Employee Engagement

Managing People Causes Disengagement

Regardless of whether your title is that of executive, director, or manager, the practice of managing people instead of leading them, drives down engagement. I’ve always loved the expression, “Things get managed, but people get led.” It’s a great perspective and it’s true.

But how exactly do bosses “manage” people? After lots of reflection, I’ve distilled what managing people means down to two issues. The first way bosses manage people is by “treating people like things”, and the second way is by “treating adults like children”. Let me elaborate on those issues and illustrate how leading people differs from managing them.

How does someone “treat people like things”? We do it in several ways. We do it when we’re insensitive to people and interact with them as if they have no feelings. We treat people like things when we ignore the fact that everyone has hopes and dreams and fears and stress. We treat people like things when we relate to people as if our own goals and aspirations are more important to us than theirs are to them. And we treat people like things when we don’t show respect for people nor value their contributions, efforts, and potential.

When we treat people like things, it sends the message that they are unimportant and that we just don’t care about them. And when people sense we don’t care about them, they start not to care about us. When the company tolerates leaders who don’t care about people, people tend not to care about the company. And when people don’t care, there is no engagement.

A good leader understands that people’s hopes, dreams, fears, and stresses are real and matter to them. A leader inspires people. A leader interacts with people as people, helping them to be their best. A leader relates to people the way they themselves want to be treated. And a leader helps people achieve their own goals.

How does someone “treat adults like children”? Think for a moment about how we relate to children and why we relate that way. We generally tell children what they need to do and when they need to do it by. We do that because we don’t trust their judgment, their sense of responsibility, and/or their self-discipline. We regularly check up on children because we don’t trust them to follow through on their commitments. We check up on children because we don’t trust them to be responsible.

When we don’t trust people to do what needs to be done, and don’t trust their judgment, we are treating them as if they are children. When we micromanage people, we are treating them like children. When we treat people like children, it shows a lack of respect and trust. When people feel they aren’t respected and trusted, they lose respect for us. When people feel they aren’t respected and valued, there is no engagement.

If someone doesn’t know what to do, then our job as a leader is to develop their knowledge and abilities. The shortcoming lies with the leader, not the follower. If someone lacks the necessary judgment for a task or decision, then our job as a leader is to develop their judgment. If their judgment remains inadequate, then either we aren’t as competent a leader as we need to be, or we just have the wrong person on our team. Either way, resorting to treating someone as a child is a poor course of action.

If you want to avoid disengagement and drive engagement to higher levels, lead people instead of managing them. Care about people and develop them. Expect people to be responsible and to do their best work, and then hold them accountable. There’s no need to accept mediocrity or to compromise in any way. Instead, hone your leadership skills and learn to bring out the best in people.

The 6 Reasons for Employee Disengagement

There’s a lot of buzz these days about improving employee engagement.

But if you think about it, when someone joins your company, they’re already highly engaged. They’re excited to be there, they want to prove themselves, and they want to make a difference.

Therefore, as a leader, we don’t need to worry as much about how to engage people as much as how to keep people from becoming disengaged!

As the old saying goes, “People don’t quit companies, they quit bosses.”

Therefore, the question is, “why does disengagement occur?”

Disengagement most often occurs because a leader does or says things that cause people to become disillusioned and less engaged.

Typically, disengagement occurs when leaders:

Tolerate bad behavior (or behave badly themselves)
Treat people like “things”
Treat adults like children
Don’t treat people with respect
Lack integrity
Take people for granted

Here are the leading causes of disengagement and what leaders can do about it.

Tolerating Bad Behavior

A company’s culture has a significant impact on attracting and retaining good employees, boosting engagement, and achieving a strong bottom line. Most people think that a company’s culture is defined by the values and behaviors a company aspires to. That sounds great and makes sense. Except it’s not true…

A company’s culture is defined by the values and behaviors the company tolerates.

