Heather Bayer
On the show today, I'm delighted to welcome Doctor Paul White, the co-author of The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace. If you're a fan of The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman, you are going to love this adaptation that helps us understand how we can communicate better with our staff and co-workers. There's lots of aha moments in this discussion, so let's get going.

Heather Bayer
This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer and I'm super excited to be back with you once again. And this is exciting. It was 2018 when I had a message from my friend Tyann Marcink asking if I'd like to join her and Andy McNulty, the founder of Touch Stay, to deliver a presentation at the then North West Vacation Rental Professionals Conference in Bend, Oregon. I would jump at the chance of working with Tyann and Andy any day, so she didn't have to twist my arm at all. And I'd never been to Bend, so that was an easy choice.

Heather Bayer
But then she told me she was developing a session around the topic of the five love languages. I'd read the book and I'd done the test, which told me a lot about my relationships. My preferred love language is acts of service, and the one at the bottom of my list is receiving gifts, which explains why I value my partner cleaning up after Christmas dinner more than any gift he could give me. In fact, receiving gifts is at the bottom of both our preferences. So we actually gave up exchanging gifts years ago, and we actually enjoy our relationship more when we offer acts of service to each other. I mean, Phil loves it if on a Thursday morning at 07:00 and he wakes up and he goes, oh my gosh, I've got to get the garbage out, and I say, I've already done it, honey, it's already done. I mean, most weeks he's already up. He's up and done it. But if he has a lie-in or oversleeps, then he will wake up to find it has been done. And that's an act of service. And I love it at the end of a meal when he picks up all the dishes and he cleans up and he always unloads the dishwasher every morning. These things are of huge value to me.

Heather Bayer
Anyway. That aside, Tyann had figured out that if we understood these love languages and how people's preferences work, we could use the knowledge to communicate much better with both our guests and our owners. It was a really fun session and I think we opened up a few channels for better relationships with our clients. Of course, we can't ask our guests and our owners to do the test, but we could be more creative in the ways we communicated to ensure that we appealed to every love language. So I never forgot the impact that that presentation had on me. So when I heard of the new book called The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, which is co-written by Gary Chapman and Doctor Paul White, I was intrigued. In fact, that was written in 2019 and I've only come across it in the last six months or so.

Heather Bayer
But the authors believe that most relational problems in organizations flow from this one question, do people feel appreciated? And by teaching you to effectively communicate really authentic appreciation and encouragement to everybody you work with, employees, co-workers, leaders, the book helps you answer yes to that question, do people feel appreciated? So in today's episode, I am delighted to be joined by Doctor Paul White to help us understand how we can create better relationships with others in any workplace.

Heather Bayer
Doctor White is a psychologist, author and speaker. He's written articles for and he's been interviewed by the BBC News, Business Week, the New York Times, CNN, entrepreneur.com, Fast Company, etc. And he's also the co-author of this best selling book, The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, written with Doctor Gary Chapman, who's the author of The 5 Love Languages. The 5 Languages of Appreciation has now sold over 600,000 copies and I have one of them and love, love, love this book. So we'll be talking more about it obviously at the end of the interview at the end of this episode. So I'm excited to bring you this interview, so without further ado, let's listen.

Heather Bayer
I am super delighted to have with me today Doctor Paul White, PhD, who is the co-author of The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, co-authoring with Doctor Gary Chapman, who wrote The 5 Love Languages. So I am just blown away with having the opportunity to talk to Doctor White. So welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Dr Paul White
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Heather.

Heather Bayer
This is going to be a lot of fun, because when I come across something new, I get really attached to it and really enthusiastic and motivated and I can't get enough of The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace at the moment. So this podcast episode will add to that and hopefully we'll be able to share this amongst many of our listeners, property managers, out there and more so perhaps even those people who are not property managers yet, who are out there listening and thinking that they may want to be property managers in the future. And using something like this to get them off to a good start, I think is a huge benefit. So can I ask you, first of all, Paul, I've already talked about all your appearances on BBC and CNN in the introduction, but perhaps you can just give us a quick background into why you got into The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace with Doctor Chapman in the first place.

