Liuba Belkin on Workplace Gratitude

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In this episode of Lehigh University’s College of Business ilLUminate podcast, host Stephanie Veto talks with Liuba Belkin about her co-authored paper called “More Than Words: A Risk Regulation Model of Supervisor Gratitude Expression, Felt Appreciation, and Subordinate Voice.” It was published in the Journal of Management.

Belkin is an associate professor and the director of the management program. She examines the role of felt and expressed positive emotions in negotiations, work trust relationships and the impact of organizational and societal-level contextual factors on employee and organizational functioning.

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Below is an edited excerpt from the conversation. Read the complete podcast transcript [PDF]. 

Veto: Describe what your research is about. 

Belkin: So this work is very dear to my heart and I have an amazing team of co-authors. We started talking about this project about eight years ago. It took some time, but it's very rigorous research and I'm very proud and happy to see it finally published. 

There’s a notion that you express gratitude, employees see that and then they change the behavior in rewarding ways. It's a very wonderful idea, but life doesn't work like that. And in fact, again and again, these yearly large-scale employee surveys show that supervisors somehow think they really express gratitude a lot to their employees. But there is a mismatch because employees don't really feel appreciated at all. My team and I started looking into what kinds of gratitudes are usually expressed in the workplace. And then we looked at dyads of supervisor subordinates to see if there is match and mismatch. 

Supervisors expressed gratitude in different ways. And we developed and validated the scale where we distinguish these two general categories of types of gratitude expression.What we found is that employees have different preferences for those types, and when those preferences match with the actual type of expression, good outcomes happen.When they don't match, behaviors like voice do not happen. 

Voice is a very risky behavior and it can be helpful for an organization. But employees need to know that they will be safe, right? And why would you speak up if it's not the requirement of your job, right? So it's very much discretionary behavior that employees decide whether they will engage in it or not for the benefit of the organization. That's what we studied. And, we found really positive effects of this match between types of expression to employee preferences, voice. And we also looked at the psychological mechanisms. 

Veto: Talk a little bit more about voice and maybe the trust an employee might have or a subordinate might have when it comes to voicing something that might be an issue or of concern, and why that's important. But also, are there instances when that can be a problem for the company? 

Belkin: Risk regulation theory is borrowed from psychology research. And that theory is pretty well known in the context of interpersonal relationships, studied in romantic relationships, mostly in the psychology field. The idea behind this is that when people are in interdependent relationships, for example, in personal relationships, people always kind of manage these two broad goals. One is protecting themselves– avoiding getting rejected or getting hurt. And the other one is investing in the relationship– trying to connect because we have this really innate desire to connect. We have this kind of communal need. It's as strong a drive as other motivational needs. Then, we thought this is basically the same thing in the work context. So supervisors and subordinates always manage these two broad goals. I'm trying to avoid getting hurt. It is a professional relationship, but still, we have the connection here. We have a relationship, right? So there is a mix of this kind of career and personal desire to keep this relationship well alive and balanced. 

Why it's important specifically in the context of the workspace is that to manage these relationships, people kind of pay attention to different signals. So how do you know that the person won't hurt you and actually perceives you in high regard. There are two main mechanisms. One is this kind of attributional system where you look at the other's behavior and you decide whether it signals that you care for me or not. Based on that, there is a behavioral system that's saying, well, I decide at the moment, will I engage in something risky? Because if there is no risk, then if the behavior is not like voice or there is nothing that would hurt you, this mechanism is not important. 

What's important is if you get the signal that the person cares for you, and the moment comes that you can help, even if you don't have to, you will actually go and lend a hand. By this, you do it for the other person, but you also do it for the relationship because you're investing in the relationship. 

Veto: I find that, for me, in certain situations where I feel maybe safer, I'm able to voice something or bring something up that maybe nobody else would. I've also been in situations where I have nothing left to lose, so I'm just going to be honest. Kindly honest about things. It's interesting to hear you saying these things and I've experienced this in the workplace for the past 20 years. 

Belkin: Being truthful to yourself makes you feel good, but it also helps others. Again, this is something that is hardwired in us as species. We need a network of strong connections. We are hardwired to invest in good relationships and be part of something bigger than ourselves. And this is the mechanism. It benefits the organization, but it also makes the employee feel good. Again, when it's a constructive voice. And that goes to your second question. Can it be a bad thing? Can it be a problem? Well, constructive voice is not given that the managers actually listen and try to find out, again, if this is said not out of spite or just the desire to feel important, right? So this is not constructive voice. And there are people who complain all the time.