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Business Owners Radio
CULTURE | Unlocking Workplace Appreciation w/ Dr. Paul White.
Unlock the secrets to fostering meaningful relationships and appreciation within your workplace with our special guest, Dr. Paul White. As a renowned psychologist and co-author of "The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace," Dr. White shares his expertise on navigating the complex dynamics of family-owned businesses. We discuss how personal and professional boundaries often blur, leading to unique challenges in communication and decision-making. Tune in to discover practical strategies from his updated book for showing appreciation in ways that resonate with each individual, especially in remote and hybrid work settings.
Explore the profound impact of personalized employee appreciation on retention and workplace culture in our compelling conversation. Learn why understanding individual preferences for recognition is crucial and how peer-to-peer appreciation can create a supportive environment. We'll dive into recent research highlighting that feeling appreciated holds more weight than compensation for employee retention. We also examine the pivotal role of HR in bridging the gap left by traditional recognition systems through meaningful gestures. Join us for actionable insights to ensure every team member feels truly valued.
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Welcome to Business Owners Radio. Business Owners Radio, where established business owners get the latest insights, strategies and practices to grow a sustainably profitable business. And now Taking Care of Business. Your hosts, craig Moen and Shai Gillod.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Business Owners Radio, episode 245. Joining Shai and I in the studio today is Dr Paul White, psychologist speaker and leadership expert, who makes relationships work. Dr White is the co-author of the best-selling book the Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, which has sold over 575,000 copies. His clients include PepsiCo, caterpillar, microsoft, nasa and many other multinational organizations.
Speaker 3:Good morning Paul. Welcome to Business Owners Radio.
Speaker 4:Thank you, I'm glad to be with you.
Speaker 3:Well, paul, we're really excited to have you here today and talk about your background and the new book. Thank you, I'm glad to be with you about relationships and how relationships work.
Speaker 4:Wow Well, I am a psychologist by training and part of my training actually in my master's program was on family systems and how family interactions sort of ping off each other and build, and I grew up in the context of a family owned business outside of Kansas city and so over the years I had some business consultant friends who kept running into family issues because you know, 85% of all the companies in the US are family owned.
Speaker 4:And I was working with a family business in North Carolina and largely I was dealing with the family issues surrounding business succession and wealth transfer planning. And I asked the dad, who was the CEO. I said how's the plan going? And he says it's going well, my son's stepping up. And then I walk across the hall and ask the son the same question. He says this is a disaster, it's never going to work, I can't ever please my dad. And at that point my wife and I were reading the Five's Love Language, which is by Dr Chapman, and it applies to personal and family relationships, and I wondered if the concepts could translate into work-based relationships. And so I pursued Dr Chapman and pitched the idea and we started working together and developed training materials and online assessment and then wrote the book together a number of years ago, but this year we've updated it and a new version's coming out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and tell us what led to that process, why the update now coming out yeah, and tell us what led to that process.
Speaker 4:Why the update now? Well, the last update was in 2019.
Speaker 4:And so those of us that can remember dates somewhat, remember that was pre-COVID and there's been a lot of change in the workplace and also in this area. There's a lot of research that comes out, so I wanted to update the research. We have a chapter that's basically the ROI of appreciation how it really helps your organization. It's not just about making people feel happy and then obviously, you know how to deal with remote and hybrid workers and can you and how do you show appreciation. So I wanted to get that updated so it could be relevant to the current circumstances be relevant to the current circumstances.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, and even that stat that you led with, the 85% of small businesses are family businesses. Well, you know, they all start with a family member, right? So it's point, you know, it's natural that there's some expansion there In your experience. You know. I love that anecdote about the father and son. Where do business owners go wrong in bringing other family members into the business?
