The Five Love Languages for romantic relationships and parents and children can also be applied at work. Adapted to be the Five Love Languages of Appreciation instead of love in the workplace, the approach is the same. Know what other people need and give them that. Even though the developers of this concept replace “appreciation” for “love” when applied to the workplace, I have no problem with calling it love languages at work. Our workplaces can and are better places when we show love in the right way and context everywhere we go. Including the office. Especially in the office.
The sink is piled high with dishes. The trash is overflowing. Laundry hasn’t been done in days. The baby is crying, and the third grader needs help with homework. And my husband is playing Xbox. I don’t want to have to ask for help, I want him to notice I need help and do it. My urge for him to read my mind and miraculously unload the dishes and clean out the sink without me having to ask is temporarily outweighed by how bad the dishes piled up are bothering me. “Could you empty the dishwasher and reload it, please?”
Expressing love at work may seem like a little too much. But in reality, showing love is really showing people you care. It isn’t about recognizing people’s accomplishments, it’s about appreciating people for who they are. When we are talking about love at work, we are really talking about how to show people you appreciate them. We talked about how to apply quality time as a love language at work on the blog last week. Quality time is a love language that is sometimes hard to know how to apply to work, but the love languages that are most and
“Would you rather me 1) give you a high five or 2) work on a puzzle with you?” I asked my five and nine-year-old over the holiday break. It was one set of about twenty force choice questions from the Five Love Languages for Kids quiz I was giving them in order to explore how my husband and I can continue to be mindful of how we can best customize our parenting to each child. Both easily answered, “Work on a puzzle with you.” The Love Languages quiz started in romantic relationships and describes five primary love languages: Physical Touch
I have the opportunity to coach a lot of middle managers. Quite often they are middle-aged men, and I’m working with them because there is some issue with how they lead (or actually don’t lead) others. Through some type of feedback mechanism, these men are described mildly as “aloof” or “disinterested” (always related to how they are with people, not necessarily the tasks or functions of their job) to more extreme words like “jerk” or “a**hole”. I’m brought in most of the time to try to fix their “personality”. Making them more caring and a better leader of people is