Using the 5 Love Languages at Work to Build Loyal Teams

Take the 5 Love Languages Assessment (for free!) 

Do you ever feel like your appreciation isn’t landing with your team?

New managers often rely on the “golden rule”, treat others how you want to be treated. But that approach leaves gaps, frustrates employees, and creates disengagement. The better approach? Learn how your team wants to be appreciated, and match your recognition style to theirs.

In this episode, Desiree breaks down the five love languages at work, show you how to adapt them to your leadership style, and share the three biggest mistakes that ruin even the best intentions.

By the time you finish listening, you’ll learn:

• Why mismatched appreciation creates disengagement, burnout, and toxic culture
• The three most common mistakes managers make when showing appreciation
• How to use love languages to build trust, handle conflict, and lead more effectively

The 5 Love Languages (translated into the language of Work!)

Words of affirmation → Verbal praise and specific recognition

Quality time → One-on-one attention and active listening

Acts of service → Helping remove obstacles or pitching in

Gifts → Small, thoughtful tokens of appreciation

Physical touch → Professional gestures like handshakes or high fives

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Transcript

Desiree Petrich (00:01.6)
Yes, I know what you're thinking. What do the five love languages have to do with work? Do I really have to go give Steve from accounting a hug just to show that I appreciate him? And the short answer is no, you don't. The longer answer is that there is more than one way to show appreciation. But most of us only show appreciation in the way that we like to receive it. There is a disconnect and there is a better way to go about it. So in this episode, we're going to break down how the love languages actually show up in business.

and how to use them the right way. You can fix a toxic culture without a pizza party or a raise. It really comes down to people. And we're gonna cover the three biggest mistakes that we make as new managers when it comes to showing appreciation. Plus, I'm gonna share some simple tips that you can use today to start building trust, helping you to handle that difficult employee that you just can't typically get along with, and you're gonna become a more confident manager of people by recognizing that they are all different. So welcome back.

to You're the Boss, Now What? I'm your host, Desiree Petriq, and our goal here is to help you lead yourself and your team with confidence. So lean in and let's get started.

Desiree Petrich (01:23.352)
will be honest, I've been putting this episode off for a while because I am a huge fan of personality assessments, of these different kinds of quizzes that kind of put you into a bucket. We are all different, but we're all different in similar ways. And I think that these types of conversations really help us to get to know ourselves better one another. But when I shared this once on LinkedIn, someone commented and said, did you know that the five love languages have been debunked?

Did you know that they are not technically accurate? Did you know that they don't have any validity? And for a long time, that bothered me and I questioned myself of should I be using these? Does it make sense? Should I continue to teach them? But over the course of time, I kind of realized that it doesn't matter if they make sense or if they're scientifically accurate or if...

Desiree Petrich (02:30.71)
or if everyone is on the same page about how valid they are. What matters is that we are all going to find different tools for what it looks like to make our jobs easier, to make us connect with people better. And if this is the particular tool that works for you like it worked for me, I would never want to take that opportunity away from you to use this as a tool. So if you are at all interested in the love languages, stick around because this changed the way that I work.

not only at home with my husband, think chores, but also in the workplace, how I connected with other people, how I showed them appreciation. So let's start by talking about why this matters for you. What can this really do for you as a new manager, a seasoned manager, someone with new employees, maybe you have high turnover. Why does this matter? First off, it is your job to manage people and people are all

different. The golden rule that we've all been taught for ever is treat other people the way you want to be treated. I don't think that that is the best advice that we can give because like I said, people are different. We don't want to treat people the way we want to be treated. We want to treat people the way that they want to be treated, the way they want to be approached and talked to and the way that they want to be appreciated. Does it take more time and effort on our part?

Yes, it does because it means that we have to individualize people. We have to actually take the time to get to know them. We have to be able to retain information to be able to actually find it in us to care. There's always going to be people that we enjoy spending time with more that we are drawn to more the ones that we can communicate better with. But this means that we have to find that for all of the people that we manage in order to make sure we have a well-rounded team.

