Crying to Be Heard: Coaching the Actively Disengaged Employee

Much has been written lately about the topic of Employee Engagement. Engaged employees are committed to doing the best work they can, often going above and beyond what’s expected of them. Disengaged employees basically go through the motions, doing just enough to get by (and often not even that). Actively Disengaged employees are very vocal about their disengagement, frequently voicing their frustrations, resistance, and disagreement with the actions of the company and its leaders.

Actively Disengaged employees can be particularly challenging for leaders because, even though they may be few in number, they can have a disproportionately large negative impact on the organization. Their influence can be especially strong on the Disengaged employees, who are particularly susceptible to the carping of the Actively Disengaged and are often led into the Actively Disengaged category themselves. Because of this, organizations are often advised to do whatever they can to shield the rest of the organization from the Actively Disengaged – a strategy which calls to mind Yankees manager Casey Stengel’s quote about handling a baseball team: “I try to keep the players who hate me away from the ones who aren’t quite sure.”

It can be tempting to treat the Actively Disengaged as bad seeds with a poor work ethic who need to be isolated and ultimately removed from the organization. “Coaching” for these employees often takes the form of: “Shape up or else!” However, rather than writing them off, the YES! Leader might consider another coaching approach that can create a better outcome for everyone.

First, the YES! Leader does need to emphasize to the Actively Disengaged employee – in a clear but nonthreatening way – that behavior that disrupts others’ engagement is unacceptable and must be modified. But rather than stop there, the YES! Leader should proceed to ask questions that explore what is getting in the way of the employee’s engagement. Among the many possible sources of Actively Disengaging behavior, two in particular stand out:

1) A Sense of “I’m Not Being Heard!” People today expect to have a voice in important work issues that affect them. They also want to feel as if their knowledge, ideas, and perspectives are being fully utilized by their organizations. If they feel stifled and stymied – if they get the sense that the organization believes in the old “Deciders decide, designers design, workers work” approach to defining roles and dividing tasks – then they might well rebel against a culture that expects them to just salute and carry on.

2) Poor Job Fit. The management expert W. Edwards Deming once said: “A bad process will beat a good person every time.” Deming was speaking in the context of process design, but the same idea applies to organizational and job design as well. If a person’s values, skills, and interests are out of synch with the job she is expected to do, she’s very likely to become frustrated in her role. Especially if the organization’s culture discourages creative approaches to letting people do what they do best every day, then the person may react with vocal resistance to being forced into an unsuitable role. Rather than being regarded as a good (or even great) person in an ill-fitting role, the employee might instead be treated as a “bad actor” who bears full responsibility for her own situation.

By approaching the Actively Disengaged employee with positive expectations about her motivations, the YES! Leader may learn that the real problem is not the person but the environment in which she’s being expected to perform.  The leader and employee can then start working collaboratively toward removing the barriers blocking the employee’s path to greatness.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

If you have an Actively Disengaged employee, consider the following types of coaching questions that might uncover the barriers to engagement and help the employee take effective action to deal with them:

·         What is something important you’ve been saying that nobody is hearing? Why do you think they’re not hearing it? What can I do to make sure they hear it? What can you do differently to communicate it more effectively?

·         What have you been telling me that you think I haven’t been hearing?

·         What is one thing that, if it changed in your current role, would make you feel more satisfied and productive?

·         If you had a magic wand, what is one thing you would change about this department, team, or organization?

Naturally, asking these types of questions won’t do any good unless (1) You open your mind to the possibilities in the employee’s ideas, and (2) The coaching interaction leads to a joint action plan to start moving toward change.