Learning The Real Reason Your Team Is Disengaged

There’s no greater feeling to a leader than turning around a splintered and broken team that is giving 20 percent and inspiring them to work together harmoniously to give 120 percent, without complaint.

In my former career, I moved offices every three or so years, so I was always consciously working on honing my leadership skills and the ability to influence people to be top performers. Why? Because I like to win. 😊 And true leadership is delegation and inspiring others because you can’t do it all alone.

Fifteen years ago, I managed 12 people, and five years later, I had 160. Working to find my way as a leader of a larger team, I used the same method on the 12 as I did the 160 and got similar results.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that people in every office are frustrated with something. They see broken processes and feel underutilized. They also feel like they aren’t trusted to do their best and don’t feel heard. People are bored and dying slowly at their desks because their leaders haven’t given them permission to be great.

Have You Given Your Personnel Permission to Be Great?

Companies lose up to $550 billion annually on disengaged employees, but the key to increasing the engagement and potential of your personnel is simply to treat them better. This is not a ground-breaking discovery or a big revelation. It’s worked for me repeatedly throughout my career, with hundreds of people in different offices and states.

I’ve shared this insight with my C-suite clients worldwide, and they implemented the insight and shifted the cultures in their organizations in a very short period of time. People rise or fall according to their leaders' expectations. What are you expecting?

Take Responsibility For Your Results – Good or Bad

You need to figure out exactly what’s happening with your team and your organization. As an experienced leader, you can step into an organization and immediately identify the necessary changes to increase productivity and effect change.

However, you only see the surface issues. The true nature of what’s going on is buried under broken processes, office politics, frustration, resentment, and the suppression of great ideas that haven’t been heard or asked for.

It’s interesting that when teams perform well, leaders are lauded and appreciated for their outstanding contributions. However, when a team underperforms, the team is labeled lazy and disengaged, and the leader somehow becomes a victim who inherited a marginal team. Shifting blame is easier than taking responsibility for the undesired results.

If you want to refresh your team’s performance or break out of a rut, it’s possible, but it will take some work. Harvard Business School professor Michael Tushman said that the longer a team has been together, the harder it will be to effect change. If they’re accustomed to the status quo, expect pain as you’re looking to break that cycle.

What’s The Story They’re Telling Themselves and Each Other

Before making changes, become an OBSERVER. Take the time to get to know your personnel and their motives. Observe the processes and apparent surface issues. Then, engage them in conversation to get the inside scoop of what’s really going on.

You need to see what “they see” and know what “they know.” Even if what they see isn’t true from the leadership team's perspective, the goal is to gain their perspective on what seems true to them.

Once you see what they see and know what they know, you’ll understand that their frustrations are likely rooted in misunderstandings and a lack of communication. Build trust and have a deep conversation with them to get to the root cause of low performance.

Having an open and honest verbal conversation is the best way to get the insider’s perspective of the deep-rooted issues. Notice I said CONVERSATION and not just a survey. Surveys are useful if they are intended to create REAL CHANGE, otherwise people are just going through the motions because they are required to.

Although this conversation can be facilitated with an outside consultant, if you’re the leader, you have to be in the room. But, depending on the organization's current culture, some people may not trust your motives (if they feel you are toxic) and will not be open to giving feedback for fear of repercussions.

Are their concerns valid? Do you genuinely want to know how people feel, or are you looking to smoke out a rat? If this is the case, other things must be addressed before you can get accurate and honest feedback.

Can Your Team Trust Your Intentions?

If you aren’t sure of the culture, watch their faces as you ask for feedback. If they say that everything is working well or don’t have any feedback, they don’t trust your motives. Invite people to type out or write down their concerns on paper anonymously and leave them in a box.

Open and honest conversations yield the best results in the shortest time. A climate survey can be somewhat useful, but if the culture is negative, it needs to be done so that they can trust the information will not be traced back to them.

If they don’t have any feedback or minimal feedback, you have a problem on your hands. If people are afraid to talk, they fear repercussions. If they fear repercussions, that means they feel threatened. If they feel threatened, they are playing it safe, going with the flow, and only doing what’s required. They aren’t innovating or doing more than what they’re expected to do.

It’s been said that people work just hard enough not to be fired and are paid just enough not to quit. If you’re ready to shift your team from disengaged, status quo, and barely getting by to one of high performance, become a leader that they can trust.

Then, don’t just seek feedback that will sit in your inbox, take action on it, and watch your team show up in new and exciting ways to meet your level of expectations.

What are some of the ways you’ve improved engagement of your teams?

Christy Rutherford is an international speaker, 8x author, and founder of Vision Finder International, a leadership development company that assists organizations with employee retention through burnout recovery and prevention. She has spoken to thousands of people in leadership positions worldwide in organizations such as JP Morgan, Facebook, Harvard Medical School, and Investment News, to name a few.

Christy believes employee retention and burnout recovery are inextricably linked and has prevented hundreds of leaders from burning out, assisted 50 with burnout recovery and assisted 30 with alleviating stress-related illnesses.