These types of conversations matter because it is your job to manage people. And specifically this conversation around the five love languages, it has nothing to do with romance. It's how do you recognize and connect with someone based on how it is that they like to receive appreciation, recognition, connection. And if we aren't meeting people's needs, if we're not doing this in a way that speaks to them as an individual,

Desiree Petrich (04:56.406)
If they have those unmet needs, it can create frustration in that person. They're going to be frustrated that they're not being appreciated. Even if you think that you are telling them thank you all the time or you're constantly giving them candy bars and a can of pop as a gift, they might prefer a different type of appreciation. And so they're going to get frustrated. They're going to start to disengage. Even if you think you're doing everything right, there's a possibility that from their standpoint, it's not meeting the mark. They might even burn out.

because they feel like they're not doing enough to earn your appreciation even though you feel like you're giving it. So if we're not doing this in the right way, there are all of these consequences, all of these things, negative culture, disengagement, burnout that we're talking about all the time and we're trying to fix and it might be a lot easier than we're making it out to be. So this is one way that we can go about that. It's also really important to understand

how your team can build trust. And that means getting to know each individual, getting to know them, what they like, what they don't like. It can help strengthen your team dynamic by just talking about it, having this conversation. The action step, I'm gonna spoil it for you. The action step at the end of this episode is going to be have this conversation with your team. Before we even get started.

If you want to take this quiz, it's a free quiz you can do online. Go to intentionalaction.net slash self awareness. That's self dash awareness. And it's free to take. Have your team take it. Find an hour in your day, have this conversation, laugh a little bit. These conversations always bring up so much vulnerability and transparency, but they also are really fun to see the nuances of different people.

It's going to help you strengthen your team dynamics just by having this conversation. So there you go. Free team building activity for you. And I'm going to give you all the tools that you need in order to facilitate it, in order to lead it. So I've given you a lot of excitement, hopefully anticipation around what does this mean. So let's quickly go over the five love languages. Let's just quickly overview them. Number one, words of affirmation. This looks like.

Desiree Petrich (07:27.022)
So let's start by doing a quick overview. Now keep in mind the love languages was originally used as a way for marriages to strengthen. And so the original view of these is how can you connect better with your spouse at home? I'm going to give you that definition. Just keep in mind I am going to change the language for the workplace in the next piece of this. But just if we're looking at it from the original why it was created way. Words of affirmation is expressing love, your appreciation.

encouragement all through spoken or written words. This is I love you. Actually saying it out loud. This is saying I am so grateful when you do this thing. It means so much to me. It's writing thank you cards. It's saying things out loud to the individual specifically about what you appreciate about them. I'm proud of you. I love the way you handled that. Sending, like I said, a thank you text or email, et cetera, et cetera.

That is words of affirmation. Quality time. Giving someone your full attention and sharing those meaningful moments together. This means at home, turning off the TV and actually having a conversation. Not eating supper around the TV and actually sitting around the dinner table. Making sure that with your spouse you go on a date night, et cetera, et cetera. Undistracted conversations, shared activity, taking a walk, eating a meal. All of these are types of quality time.

Acts of service is showing love by doing the helpful things that make someone's life easier. I always say, I know my husband is saying, love you when he vacuums because I absolutely hate vacuuming or maybe he'll unload the dishwasher. But examples at home are cooking dinner, running errands, taking care of chores, fixing something. My husband's very handy. So that has been a great way that he has shown his love to me is through acts of service. Gifts, tangible symbols that show

thoughtfulness, love, it doesn't have to be big. It could be your kid bringing you a dandelion is technically a gift. It is a show of love. It is a show of appreciation that they appreciate you as their parent, as their loved one. It can be big or small. And the last one is physical touch. This one can be hard in the workplace, but at home, right, it's connection and expressing love and caring through hugs, holding hands, kisses, a gentle touch on the shoulder, cuddling. Remember.

Desiree Petrich (09:53.342)
This podcast is, about the workplace and as new managers, but I also want you to live a full and well-rounded life in every area. So hopefully that kind of gives you an idea of why this was created specifically in the home place. Now I want to go through, though, what might this look like in the workplace? Why does it matter for us to show up at work using these things? We're going to translate it into workplace language. again, words of affirmation. If you have

employee who has words of affirmation as their love language is. They want you to give verbal praise. Thank them for doing something. They want a written note. They want you to encourage them through the words that you're saying. It can sometimes feel a little disingenuous if words of affirmation is not your love language. It's going to feel uncomfortable. It's going to feel like you're wading through something heavy to maybe have to

do something outside of the norm for you, outside of your default. But those words of affirmation, that verbal praise, that verbal encouragement is what this person craves from you to show them that you appreciate them. They want your words of affirmation. Quality time. If you have an employee who has quality time as one of their love languages, they want your undivided attention.

They want one on ones. want mentorship. They want you to listen. They want a dialogue. They don't just want you to delegate something to them and expect them to go off and do it. If they have quality time as their love language, they want to spend time with you. Period. They want to have that undivided attention. Next one is acts of service. If you have an employee who has acts of service as a love language, they are going to want you to do specific things like help them to remove obstacles.

pitch in when needed. They're going to want your physical help supporting deadlines. Maybe you're checking in and offering that to them. Even if they're not taking it, you are showing them appreciation by saying, I am here. I'm willing to throw a hand in where needed. I always thought, personal anecdote, when I was managing the dementia facility, I was like, I've been a CNA before. If someone needs to go to the bathroom, I can help them. That's not a problem.

