Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages and their use in the Workplace

August 16, 2011 at 5:32 am | Posted in communication, love/relationship/marriage, self development/motivation | Leave a comment
Tags: gary chapman, love language, love languages

How are you showing your love?

My friend and colleague Cath Lawrence from Kandula just wrote a great post on exactly this topic: Applying the 5 languages of love in the workplace.

This reminded me of the multifaceted usability of Gary Chapman’s approach. If you want to read more about the different love languages, you can find plenty of my articles about it here (click here). His approach on teaching us how different people show love and how different people feel the love that you’re intending to show them has been an integral part of counselling couples, families and children to understand themselves and each other better.  When I’ve worked with this model with couples I have many times that they come back reporting how it not only improves their relationship with each other but also taught them something about how to relate to their work colleagues, employees, friends, children etc.

Personal Benefit

I also found that it is of great benefit for your own self knowing to understand how you search for love and admiration. It surprises me again and again to find myself fishing for treats that fulfil my strategy. It’s like your ’emotional love account’ has the highest return on investment when payments in Euro come in and people around you seem to be wanting to pay in US $. It just doesn’t give the same return, even though it might be their favorite currency.

So what’s your primary ‘love currency’?

• Words of Affirmations
• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

You can read up on them by clicking on the link provided.

Experiment

Do you know the ‘love currency’ of the people you closely interact with? How about an experiment: If you have a good sense of a person, you might be able to guess their primary ‘love currency’. For the next week, go ahead and pay them with their primary ‘love currency’. Remember that this might not be what you’re most used to pay with so it might mean that you have to be a bit creative here (change some of your $ into their currency). The links above will give you some ideas on what you can do or say in each of the love languages. Note the change in your relationship with that person. If it has improved, you have most likely guessed right, if not, try again.