Dr Paul White
Sure, sure. So, you know, I'm a psychologist by training and done a variety of things, but mid-career, I was working with family owned businesses and dealing with the family issues that are intertwined with running the business and then business succession and transferring across generations. And I was dealing with a family in North Carolina and talking to the dad who's the CEO. I said, How's the plan going? And he says, it's going fine. My son's stepping up. I think it's going to work. I walk across the hall and I 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, which I could understand. I grew up in a family business, so I sort of understood that context. And my wife and I were re-reading, actually The 5 Love Languages at that time. And I thought, I wonder if this could, you know, maybe help in business relationships. So I pursued Doctor Chapman, took me a year to get past his assistant and be able to meet with him and pitch the idea. And we agreed to work together on this and started actually, I mean, obviously conceptually, but then started the online assessment and then training materials and then wrote the book. So it's been a great process.

Heather Bayer
Well, can you explain the concept of The 5 Languages of Appreciation?

Dr Paul White
Sure. You know, it's one of the things I had to get past as a psychologist. It's not very intellectually demanding. I mean, it's not tough. It's that not everybody feels appreciated in the same way, you know, and that intellectually we assent to that. But if we look at what we do or other people do, pretty much we do the same one or two things for everybody. Often we start with what we value and then maybe expand a little bit. But just like in personal relationships, people feel loved in different ways. So in work settings, people feel valued and appreciated by different kinds of actions. And if we don't use the right action for the right person, it's basically a waste of time and energy and doesn't really get the impact that we want.

Heather Bayer
Well, when I started out learning about The 5 Love Languages, in fact, a friend of mine, a lady called Tyann Marcink Hammond, who is very innovative and she comes up with these great ideas for presentations. And she said, let's do a presentation on The 5 Love Languages and apply it to our guests and our owners. And we're going, Yeah, how do you do that? This is about love. It's about connections. And she said, Well, absolutely. This is what we have. We have these connections, these relationships with our guests and with our owners. And we said, Well, how do we know what their love language is? Do we ask them? Do we get them to do a test? And her idea was, well, no. she said, as long as we understand that people have different ways of communicating and giving and receiving love in communication, then we make sure we apply something for every different aspect of the love languages. And it was such fun doing that presentation, because we had to come up with all the ideas. You know, how do we use physical touch, for example, to demonstrate some communication with a guest who might have physical touch as their primary love language.

Heather Bayer
And we started talking about soft fabrics and furnishings and things that they could touch, the more kinesthetic type of thing. So we got very creative with that. But for anybody who is listening, who perhaps hasn't read The 5 Love Languages and is perhaps wondering, whatever are they talking about? Can you just briefly talk about those five love languages? And we'll go into how they're applied in the workplace. But let's start with the basics.

Dr Paul White
Sure. So they're the same in name. The languages of appreciation are the same in name as the five love languages, but they look differently, obviously, in how they're applied in daily life. Words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, tangible gifts and even physical touch. But yeah, we felt like it's really communicating value to people in the workplace. And those largely float over, obviously, because of what we had to talk about. And we'll dive into that. But yeah, the same concepts apply across different kinds of relationships.

Heather Bayer
So, you know, I've been on this planet quite a while and my early stages of working, way back maybe in the late seventies, eighties, nineties, this sort of thing would perhaps not have gone down very well, because it was very structured. It was a different type of workplace than we're in now. How has the concept of the workplace changed over time and particularly in the last few years?

Dr Paul White
Well, yeah, especially the last few years. But one thing, which I just published a blog about, Generation Z. One characteristic is that as we've moved on, things have become more informal. Right? I mean, both as far as dress, appropriate dress, but the type of interactions and relationships and titles and all that kind of stuff. So there's more of an informality. And for younger employees and team members, they're far more interested in soft kinds of issues, of purpose and meaning, of work-life balance, of being valued for who they are. And so, yeah, we've really sort of transferred into...., it's interesting dynamic with technology, too, because technology takes us to an impersonal place lots of time. I think that's partly the need that we feel, is that we're feeling disconnected because of technology replaces a lot of personal interactions.