Desiree Petrich (12:12.716)
And I actually had one of the employees, one of the nursing staff go, this is not your job, this is my job. And I was like, they're not looking for an active service for me. That is not their love language. They don't want me to have any hands on. Instead, I asked them one day if they knew theirs. And it was a words of affirmation. So instead of doing it myself, I knew that I just needed to thank them and appreciate them verbally for the work that they were doing. And that's all it takes.

is one conversation, one understanding of what that looks like. And I knew then that they weren't, that individual wasn't frustrated at me for not giving hands on help as long as I was showing them appreciation for the work that they were doing. The next person, however, might've really appreciated that hands on help. This is why it's important to individualize the appreciation style that we're giving. Next one is gifts. Small tokens of appreciation. It could be coffee.

giving someone a gift card. It could be a team lunch for the team in general. My coworker and I gave a favorite things list and so we did this for everyone just in an effort to make sure that no one felt left out. But we would say, what's your favorite candy bar? What's your favorite pop? What's your favorite restaurant? And if they would, you know, be the employee of the month or if they would do something outside of the ordinary and we wanted to thank them, we would do this with gifts. Specifically, even more so if gifts was their love language.

It's a little bit easier when your team is smaller to know these things. I understand that. And so if you have a large team, it might feel a little bit frustrating or overwhelming to have to know this about everyone. Just keep a list. Keep a list of who has what love language, talk to them, make sure that it's accurate. Sometimes people answer questions in the way that they think someone wants them to answer them specifically in an assessment like this. So I would.

use that team building opportunity to sit down and have this conversation about the results that they got. It's really going to put something behind that. And the last one, physical touch. I understand this one can be tricky in business. It is maybe frowned upon to go up and give someone a hug or kiss on the cheek, but it can show up like a handshake, a high five, a fist bump, a pat on the shoulder. I, this might be frowned upon, but during, well, actually I know for a fact it was frowned upon because during the pandemic you were supposed to

Desiree Petrich (14:29.838)
six feet apart, but we had tenants who were not allowed to see their family members. We would have family members come in and just be very upset and sad that they couldn't see their loved one. And I would just offer a hug. I would always say, do you need a hug right now? And I found that that helped in one of two ways. One, my love languages, I have two of them, is words of affirmation and physical touch. I've said it here before, I give appreciation out like it's free.

I will give it out all day long. say thank you probably obnoxiously and it's because words of affirmation is one of my love languages, but the other one is physical touch. so being able to offer someone a hug not only diffuses maybe a hard situation and uncomfortable situation, but sometimes people just really need a hug. so offering that physical touch, even if they have no intention of taking it and I know they won't, that to me is offering up my love language, especially if I know that that is theirs.

So physical touch can be tricky in business, yes, but it looks a lot of different ways and it doesn't have to be anything romantic. It doesn't have to be anything outside of awkward. Again, ask someone first. Don't ever just assume that you know someone's love language, but this can be a conversation that you can have with someone. So how can we go about this in a way that actually works? Because...

There are a lot of common mistakes when it comes to utilizing the five love languages, which is where we might get in trouble. One of them, and we already talked about this, is assuming that everyone is the same. We cannot assume that everyone wants the kind of appreciation that we get. I want someone to send out an email thanking me, put it on a social post, scream it from the rooftops. I want the attention all on me. Granted, this comes from my disc style of liking being the center of attention. A lot of people don't share my disc style.

Everyone is different. Everyone wants it at a different volume. Everyone wants it at a different quantity. Everyone wants it to look a little bit different. So understand that about them. Write a favorite things list. Ask them how they want to be appreciated. See if it meets their love language. Know your own preference because we all default to that. I default to showing appreciation through words of affirmation and physical touch like a high five or a handshake or a hug.

Desiree Petrich (16:50.368)
I default to that, but I know that that's not what everyone likes. I know that the general recognition of great job without actually being genuine or specific is not going to help. You can never assume that everyone wants the same thing. And giving that extra special touch of knowing what people want is where you are really going to differentiate yourself as a new leader. That's one of my tips for you. The next one is inconsistency and insincerity.