Speaker 4:That's a great and sort of complicated question because you know family in and of themselves are sort of a system. There's rules, informal and about communication and decision making, and then businesses have a system about ownership and decision-making and responsibility and the two of those, when you have a family business, overlap. Sometimes. You get confused which hat you're wearing. If you're one of the parents and also an owner and you're talking to an adult child who is a manager, you can get confused. In fact I was dealing with one family and the dad and the CEO sort of told the rest of the family what they were going to do for their family vacation and he was funding it. But a couple of the daughters-in-law stepped up and said dad, love you, but you can't tell us how we're going to have our family vacation. And so it's sort of a boundary issue of keeping family issues sort of straight in business and working through the challenges when they overlap.
Speaker 2:Paul, there's so much discussions over the last 10 years with COVID and so forth, having these issues of relationships and appreciation levels transcending right down to the remote worker. I'm sure you've had some recent experiences and what can you give us for guidance there?
Speaker 4:Well, craig, the remote and hybrid employee is a challenge for any business leader today, because one of the issues is that not all remote or hybrid employees are the same right.
Speaker 4:I mean some work on-site, some in off-site, some worked off-site prior to COVID and this isn't that new for them Depends on your role, as whether you're a frontline worker, supervisor, manager of a lot of people, communication style, some people are very verbal, some people are more written and all of those challenges. And when we refer just to remote and hybrid workers, we sort of lose the individual distinction and that's part of our model of the five languages of appreciation is that not everybody feels appreciated in the same way. In fact, we've had over 400,000 people take our online assessment and less than half of employees prefer to be shown appreciation through words, and that's often the first thing that comes to our mind. We hear appreciation and say, oh, I need to say something, thanks or give a compliment, but if you only use words, you're going to miss more than half of your employees in how they really feel valued and appreciated. So it's a trick, but we've developed tools to help identify how each person wants to be shown appreciation and make it simple to do.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you're making it simple because it's really difficult to hone in on all the individuals within an organization, to understand their psychologies and their feelings or relative values. On appreciation, I remember being in meetings in which leadership was appreciating or recognizing various members of the teams and so forth, and used the same template for each one of them and it landed differently for each.
Speaker 1:What are the general?
Speaker 2:guidelines and it's really interesting that you have this assessment, which could be extremely helpful. Before assessing each one of your people, what steps do you think they should be aware of in this awareness of the differences?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, you know employees are asked to take a lot of different kinds of questionnaires or inventories and sometimes we're not real good at clarifying the purpose and when people find out that the goal of this information from our assessment is to identify how to show you appreciation or encourage you in the ways that are meaningful to you. So, one, I hit the mark. And two, I don't waste time and energy doing things that aren't important to you or others. Usually that helps people relax and they're fine with it.
Speaker 4:The other key part about this because you know owners and managers have more than enough to do. They don't need another to do list. I mean, I got a regular one, probably a project to do list, and then you know they don't need an appreciation one. And we really emphasize and have learned that appreciation really works best when it's communicated across team members, that it's not top-down solely. I mean clearly we want supervisors and managers to chime in, but More and more, especially with younger employees, they're more focused on collegial and peer relationships, and so our focus is teaching team members how to show appreciation to one another, versus sort of putting all the responsibility on the shoulders of the managers or owners.
Speaker 2:That sets up a very nice working environment and recent statistics are indicating why do people stay within their organizations and a large volume appear to be based on they enjoy their co-workers and follow that of being. They enjoy their management. So money is not the first factor in this involvement. So this seems to be something that's a very critical focal point for the relationships.
Speaker 4:You know, one study found 89% of managers think that their team members leave for more money. But when you ask the team members, it was only about 29% that say it's for more money. And MIT recently during sort of the great resignation of 21-22, did some research and found that cultural factors, and specifically feeling appreciated or not, was three times more accurate in predicting whether a team member was going to leave or not in comparison to compensation. So that's 300%, you know. It's not 3%. It's a huge factor and I think business managers and leaders you know you have to focus on the finances, keep track of that. But we can get sort of fogged, I think, sometimes and miss the human element of work and relationships and for most employees that day-to-day contact is really sort of what keeps them there or makes them think about leaving.