Heather Bayer
I really enjoyed that article that you linked to in the newsletter this morning, and I posted that on LinkedIn. And in particular, one thing that grabbed me was that Gen Z are more prone to wanting to give their opinions regardless of how experienced they are. And that really got me. I mean, I know. I've got grandchildren that are going to be the Gen Z going out into the workplace in a number of years time, and they're already making their opinions quite well known. So that was interesting. I'll put a link to that article at the end of the Show Notes to make sure everybody has a chance to have a look at it. But  you talk a lot in the book about peer appreciation. So what are the benefits? Because going back to my early days of the workplace, it didn't really matter if your peers appreciated you. It was all, you know, does your supervisor appreciate you? Because there is a performance review coming up.

Dr Paul White
Right.

Heather Bayer
But things change.

Dr Paul White
Things have changed over time, for sure. I mean, there used to be saying, remember this? You don't leave a job, you leave a manager. I mean, that the supervisory relationship was so important at that time, and that's really changed now that people are more interested in connecting with and working with collegially with their peers and their colleagues. And so team member relationships are far more important than they used to be. And in some ways, the supervisor direct report relationship has diminished in its influence, not totally, obviously, but so peer relationships, and peers in the sense of really probably same aged peers, not just at a sort of organizational peer level, that you're at the same level, manager, supervisor, but that how those with whom you identify, think and feel about you is really important.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I've been watching a British sitcom, sort of sitcom, but it's called Trying. It's about a couple that are trying to adopt a child, but the lead actress in that role, works in a call center and she's millennial, but she's working alongside a Gen Z. And they've captured this relationship so well and the differences and challenges of actually communicating between them. So, yeah, that just came to mind there.

Dr Paul White
Yeah. Until recently, it was really us boomers, because I'm part of that group that were largely the target and source of a lot of irritation. But it's moved down. Right? I mean, it's moved down to millennials and Gen X and Z, that the issues of communication of different values are the same, they look differently between generations. And so whether it's a millennial that doesn't understand or agree with how a Gen Z person thinks, the intention is similar.

Heather Bayer
So in talking about the languages of appreciation in the workplace, do you feel that understanding these will make those communication gaps and differences? Will it iron them out in some way?

Dr Paul White
Well, you know, it's interesting that I was just meeting with a couple of probably Gen X people at an organization and talking about our resources, and they said, Oh, let's do this with our team. And there's this excitement about a sense of both self-discovery and also how you're the same or different from others. Right? And that largely differs, but I want to know how you feel valued and appreciated or encouraged, because if you're struggling, I want to encourage you, and I don't want to waste time doing things that aren't important. I think it is a mechanism, a tool that helps facilitate more clear communication to really the heart or motivation of another person.

Heather Bayer
So let's break them down. Let's break down these five languages and have a chat about each one, because I think this is going to be interesting. I want to start with words of affirmation, because that's what we used to get for the performance review is, you know, that's what you're looking for, is that praise. You did really, really well, and you did well on this. So how can we express those words of appreciative affirmation in ways that truly connect with somebody else?

Dr Paul White
Yeah, well, first, they're simple conceptually in that they're words that are affirming. Right? We're affirming the value or worth of a person or of their work. And that's a difference that we make between appreciation and recognition. Employee recognition, historically, you know, there's been programs, and it's sort of, I think, disintegrated into lesser value kinds of activities, but about doing well. And we believe that employees and team members have value as persons, that we're people. We're not just production units and sales people. And so that actually frees up a lot of capability to affirm people, because it doesn't have to be about work, because employee recognition tends to only approach, you know, or impact about 10% or 15% of the top workforce. But you have this big middle group that if they don't hear something, they get discouraged and they actually leave. And so the key for effective words of affirmation is to be specific.

