Is your leadership disengaged?
When you as a leader are disengaged, it causes your employees to be disengaged. Many companies are trying to increase their employee engagement, but what if the root cause is that the leader is disengaged?
Think of employee engagement like the transmission in your car. When the transmission is disengaged or in neutral, all the power from the engine isn’t making it to drive the wheels and make the car go forward. In the same way, when leaders are disengaged, the organization can’t move forward either.
Leader disengagement often happens for the same reasons as employee disengagement. They don’t feel respected by their manager, they don’t feel like they have a say in decision making, and they aren’t kept in the loop in terms of communication. Finally, they usually don’t receive enough positive feedback and appreciation themselves as leaders. Lack of leader motivation and engagement tends to breed cynicism, sarcasm, and negativity in the leader.
The senior leadership team should lead the leaders in the same way as they want those leaders to lead the team members. Some managers think that the supervisors should be tough enough to not need those basic motivators, but the reality is that supervisors are employees, too, and their needs aren’t that different from the needs of the front line employees.
Many supervisors will tell us, “Our managers need some training.” Instead of being offended by that comment, perhaps managers can be a little more self-reflective, and ask themselves if they’re delivering the basic motivators to their supervisors.
Re-engaging your supervisors is a great first step to engaging your frontline employees. Share on X
What’s one thing you do when you notice a disengaged supervisor?