Speaker 2:And Paul. Is there a frequency to all of this or is it random? Or should there be a process to making sure that we're aligning and checking in with our team members?
Speaker 4:Well, it's partly case by case, but we know that more than once a year, if you only have an annual review.
Speaker 4:It needs to be more frequently communicated than that.
Speaker 4:But really, more than frequency, it's the accuracy, and that's the part that we found to be really helpful and successful is not only identifying a person's language of appreciation.
Speaker 4:So there's five of them. They're the same as the five love languages words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, tangible gifts which in our concept is not bonuses or raises, but just small things that show that you're getting to know your team members and then appropriate physical touch, which again in our culture is largely spontaneous celebration. It's a high five when you finish project, or a fist bump when you solve a problem, maybe a congratulatory handshake. But beyond the languages, we found that it's important to get the specific actions right, and that's where our inventory comes in, because we help people identify what they really value and share that message with their team members. And it doesn't take a lot when you, you know, sort of hit the target. And so it's less about frequency and more about maybe, if they do value, a handwritten note that it's just one every few months or something like that could clearly make them feel valued and motivated more than you know going to lunch every week if time's not that important to them.
Speaker 2:Paul, it appears that some organizations have an HR organization aligned with them in a certain space or a certain person on the staff of a team, and so forth. It seems to be something that HR really takes seriously and is an integral part of, for even training the leadership to be sensitive to. Where does HR fit into this?
Speaker 4:Well, hr is a huge piece and can be, and often are the people that are tasked with implementing the plan and the program. What's interesting is that historically, you know, hr has been quite involved in employee recognition activities, and those are good when they're designed well and implemented consistently, which is a couple of big ifs. That doesn't always happen. But also we found that recognition, especially as traditionally implemented, is not very effective in really making individuals feel valued, and it wasn't designed to do that. It really was designed to identify specific behaviors and goals, identify those, develop a plan, monitor it and then reward those, and when that's set up well, it works well. You want people to do the right thing, but that's different than valuing and appreciating somebody who maybe isn't a star, and so they don't reach sort of that higher level. And most employee recognition programs tend to focus on the top 10 or 15% of your workforce. That leaves the big 50 to 60% in the middle. That are good people, they work hard, they come in, but they don't hear anything, and one study found that 79% of the people who leave a job site, a lack of appreciation is a key factor, and so if they don't hear anything, they're sort of on the trading block, and another aspect that we really focus on is that appreciations about the person we believe. You know employees are people. We have value beyond just what we produce. It's a both and it's not an either, or Because there's some times in our life that we're not that productive.
Speaker 4:I have twin sons. They're now adults, but when they were little man, sleep deprivation was a key factor in my life and I wasn't the best professional on my team, but I didn't need sort of the rah-rah motivation. I just needed some relational support, and sometimes that's what's needed, in that we can value somebody for a characteristic not related to productivity. I like to work with cheerful people more than grumpy people, so I can show appreciation for somebody that's got a good sense of humor and a fun laugh or even things outside of work, when somebody's training for maybe a half marathon and to say, man, dave, I'm really impressed with your personal discipline to do that. It's not about work, but it helps build a connection and that's really critical these days we really are struggling, especially with remote and hybrid workers, of building a connectivity that helps them sort of stay with us even when things are a little bit challenging.