Dr Paul White
We actually do a poll. We have 100,000 people on our newsletter list, and we do polls occasionally, and we ask What you don't like to hear? And 'good job' is one of things, because it's too vague and it doesn't really mean anything. It didn't take any thought or effort. And so being very specific about that person, either a character quality that you value about them, dependability or integrity, whatever it might be, or a specific task that they did well, and you want to call attention to them.

Heather Bayer
So can you give me some other examples? Just, you know, because the one that came to my mind was the 'good job.'

Dr Paul White
Yes.

Heather Bayer
As being, you know, less than helpful in terms of communication.

Dr Paul White
So, I mean, it might be as simple as, Cynthia, thanks for staying late after the meeting and cleaning up the conference room. That way it's ready to go when we have a meeting first thing in the morning. So we tend to encourage people to use your name, be specific, and then why it's important to you or the organization. Or it could be something that's not performance based. It could be, you know, Steve, I just really enjoy your sense of humor. It lightens the room, you have a delightful laugh and smile, and it just helps, you know, keep a positive atmosphere. But it can be not about work, because sometimes somebody's still learning their job and doing well, but you want to call attention to something. So it could be, Sarah, you know, I'm just impressed how you're training for this half marathon and just that you have the discipline to do that. I think that's cool. Hard for me to do. So it's just that you want to get specific about something you've observed and call attention to.

Heather Bayer
Okay. I love that. I was playing pickleball at the weekend, and I'm an intermediate player and I was playing with a couple of advanced players and they just annihilated us. But at the end when we said thank you over the net, Thank you for beating us bloody. And I said, do you know, I really appreciate the time that we've had playing with you because it does help as an intermediate player to have that experience. And this one player, she said, Oh, thank you so much for saying that. Clearly that had got to her, that I actually was very thankful that I got that experience, because it put me right in my place and told me that I'm really not as good as I think I am.

Dr Paul White
Well, with each of these, one of the things is that one of the obstacles that we have to deal with is perceived busyness. And everybody's busy. Right? But we believe that if you get the right language and the right action, it doesn't take much to have a lot of impact. And so that's the goal. We want to help identify the language and actions that are important to the different people so that you're not writing notes to everybody or spending time with everybody and a lot of that's wasted.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, we're going to come back a bit later and figure out how we find out what everybody's language of appreciation is, because I just wonder if it can come across as contrived. Oh, I've got to say something to this person of appreciation. So is it likely to come out as less than natural if you're really thinking about it?

Dr Paul White
Well, it can, but one of the things that we know is that the more specific you are about what you value, the more likely it's to be perceived as authentic or genuine, the more vague it's like, yeah, whatever. You just sort of blew smoke at me.

Heather Bayer
Let's talk about quality time. Now, I used to work at Reader's Digest in England many, many years ago in their customer service department. I had a manager. That door was always shut, and if you had a problem, you'd knock on the door and just gently open it and, Yeah, I'm busy! Well, I just need five minutes of your time. And it was when I was looking and I was going through the book, that experience really came back to me. Quality time is my second preference. Acts of service followed by quality time.

Dr Paul White
So quality time is, we found, to be an interesting one. It was actually the one that led us to create a deeper version of our inventory. Because I had early on a manager tell me, hey, one of my team members has quality time. What does that mean? What am I supposed to do? We've then gone back and retooled it, that we give people a number of actions, and it could be go to lunch together and talk about work, or go to lunch together and not talk about work. I mean, but one of the other things that we found over time is that there are really some generational differences. For those of us that are older, quality time really was time with our supervisor/manager, that we got time either to ask questions and get input, or to be able to share some observations. And that was what that looked like. It was focused attention with them. For younger employees and team members, it's really about collegial and peer relationships. I tell older managers, I say, just because you have a team member that has quality time doesn't mean they want time with you. You may be wonderful, you may be great, but they want to hang out with their friends, go to lunch, go out to work afterwards, and it's obviously time with people you want to spend time with.

Dr Paul White
But again, it doesn't take a lot of time. I had a CFO tell me, she said, my language is quality time, and I just want somebody to stop by and check and see how I'm doing. And after five minutes, I'm booting them because I've got too much to do. That action of initiating to check-in, is meaningful.

