Category: leadership

Managing disengagement

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You can’t just let disengagement be. You have to manage it.

It’s easy to manage motivated people, people you like to work with, people who are talented and constantly deliver good work. It’s more challenging to manage those who are disillusioned, who have have little ambition and feel out of place, who end up meeting all requests with silence and a nod.

And you can’t just let them be. Because disengagement spreads and it touches everyone it meets.

It’s likely that disengaged people will end up leaving. It’s your responsibility to manage the transition. To ensure they get the best deal out of it. And to ensure that they don’t leave disengagement behind.

In the shades

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It’s not you vs your boss, your colleague, your partner, your friend, your child.

It’s not us vs the bigots, the social media, the conservatives, the progressives.

We suffer as they suffer. You feel as they feel. I act as you act.

Life is not a dichotomy and you are very rarely required to take sides.

It’s in the shades that we meet and thrive.

What is keeping you?

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That thing that’s keeping you from delivering on your promise – to yourself or to someone else. Is that an excuse or a reason?

People – ourselves included – have little tolerance for excuses. If we keep repeating them over and over again, they do not become more acceptable. They simply make the relationship more difficult.

Understand the difference and take a stand.

Fun fact: we tend to hide excuses, burying them inside long monologues or beyond a volatile interpretation of data. Reasons, on the other end, emerge whenever we need to strengthen a connection.

Fine print

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Company principles and values should be literal and absolute.

Saying that you care about people is a powerful statement. If you then put that in practice only when people do what you want, not so much anymore.

Saying that you foster collaboration and learning is a powerful statement. If you then do that only after everyone has achieved their own personal goals, not so much anymore.

Saying that you pursue innovation at all costs is a powerful statement. If you then keep quiet every time someone makes a mistake, not so much anymore.

Companies add fine prints to culture statements all the time. Employees figure that out in no time, and they get disengaged.

Start from how things work, from what is actually happening, from reality, and work your way up.

It’s the only way to build an effective culture.

No solutions

FabrizioLeave a comment

People who come to you with a problem is rarely asking you to find the solution.

It is about talking it through with someone, letting it all out, righting thoughts that might be taking the wrong turn.

We hear a problem, we want to fix it.

And that harms the relationship.

Stay with what you have heard, sit there and listen, nudge the other in the direction they want to go – what else? and tell me more about his.

This helps.