Employee Engagement
How to improve your employee engagement without a team overhaul
My 30-year-old son worked for an international tech company. He was very good at his job. He started at the company when it was a small, family-owned tech company. He loved his job. The family owners were kind and paid attention to the team members. After the big tech company purchased the family-owned company, he still loved his job. He had built a good rapport with the customers, and he was often specifically requested to help some of the more challenging clients. He generally has an internal locus of control, meaning he is motivated by doing good work and doing the right thing. BUT, he also needs the external gratification of a customer who thanks him or specifically requests his services because he is good at his job.
Spring forward a couple of years, and he gets a promotion from Customer Support to Business Analyst. This came with a nice raise and something good to put on his resume. HE WAS MISERABLE. He no longer had customer-facing time. He worked with IT teams who didn’t care about him. He had a boss who belittled him in meetings in front of his peers and failed to help him learn from his mistakes. All of his internal locus of control went out the window. He was now just a cog in the machine. No one on this team was happy. It was obvious that the quality of their work product did not matter. My son was being crushed by negativity and toxic conversations. He resigned.
He was only unemployed for two weeks - remember, he was good at his job. It was the environment that failed him. He has been training at the new job for the past two weeks, and he comes home happy. His role is hybrid, so he gets three days per week working from home and two days in the office. He is making connections with peers. His manager tells him when she is impressed with his work. She listens when he is struggling and fixes whatever the issue is. He would do anything possible to support her because he feels like she does the same for him. She changed his attitude about work in just two weeks.
Zach Mercurio wrote a wonderful book: The Power of Mattering. It just came out this week. He speaks about the very same thing. People want to “matter.” They want to be remembered for the good things they do to support the team, the company, and the leadership.
This goes back to a principle I wrote about a few weeks ago when I told the story about my dad telling me to know the name of every person who worked in my office. Not just know who they are, but know their name and speak kindly to them.
Zac did a podcast with Simon Sinek this week. (I love Simon Sinek - can I say this out loud?) Here is the gist of the conversation:
“Picture this: You’re a distribution center leader with engagement scores in the basement. Your team feels invisible, disconnected, and frankly, like they’d rather be working anywhere else. But there’s one team in the building that’s different. Their engagement scores are through the roof. They would do anything for their leader.
So what’s the secret? A notebook and three minutes.
Zach shared with Optimism Library subscribers something that the leader of the thriving team did every single Friday. She wrote down one thing each person on her team had mentioned—a worry, a frustration, a small detail. On Monday, she followed up. “Hey, how’d that meeting go?” “Did they fix the equipment that was acting up?”
And the science agrees. Being remembered builds trust—literally. It releases oxytocin, the connection hormone. But when we’re rushing from meeting to meeting, multitasking during calls, or racing through our email backlog, we miss these opportunities for connection.
So here’s how to implement this practice starting tomorrow:
Ask better questions: Instead of “How are you?” try “What has your attention today?” or “What’s been taking your energy this week?” These questions actually get answers.
Actually listen: When someone shares something—their kid’s soccer game, a presentation they’re nervous about, a project that’s really frustrating them—take note of it.
Follow up: Next time you see them, reference what they shared. “How did Jamie’s soccer tournament go?” “Did that presentation end up going as well as I knew it would?”
You don’t need to overhaul your leadership style—just remember one thing about one person and follow up on it. Because at the end of the day, people don’t need another pizza party. They need to know they matter.” - Simon Sinek 2025
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#search/simon/FMfcgzQbfLSTkZJGgXbHlqJnfDjQNlrS