Heather Bayer
I expect that also means by giving full attention.

Dr Paul White
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the way to torpedo quality time is to be doing something else, to multitask, or to be distracted. So, like, even if you're in a restaurant and, you know, looking over the shoulder at watching the sports, you know, it really sends the message, I'm not really with you. You're not that important to me.

Heather Bayer
Yes. I think if anybody, and I've experienced this, and it's something that I was doing unknowingly, was not giving people full attention, and somebody brought it to my attention. I think it was at a conference, and we were having this discussion, and I must have looked as somebody walk past and she said, oh, is there somewhere you need to be? And that was a big eye-opener for me, and I think that's worthwhile for people to think about. Watch checking. It used to be watch checking when people wore watches, but now it's checking the notifications on a phone.

Dr Paul White
Yeah. Not your phone, not keep typing on the computer if you're in your office, that kind of thing. Just stop, give them your undivided attention.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Can you give a couple more examples of quality time?

Dr Paul White
I mean, it's as simple as somebody, maybe they want to..... Well, I met with these people yesterday, and it was over the lunch hour, and another person showed up and they said, hey, we just decided that we're going to have sort of an open lunch meeting one day a week, and people can come and just hang out and talk. And I guess a part about all this is that it's that you're sharing time and information that's personal. It's not that you're meeting together to talk about work and that, I think through COVID and the pandemic, we learned that work and life do flow over, and it's important to know something about one another's lives and how that's going and impacting our work. And so it can be as simple as that. It could be going for a walk together during the lunch hour and just chatting and talking about the Euro Cup, you know, and what happened, or your favorite team, or what you did over the weekend. And it's often important, especially if it's a person that is a supervisor, to not just talk about work and also to share about themselves. Otherwise, it becomes sort of...., it feels like an interrogation, you know?

Heather Bayer
Yeah.

Dr Paul White
How's your wife? How are your kids? You know, what did you do this weekend versus saying, hey, you know, I got to go sailing with my brother this weekend. It was a nice time.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Okay, let's move on to acts of service? Acts of service is my language. And, you know, I love it when somebody offers to do something for me. I mean, before I came down to start this interview, I was baking a cake with my granddaughter, and the kitchen was just an entire mess because kids like to get everything out. And I said, oh, look, I'm going to have to finish soon because I'm going to go and record an interview and she said, I'll clear all this up, grandma? Oh, yes. That's an act of service for me.

Dr Paul White
Yeah. Acts of service can be misperceived in the workplace in that it's not rescuing low performing colleagues. It's not like you always have to save them from not doing the work. And culturally, in the US at least, there's a barrier. And I think it's true in western Europe as well, is that if somebody asks you, is there something I can do to help? Almost always the first response is, No, I'm good, thanks. And in some culture you can take offense at it, like What? You think I'm not capable? But you want to ask because the thing you don't want to do is assume that you're looking at their situation and that they need help and you just dive in because largely you're not going to do the right thing that they would view as helpful.

Dr Paul White
But two situations are common in the workplace where acts of service are really meaningful. First is when you're working on a time limited project that you're just banging away trying to get it done. And it's what's something somebody can do to help make that go better, whether that's maybe answer your phone calls or answer your emails for today so you can stay focused on the project, maybe bring in you lunch or snack so you keep working, or that you're able to delegate part of it to them and say, hey, if you would copy this stuff and put it together for the presentation, that'd be helpful. So you need to find out what is important to them and then do it their way. It's not helpful to teach them a new way, which is your way, to do it.