And who does that tolerating? The leaders do. The values and behaviors that the leaders tolerate become the company’s culture. But it doesn’t end there. It gets worse. When a leader professes to value a behavior but acts in a manner at odds with it, it demonstrates a lack of integrity. And when a leader is seen to lack integrity, people stop trusting and lose respect for that leader. And when people lose trust and respect for a leader, they become disengaged.

Treating People Like Things

When we interact with people without compassion, empathy, or understanding, we’re relating to them as things. And the consequence of treating people like things is that you’ll get compliance, but not commitment.

When a leader treats people like things, it sends the message that they are unimportant. When the company tolerates leaders who don’t care about people, people tend not to care about the company or the leaders. And when people don’t care, they become disengaged.

What does “treating people like things” look like? It’s when a leader is insensitive to people and interacts with them as if they have no feelings. A leader treats people like things when he or she ignores the fact that everyone has hopes and dreams and fears and stress. And leaders treat people like things when they don’t show respect for people or value their contributions, efforts, and potential.

A good leader understands that people’s hopes, dreams, fears, and stresses are real and matter to them. A good leader inspires people. A good leader interacts with people as people, helping them to be their best. A good leader has empathy. A good leader relates to people the way they themselves want to be treated. And a good leader helps people achieve their own goals.

Treating Adults Like Children

How does a leader “treat adults like children”? Why would a leader treat an adult like a child? The most prevalent reason stems from the flawed perspective that if people aren’t told what to do, they will do the least amount of work possible, doing just enough to keep their job.

When a leader doesn’t trust people to do what needs to be done, and doesn’t trust their judgment, they are treating them as if they are children. When they micromanage people, they are treating them like children. It shows a lack of respect and trust. And when people feel they aren’t respected and trusted, they lose respect for the leader. When people feel they aren’t respected and valued, they become disengaged.

Not Treating People with Respect

The impact of showing respect is powerful, but not nearly as powerful as what happens when a leader does not show respect for others. When a leader doesn’t respect people, they lose respect for the leader. And when people feel they’re not respected, they become disengaged.

People feel they’re not respected when they’re spoken to in a manner that either minimizes them or makes them feel that they and their ideas are being dismissed.

We show respect to people when we give them our full attention. It demonstrates that we care about their ideas and concerns, and that we feel that what they have to say is valuable. People usually feel they have good ideas and have something to contribute. Whether we agree with them or not, soliciting input from others demonstrates that we value them and their ideas, and that goes towards earning their respect. The most effective means of showing respect for others is asking good questions of people and then listening to their answers. If their ideas are misguided, it gives us the insights we need to help coach and mentor them.

Not Having Integrity

A leader who lacks integrity has a difficult time influencing and inspiring people. People assess us by our words and actions over time. A leader earns trust by how he or she acts in everyday situations. A leader’s words and actions will carry more weight and have greater impact if they’ve earned the trust (and respect) of others in advance.

Acting with integrity means doing what you say you’re going to do. Committing to a deadline creates an opportunity to demonstrate your integrity. Regardless of the importance of the task, fulfilling your commitment on time cements your level of integrity in the minds of others. Only when you have consistently demonstrated that you are a person of your word can solid trust be established. When you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, people become disengaged.

Acting in integrity is slightly different than acting with integrity. It’s about how we conduct ourselves in relation to the values we claim matter to us. Acting in integrity means that if we say that treating others with respect matters, we are always respectful of others – regardless of the situation or the person’s position. Acting in integrity means that if we say that honesty matters to us, we are honest – regardless of the situation. If you say that work/life balance matters, then you go out of your way to strike that balance – not only for yourself, but for the people you lead. When we act at odds with the values we say matter to us, people become disengaged.

Taking People for Granted

In order to bring out the best in people, they need to feel valued. A leader must show appreciation for their efforts and recognize them for their accomplishments. Being taken for granted is disheartening and demotivating. And when people feel unappreciated, they become disengaged.

Some leaders adopt the attitude that people are paid to do a job and therefore the payment of a salary is sufficient appreciation and recognition for their work. And while it’s true that people have an obligation to do good work in exchange for fair pay, people are still people. They have emotions, pride, fears, self-esteem, and a desire to please.

