For some time now I\u2019ve been speaking and writing about the value of building an engaged workforce, and about what it takes to accomplish this. And quite often, in my conversations with business leaders, I\u2019ll hear something like this: \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve done about all I can to create a great working environment, and yet there are some people I still can\u2019t seem to get engaged. It\u2019s as if they just refuse to make that emotional commitment to the business and their work. So what do I do?\u201d<\/p>\n
My first response to this question is often a story about my father years ago when my mother and sister were preparing for my sister\u2019s wedding. As they were frantically trying to make sure that everything would be just perfect, my father finally asked what all the stress was about.\u00a0 Their response was, \u201cWell, you know how some of our family are. They can always find fault in something, something to complain about.\u201d My father came back with, \u201cLook, all you can do when you have a party is to have it in a nice place, with good food and drink and good music. Then if some people come and can\u2019t find a way to have a good time, it\u2019s their own fault!\u201d<\/p>\n
The moral of this story, and I have come to believe this, is that as leaders we really can\u2019t engage anyone! All we can do is work hard to create an environment that encourages people to become engaged. But the fact is that no matter what we do, some people, for whatever reason, can\u2019t or won\u2019t respond. It\u2019s almost as if their attitude is, \u201cEngage me if you can!\u201d Eventually, whether to be engaged or not comes down to a choice people need to make.<\/p>\n
So what do you do about people who choose not to be engaged despite all of your efforts?<\/p>\n
Beyond making a sincere effort to see if there are any appropriate issues involved, you don\u2019t <\/em>spend too much time trying to figure out why they won\u2019t engage, because you never will.\u00a0 You\u2019re trying to lead an organization, serve the organization, and get results, not serve as a psychologist or social worker. So let\u2019s assume that you\u2019ve had some serious conversations about their attitude, with no appreciable improvement. At that point, they may finally figure out that this place might not be the best fit for them and leave. If not\u2014to borrow a phrase from Jim Collins in Good to Great<\/em><\/a>\u2014 it\u2019s probably time for you to\u00a0 \u201cmove them off the bus!\u201d If someone is truly disengaged, it\u2019s very unlikely that they\u2019re performing at a high level, so you can go through the appropriate process to performance manage them out of the organization.<\/p>\n But what about that actively disengaged employee who still manages to deliver results? Bearing in mind that according to Gallup it takes four actively engaged employees just to neutralize the negative effects of one actively disengaged person, it seems fair and entirely justified to consider attitude a performance issue and act accordingly.<\/p>\n Many leaders step back from actively managing attitude, particularly if they hired the person, because they don\u2019t want to admit that they made a hiring mistake. But I\u2019ve never met a leader who\u2019s batted a 1000! As a Servant-Leader, we can\u2019t be afraid to admit a hiring mistake, especially when you\u2019ve done all you can to support and lead the person.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a myth that as a Servant-Leader you should tolerate actively disengaged, cynical and toxic employees. In fact, you\u2019re not serving your other people or the organization if you do. As a leader, what you accept or tolerate has a far greater impact on your organization\u2019s culture than what you say.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve said in so many previous postings, building an engaged enterprise is not easy, but is it worth doing? What do you think?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For some time now I’ve been speaking and writing about the value of building an engaged workforce, and about what it takes to accomplish this. And quite often, in my conversations with business leaders, I’ll hear something like this: “I feel like I’ve done about all I can to create a great working environment, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}