Dr Paul White
And the other situation is when, like in service kinds of settings where, say, a dental office, everybody shows up all at once and the front desk is flooded. What can you do to help the receptionist out? Whether that's answer the phones or handle something else. So. And for acts of service, I mean, words are not only sometimes not meaningful, actually they can be negative if you're just sort of praising people but never helping out. I mean, I had one example shared that a graphic designer was working late trying to finish up a project and the rest of the office was good to go and they were headed out and go down to the sports bar to watch a game and they said, Hey, great job, hang in there. Come on down when you're done. And she was just fuming. They didn't think to see if they could help out.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, it's very relevant in our short-term rental and vacation rental management industry because it's a very fluid type of business and busy times. You know, a company and the staff may be handling a lot of people checking out and then having to do the cleaning before the next people check in. And you can get to points where there's backups, things go wrong, there's maintenance issues and just sending one cleaning team in and one maintenance person in may simply not be enough. And I can see that for those who really value acts of service as their language, then having somebody come and say, look, I can step in and give you an hour of my time to help get this property turned around so that it meets company needs, meets the needs of the guests coming in and eases your job. I can see where that is really beneficial.

Dr Paul White
And it's especially impactful when it's clearly not in that person's responsibilities. Right? Even as a supervisor or above, and that they're doing it out of desire to help and encourage you. And that really creates a sense of gratitude and connection, which leads to people staying around and not leaving, as far as turnover and so forth.

Heather Bayer
So let's go on to tangible gifts, because this one is my lowest preference. And so, you know, I don't turn down a gift, but I don't value it. I don't value it in the same way. And I love to give gifts, but I don't value the receiving of it in the same way as I do if somebody says, let me do this for you, or let me help you out with this, but how can gifts be delivered best? Because I know from being in a workplace environment, it was often something that's almost paid lip service to, you know, everybody gets a bottle of wine at Christmas. Right?

Dr Paul White
So, yeah, so it's interesting. So we've had over 400,000 people take our online assessment and so we have pretty good data set. And in the US and Canada, 7% of employees choose tangible gifts as their main way to be shown appreciation, which is the least chosen one besides physical touch, which is less than one. But that's the one that we usually use. And actually internationally, we just did some studies that's actually lower in other countries. But the issue is that it's not bonuses, it's not raises, that's part of the employee-employer contract, but it's about something that's of value to them and it really has to be personal, it has to be about them to have meaning. That's where corporate gifts, at Christmas, you get a cheese and cracker fruit basket from one of your suppliers, it's from the company. It has no meaning. The meaning is if one of the people that you work with finds out what's valuable to you, that you really like chocolate covered cherries and they give you a box of that. So it's really about being very specific and personal, and it's not about the monetary value at all. It can cost nothing. Like maybe you're starting to coach your child's soccer team and one of the other team members knows about it and has some experience, and they send you a website that has all kinds of training videos on it that they thought about you and got something that was meaningful and appropriate to your life.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. While you were talking, actually, it got me thinking that I did get a gift relatively recently, and it was from a colleague that I know quite well, and he's a fellow Brit, and I'd given a consultancy referral to him. And then he asked for my address. And so I thought, yeah, there's a gift on the way.

Dr Paul White
Yeah.

Heather Bayer
But when it came, it was a hamper, and in it there were.... Well, he knows how much I love tea. Okay? So there was a variety. There was some Welsh tea in there. There was a book on the history of tea and the history of tea making. I don't know if you've heard of Marmite.

Dr Paul White
Yes.

Heather Bayer
It's a particularly disgusting, for some, spread.

Dr Paul White
Right, right.

Heather Bayer
It's one of those love it or hate it things. And he'd sent me Marmite before, but, because everything in that hamper had been thought out, and it was personal to me. So the fact that receiving gifts is my least preferred language of appreciation, I absolutely loved that gift, because it was personal, and as we say, it's the thought that counts, that's thoughtful.

Dr Paul White
And it would be like if you're a Manchester United fan and somebody gives you a Chelsea jersey or something, it happens here, too. So anyway, yeah, it is about the thought, and it doesn't take a lot, but in one way, because they're typically valued not much by themselves, but one way to increase the value of gift is to include it with one of the other languages, whether that's an active service or quality time or whatever. But again, it has to be personal. And giving everybody the same thing at Christmas is just a waste and offensive, actually. And so I would say it's better not to give them that across the board.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. In the book, you talk about bad gifts, bad gift ideas, the promo materials that were left over from the recent conference that they just came back from.