Doing it sporadically, in other words, you're not doing it daily, you're not doing it weekly, you one off right after this podcast episode, you go back to your team and you do this and then you never look at it again and you never utilize it, that would probably do more harm than what you're currently doing. So you have to make sure that if you're going to put in the work of doing something like this, that you are actually putting in the work. You can't just praise one another.

praise once in a while. You can't cancel your one-on-one meetings with someone whose quality time is their love language. You can't just give a person a candy bar and expect it to fix everything. It's going to undermine you as a manager for it to be sporadic or even unfair. People are going to see that you're paying more attention to one, which might look like you are paying attention more to the people who share your love language because it's the easiest for you. If you're going to put time and effort into this,

do it with all of your team members. And then this is the next one. And this is the one that is most important, especially for a high functioning, high performing team is you can't let appreciation replace accountability. So one might think that because I am so into giving appreciation, I might not hold people accountable, but we cannot lower.

our standards to people's comfort. We can't just placate people and tell them they're doing a great job if they're not. We have to make sure that we're not being overly nice and not addressing performance and conflict issues. Recognition and appreciation actually work best when they're paired with clear expectations, when they're paired with accountability. Because if I'm being too nice and I'm giving too much grace to people, it actually lowers the standards for everyone else and they start to feel like they don't need to work as hard and you're going to end up

Desiree Petrich (19:10.382)
Feeling like you need to praise even more to get people back up to the level when in reality, if you held people to those higher standards, held people accountable while also giving them appreciation, that's going to get you further at the end of the day than trying to be too nice. Now, that comes from someone with a little bit of an aggressively friendly style. So I recognize that it's easier said than done. But don't let appreciation, don't let this framework replace the accountability that you need to have for your team.

or for yourself.

Desiree Petrich (19:51.926)
Okay, last piece of the puzzle before we wrap up here is how do you actually do these things? How can you go back to work today and say, I'm going to do this? First off, ask directly, ask someone to take the assessment and share the results with you. Ask a person what makes you feel most appreciated? What volume do you like to be appreciated at? In other words, do you want it shouted from the rooftop or do you want just a quiet moment of recognition between the two of us?

How do people like to be appreciated? You can ask them. Number two, it's hard because when I say this to individualize people, that can sometimes look like playing favorites, especially like I said, if you default to the people who look like you. So how can you go about this? You need to balance the individual preferences with team culture. Make it look like, or don't make it look like, make it a team.

bonding experience, make it a team building experience, team development, recognize that this is something you're expecting from everyone. Say it out loud, balance those individual preferences and the way you're connecting with one-on-one in the same way that you're doing it as a team. Recognize that your ultimate goal is to make the team stronger, to make the team more cohesive, to make that one person who doesn't seem to feel like a team member, they're a little bit difficult as an employee.

Make sure they know they are just important to you and making them feel comfortable and appreciated as the next person. So balance those individual preferences with team culture. And then this is the last one. We need to use this to lead effective team meetings, to hold people accountable. How do you do that? You can say, I want to show you this appreciation. I want to give this to you to make you know that I value you.

but I need this from you in return by giving this to other people. This is why we need to do this as a group activity and not just a one-on-one necessarily, because it can't just be on you as the leader to hold people accountable and to show appreciation. This should be something that peer-to-peer and co-worker-to-co-worker, they are putting effort into as well. That needs to be a conversation and an expectation.

Desiree Petrich (22:18.978)
that is given to the group. So if you ever need a facilitator to come in and do a workshop like this for your team, whether it's the love languages or disc or working genius, if you ever need help in facilitating this conversation with your team, I would love to be that partner with you. You can go to desirapetric.com and fill in the form. I would love to come and join you and your team. But here's the call to action. Here's what it is that I really want from you.

Have your team take this assessment. It is free. Intentionalaction.net slash self dash awareness. Discuss it as a team. Use it as a one-on-one fun activity. Take it yourself. See what it says about you. Have this conversation with your spouse. Don't just listen to this and think that's a neat idea and then walk away. I am going to galvanize you right now into going and taking this assessment. Share with me your results. Someone on LinkedIn messaged me the other day and said how much they were.

enjoying the podcast. said that it was their little escape during their lunch hour to work on being a better team leader. They are a first time manager and that warmed my heart more than you could possibly know. So whether you scroll down and put a rating and review on Apple or Spotify or if you just send me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn, please know that I see them. I hear you. I'm so thankful for you. See that? That's a words of affirmation. I'm so thankful for you for continuing to show up, for listening to

focusing on your self-awareness and your emotional intelligence and learning how to become a better and more confident team manager. So thank you for being here. And just remember that leadership is a privilege, but it is also a huge responsibility. And you're the boss now. So what are you going to do with it?