Having one’s effort taken for granted can be disheartening. If a leader wants people to do and be their best, it’s important to demonstrate that he or she values them. There is a difference between appreciation and recognition, and the distinction is important to understand. Recognition is offered to acknowledge a person’s achievement and is usually done publicly. Appreciation on the other hand, is offered for someone’s effort.

Most people want to be appreciated for their efforts more so than for their accomplishments. Appreciation is generally personal, heartfelt, and given privately from one person to another. It is an expression of gratitude for someone’s effort. Its impact is immediate and long-lasting. Telling someone you appreciate their effort in completing a project over the weekend has a far greater impact on engagement than offering a token of recognition for the end result.

Reducing disengagement keeps the base level of engagement high and increases overall engagement over time. A highly engaged team becomes committed to the outcome of an initiative, and the results from a committed team far outweigh those from a team that is simply compliant.

If you’d like my help reducing disengagement (and increasing engagement), please contact me.

How to Reverse Manager Disengagement

As the economy has become more challenging and unpredictable, workers are being asked to do more with less. The consequences, of course, are employee disengagement, burnout, and higher turnover. All of which make matters even worse!

These teams are being asked to do more with less by the leaders of the organization. The leaders don’t take these decisions lightly and generally don’t enjoy having to cut head count. Employees know that, but it doesn’t really help the situation.

There is, however, a “hidden” negative consequence to this issue of doing more with less.

The “hidden” negative consequence is the toll it takes on the managers of those teams. The Gallup Organization just released a study examining this issue.
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx

According to the study, the drop in employee engagement cost the world economy $438B in lost productivity in 2024! Gallup says the primary cause was a drop in manager engagement. And as manager engagement drops, so does team engagement, thereby compounding the problem.

The study goes on to say that the manager engagement issue especially affects managers under 35 years of age and female managers. Overall, manager engagement fell from 30% down to 27%. That means that almost ¾ of all managers are not feeling engaged!

What can leaders do to reverse this trend and improve manager engagement?

Provide Training on How to Manage
Most managers are people who were great individual contributors. After all, they’ve proven they know how to get the job done! The reality, however, is that technical competence isn’t enough to be an effective manager. Clearly, a good manager needs – among other things – to be able to oversee their team’s work and provide guidance, properly allocate resources, and help their team deliver quality results on time.

Because many of these skills don’t automatically come with being a good individual contributor, leaders need to train their managers on how to manage others.

Provide Training on How to Coach and Mentor Others
In addition to those skills mentioned above, managers also need to be able to coach and mentor their team members. Developing subordinates doesn’t only make them more valuable, enhance engagement, and increase productivity, but it also makes them more promotable and drives manager engagement.

It is essential that leaders teach managers how to coach and mentor their team members.

Provide Continuing Personal Development
When a manager develops team members it helps improve engagement, productivity and job satisfaction. The same things happen when leaders develop managers.

People don’t want to feel stagnant and/or stuck in their current role. They want to continue to grow, expand their skill set, and prepare for advancement.

If leaders want managers to stay engaged and committed (as opposed to simply being compliant), they need to provide development opportunities for them.

Have an “Open-Door” Policy
The final suggestion for helping managers stay engaged is for leaders to have an open-door policy. In other words, make it comfortable for managers to come to their boss with questions, ideas, and problems without feeling they’ll be criticized or judged.

Having an open-door policy allows both the manager and leader to grow and connect. People want to be heard and respected. Knowing they can come to their boss with questions and/or ideas helps accomplish that.

Moving From Compliant to Committed

As you well know, a team or an organization that is simply compliant produces mediocre results. On the other hand, if people are engaged and committed, the results are very different.

When someone is compliant, they simply obey – doing what’s asked of them but no more. Typically they’re doing just enough to keep their job. In contrast, someone who’s committed will spend time and effort outside of normal business hours thinking about work, solving problems, finding better ways to get the job done, seeking out new insights, and taking action.

What causes someone to be committed? There are a number of drivers of commitment. The first is that they need to have some degree of self-motivation. If a person isn’t self-motivated about the work they’re doing, they should find a job that has the kind of work they can be enthused about.