Dr Paul White
Yes, yes. I had one guy say I thought my team was trying to kill me. Says I'm a serious type one diabetic, and they gave me a box of candy, they didn't pay attention to who he was.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, yeah, I think some very good points there. I think a lot of managers think that giving a gift to their team is the thing that everybody's going to love and then everybody gets exactly the same thing and, yeah, it takes away that thought, I think.

Heather Bayer
Physical touch, this was one when..., we had a lot of fun with the physical touch when we did our little presentation and we really had to think about this, because we're trying to adapt it to our owners who are, as property managers, property owners are our primary clients, because if we don't have the properties, we've got nothing to rent to our guests.

Dr Paul White
Right.

Heather Bayer
So we're always thinking about how can we create better relationships with our owners? So we started thinking about, Oh, gosh, you know, physical touch. We're going to give them a hug and then of course, going on to think about it in the workplace. I think me, like anybody else who's begun to read the book, they're going to be thinking, okay, how are they going to be handling the physical touch side of this?

Dr Paul White
Right? So physical touch, you know, when Doctor Chapman and I first started, we're like, do we include this? And we talked to people and got, you know, sort of, Yeah, but obviously with the sexual innuendos or harassment or whatever. But for one reason we chose...., we didn't want to just advocate a touchless society, even in the workplace, because healthy, appropriate touch and healthy relationships can be deeply meaningful, especially when somebody's under a lot of stress and just a hand on the shoulder or something like that. But secondly, it happens. And so, well let's address it. And it's largely spontaneous celebration. It's a high five when you finish a project or a fist bump when you solve a problem or a congratulatory handshake when you make a sale and so forth.

Dr Paul White
Now, it differs regionally and culturally, our materials are available in different languages. And so, I lived in the south for a while in Atlanta, and they do a lot of side hugs down there. In New York you sort of just, you nod across the room and say, Hey, you know, that's about what you do. But, you know, our Hispanic and Latin American friends and southern Europeans are more physical. They kiss on the cheek with greeting and so no physical touch feels very cold and impersonal to them. So you have to be aware of that. And obviously, it's the recipient who always gets to determine what's appropriate for them, you know? And so it's just something to be aware of and, and to note. But literally, I mean, I had a friend, he finished a project with his assistant, and he's leaving, and she put up her hand for a high five. He said, what am I supposed to do? Just leave her hanging? You know? I mean, it's like, you know, you respond appropriately, but it's less than 1% that choose that as their primary language.

Heather Bayer
Okay. So we've talked about all these. Talked about the five languages and the important, really, the higher level ones, shall we say, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, and the lesser ones, tangible gifts and physical touch. How do we know in the workplace what our peers, what our colleagues, what our team members, what their languages are?

Dr Paul White
Yeah. And that's been a core challenge from the beginning, because in personal relationships, you can observe, you can ask your wife or your spouse or kids or whatever. In our culture, typically, it's a weird conversation to say, if I'm going to show you appreciation, how should I do it? It feels sort of weird. Secondly, you're going to get, I don't know tell me, Thanks. And that's it. So you don't get much. And trying, there's not really enough data points to observe people giving and getting appreciation to build that. And so that's really with the book. We give a code for the assessment. We developed different versions for different industries, including long distance relationships and remote employees, to identify that, because, again, it's not just the language, but the actions that are important.

Dr Paul White
And so on our assessments, called the motivating by appreciation inventory, it identifies your primary and secondary language, your least valued one, but then goes back and gives you the choice of, within your primary language, your most preferred one, the actions that are most important to you and also from whom, because you may want to get together and watch sports with your team members over the weekend, but you're not going to invite your supervisor. So you can specify that. So. And then we can create group profiles for teams because it's fine and interesting to know your own language and actions, but the most important is to find out among your team members so that you can communicate in a way that's meaningful to them.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I note on your website you can download stickers or...

Dr Paul White
Oh, yeah, yeah. Symbols....

Heather Bayer
Symbols. That's it. That you can print off and put on your PC or computer. And this is my language of appreciation.

