in the afternoon. And they gave me the flexibility to do what I needed to do. I walked through fire. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and actually that's the thing. I mean, it creates loyalty. If you want to keep your team members, find out how they want to be appreciated in and start to show it and teach, don't try to carry the weight all by yourself. We found that you really need to teach the team members how to show appreciation to one another. And that's the way that it works well. Yeah. Unfortunately, we're getting down to the short strokes here. I got a hunch I could probably talk to you for another half hour, but got to wrap this up shortly here. But looking back at the massive global footprint this framework has had over the years, is there a single truth about human nature in the workplace that you wish every manager would internalize today or tomorrow? Wow. I guess it is that we... Do our best and respond best when we know that we're valued. And if there's a question of, you know, am I just being used to accomplish their goal? That's not very motivating. But if I know they value me, they value my talents and abilities, then that calls to something deeper that you're going to get the best out of your team when you show that you really do value and appreciate them. Yeah, well said. And that appreciation leads to this discretionary effort that we referred to, which drives profitability, which drives business value. It's all connected. So let's do it right. Dr. Paul, before I let you go, where can listeners learn more about your work, your books, the assessment and everything else they need to know about how they can connect? Yeah, sort of our global centerpiece is appreciationatwork.com. And it's the word at appreciationatwork.com. It has information, books, assessment. I do speaking engagements for organizations and occupational societies and so forth and the international work. And I'll provide a sample report to you as well as we do a group summary because it's nice to know how you like to be showing appreciation, but it's really you need to learn how your team members are. And so be able to see the results that you can get from doing our assessments. That's awesome. Dr. Paul, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today on Behind the Numbers. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Pleasure. And thank you out there for listening to Behind the Numbers with Dave Bookbinder. If you enjoyed the episode, please do take a moment, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. As I always say, that stuff really does move the needle. It helps people find the show and help get great guests like Dr. Paul on the program. Until next time, I am Dave Bookbinder reminding you that the numbers tell the story, but the people bring it to life. Take care, everybody. We'll see you next time.