The second driver of commitment involves the person they report to – their leader/boss. A motivated, committed person will soon become unhappy if their boss is someone they don’t trust and respect.
Trust and respect must be earned over time. Trust is earned by acting with integrity and by acting in integrity. Acting with integrity means doing what you say you will do and acting in integrity means being the kind of person you claim to be.

Trust grows when a leader follows through on their commitments, and mistrust grows when they don’t follow through. Trust grows as a leader consistently acts in alignment with the values they say matter to them, and mistrust grows when someone claims to embrace certain values but acts in a manner at odds with them.

When it comes to respect, a leader demonstrates they respect someone when they listen to their ideas and interact with them in a respectful manner. When a leader doesn’t value people and doesn’t treat them with respect, their team loses respect for them.

The third driver of commitment involves the culture of the organization. A company that lives by the core values that matter to it drives engagement and commitment. On the other hand, an organization that claims certain core values but acts in ways which clearly demonstrate that those values don’t matter, soon causes widespread disillusionment and disengagement. It’s just like a leader professing the importance of certain values but acting in a manner at odds with those values. When a company tolerates bad behavior, it demonstrates a lack of integrity, which leads to a loss of trust and respect within the organization.

The fourth and final driver of commitment involves the nature of initiatives undertaken by the company, the department, or the team. An initiative without a reason, lacking any purpose other than to make the person who set the goal look good, leaves people flat. If an initiative is to drive commitment, there needs to be a “why”. People become engaged and committed when they believe in what they’re doing and feel they are making a difference.

If you want a committed workforce, start by ensuring that skilled people are being hired who are self-motivated and aligned with the organization’s culture. Ensure that leaders at all levels improve their interpersonal skills. Take a good hard look at whether the organization is living up to the core values it claims to embrace. And be clear about why initiatives are being undertaken.

If you’d like help driving engagement and commitment, let’s find a time to talk.
Helping leaders drive stronger results is my passion.

Company Culture: By Design or Default?

A company’s culture has a significant impact on attracting and retaining good employees, boosting engagement, and achieving a strong bottom line.

Over the years, I’ve had some interesting conversations with clients regarding their company’s culture. I remember one client (someone I was helping to groom as the owner’s successor). He told me how much they value their culture. Not only that, but they felt very strongly about “hiring to their culture”. In other words, they made certain that every new hire understood how important the company’s culture was.

As an executive coach focused on effective leadership, these statements were music to my ears! I naturally asked him, “So, what IS your company’s culture?” AND HE HAD NO ANSWER! It turns out, when they speak to new hires about culture, they simply tell them that their culture was important but offered no guidance as to what that was or what it meant. So, I gave him an assignment to better define their culture and reduce it to a handful of statements.

In our next coaching session, we discussed the list of values and behaviors the company strove to live by. We spent that session refining and clarifying the list so he could better express what mattered to the company to new hires and so he could better hold employees accountable to those values and behaviors.

I had a very different conversation with another client (the president of a company). This client had very clearly defined their culture and made sure that new hires were aware of it. But there was a problem. In fact, it was a major problem.

You see, most people think that a company’s culture is defined by the values and behaviors a company aspires to. That sounds great and makes sense. Except it’s not true…

A company’s culture is defined by the values and behaviors the company tolerates.

And that’s exactly what was happening at his company. Even worse, my client was as guilty as anyone in the company, acting at odds with the stated culture. Nevertheless, he couldn’t understand why they had so much trouble making progress and holding people accountable. Consequently, we began strategizing about how to change his behavior and the behavior of other leaders within the company.

So, here’s the bottom line…. A company’s culture needs to be defined. A culture that exists by default is always inferior and leads to lower engagement. And although a defined culture is superior to a culture by default, it only works when the leaders live by those values and behaviors. Plus, those leaders must not tolerate non-aligned behavior by others.
A positive, well-defined culture that people live by will attract better employees, and will result in stronger engagement and improved profitability.