Dr Paul White
Right, right. Yeah. We actually have created a chart for a team we have in our hallway of a person's primary, secondary and their actions. We had an article written about this in the New York Times that there were miners that took those symbols and had them printed up as stickers for their hard hats so that they could just know from looking at each other's while working. So that's why.

Heather Bayer
That is great. Paul, how can.... Oh, before I wrap this up, you just mentioned remote workers. So I wanted to ask are there any specific things from any of these languages that can help with working with remote teams?

Dr Paul White
Yeah, we do research along the way. I published, I don't know, 15 published papers or whatever, and we did one both pre-COVID, during COVID, after. And remote workers. Showing appreciation does require a little bit of different approach in that, first you have to be proactive because it's not like you have a spontaneous interaction in the break room or you walk by their office. You don't see them, so you have to think about them. And one way to do that is to have some kind of visual reminder of people. Secondly, that it's really important for peers to connect with one another remotely. Honestly, a supervisor or manager is going to reach out, but to keep your team members connected at a group level. And so we have one team member that's remote in Chicago, and so when we have a team meetings, I mean, we focus on talking together. And the third part about that is that you're talking about personal information. You're not just talking about what you're doing, but hey, what did you do this weekend? Or, you know, how are your kids doing? And so forth? And that's the way that connection is created.

Dr Paul White
Most people are not really that connected to an organization. They're connected to other people. So if you want to keep your team members and your owners and so forth, you want to connect with them at a personal level.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that's great. My company was entirely remote for 15 out of the 20 years before I sold it. We still have, in fact, one team member in the Philippines that's worked with us for nearly twelve years now, so never met her face-to-face. But we do understand that importance of giving that quality time so that she can get to chat and have a meeting and not just be inputting data day-in, day-out without any connection.

Dr Paul White
And that's a key thing. When you have remote or team meetings by Zoom or whatever, it's important to allow time for personal conversation, as if you were in a conference room where people would show up and they'd ask questions or share. But if you just get to the point, do the agenda and then you're done, you don't have that connection that needs to be created.

Heather Bayer
Well, this has been great and I've really enjoyed talking to you and getting a little bit more information on this. How can people who are listening connect with you and with your company if they're interested in finding out more?

Dr Paul White
Yeah, so our mothership website is appreciationatwork.com and it's the word 'at', appreciationatwork.com. And also, you know, I would be glad if they write me. I've got an email that I set up. It's just, yesdrpaul@gmail.com. So yes drpaul@gmail.com. and if they write me and, you know, put your name or the podcast name in the subject line, then I'll send them a sample report of the inventory. I'll probably do the remote one, so they can see that. And on the website you can get books, you can get codes for your team members to take the assessment so that you can know together how to show that you value one of them.

Heather Bayer
Well, that's great. And I'll put all that on the Show Notes. And I do encourage those of you listening to get this book, get it in your library, in your workplace or at your home, and let as many people as possible read it. It is a fun read, actually, I really enjoyed it. Enjoyed The 5 Love Languages and obviously enjoyed this one too. So there'll be a link to that as well.

Heather Bayer
Doctor White, Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you and I look forward to perhaps talking with you again, because I think I'd like to learn more.

Dr Paul White
Be glad to. Thanks for having me.

Heather Bayer
Thank you. That was really great. While we're talking, it got me thinking back to all the different places I've worked and also got me thinking about the times over the last 20 years of running my property management company when perhaps our communications broke down, because I hadn't realized what language my team members preferred. And I've seen this with other organizations where somebody has said, well, I gave them these gifts and nobody seemed to care and I didn't get a thank you. Well, now maybe you understand why that happens.

Heather Bayer
So I think it really is worth exploring more. And if you've got questions about this, I'm going to spend more time with Doctor White over the next few weeks. We're perhaps going to be putting, hopefully putting an article together that we can publish which relates these languages of appreciation to our specific industry in a little more detail.

Heather Bayer
So that's it from me for this week. It's always a huge pleasure to be with you. And, of course, I'll be with you again in another seven days. It's been a pleasure as ever being with you.

Heather Bayer
If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at www.vacationrentalformula.com, we'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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