Speaker 3:And I think you point out something important here, which is that these kinds of behaviors you know, maybe there was a time where employers and business owners actually had more leverage, right, maybe more leverage over the workforce but that script is gone. It's so far gone. Now People have more options than ever what organizations they can be involved with and they demand transparency and deserve transparency. They can be involved with and they demand transparency and deserve transparency. And if you're not able to not just gain an understanding of this but put this into practice, it's going to be challenging to really grow your business.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think there are certain businesses that are totally have virtual teams that really don't know each other and haven't met each other. I think they're going to struggle. In fact, I work with some large tech companies and they've asked me to help train team members how to show appreciation across virtual teams and I said I don't know if this is going to work because really appreciation is person to person and you have to know people and you can recognize somebody's performance. Virtually that's not an issue, but without that connectivity it's hard for people to sort of stay with and not be looking around and in fact some new research in neuroscience has shown that there's a qualitative difference between two people interacting face-to-face in the same space, like in the office or at a restaurant, versus face-to-face virtually. You know online that there's a qualitative difference of understanding and empathy and I think if virtual teams don't get together at least occasionally, they're going to have a hard time keeping people and working together without misunderstandings and conflict.
Speaker 2:Paul, one of the things I read about in your descriptions is the workplace culture, and you mentioned something about appreciation between co-workers themselves. How does a small business owner perpetuate that relationship and that workplace culture where people are supporting each other and encouraging each other and appreciating each other?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it's key and it's not that tough to do. One of the things I had to get past was that our information and material isn't intellectually difficult, but it takes some discipline to implement and part of it is modeling right that as a leader, you want to model, paying attention to the individuals with whom you work and that report to you and get to know them. One of the things we found with remote workers that those who deal with the stress of the remote kind of work better are those that feel that they're connected at a personal level with their colleagues and their supervisor, that they know one another. And part of that is allowing time for team members to chat before or after a conference call, because in the old days when we would get together in a conference room, you'd show up a couple minutes early and talk about the Super Bowl or how their kids are doing in soccer and so forth. But we've sort of made things so efficient, if you will, some of our meetings, that we leave out that personal component, and so allowing time for team members to chat before and after and even just throw out a question about you know how was everybody's weekend, is really important as well as helping them go through a process.
Speaker 4:You know we have these online assessments. Code for taking them comes with the book, but you can just buy codes for the team members to take and it's sort of a fun exercise to learn how one another prefer to be shown appreciation and clearly you learn some things. And then facilitate that and bring it up in meetings occasionally and say you know what's gone well and what have you heard, and sort of make it part of your structure versus trying to do it outside of your existing meetings and communication. Let me add this I would say just sort of as a summary, that it's good to start somewhere with someone, that lots of times we hear things and we think, oh, it's a good idea, and then we never really start to implement it. And so just take a minute to think about those people with whom you work that if they didn't do what they did, your daily life would be harder. And mention it to them and be specific about what you value and why it's important to you, and I think you'll see some positive responses immediately.
Speaker 2:Paul, that was great insight and really helpful, and we really appreciate you joining us on Business Owners Radio today.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you, Craig and Shia. I'm glad to be able to share with your audience and thanks for the invitation.
Speaker 2:Is there anything else you'd like to leave with our audience today?
Speaker 4:There are a couple of things. One is, if people are interested to find out more, they can go to our website, appreciationatworkcom, and it's the word at, not the at workcom, and it's the word at, not the at sign. But also I'd be glad to send people a sample report of our assessment and a group summary that we put together. They just email me at yes, dr paul, yes d-r-p-a-u-l. At gmailcom. I'll send that out to them as well. As we actually had an article written about us in the new york times and in forbes, and I can send them as well. As we actually had an article written about us in the New York Times and in Forbes, and I can send those as well, just to make it easy for people to get more information.
Speaker 2:Our guest today has been Dr Paul White, co-author of the bestselling book the Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace. You can learn more about Paul, as well as find links to his book and all on our website at businessownersradiocom.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Business Owners Radio. We hope you enjoyed today's show. As always, you can read more about each episode, along with links and offers, in the show notes on our website, businessownersradiocom. We want to hear your feedback. Please leave comments on this show or suggestions for upcoming episodes. Tell your fellow business owners about the show and, of course, you would love the stars and comments on iTunes. Till next time, keep taking care of business.
