In my experience, the most actively disengaged employees are ones who are suffering from deep disappointment in their organization. They are often people who really invested their hearts and hopes in the past and were massively let down, by destructively poor management, by abandoned change and improvement initiatives they passionately supported, reorganizations that took them away from work/projects/services they loved, and the like. These folks are actively protecting themselves from investing in the organization again to avoid the real pain they’ve felt when they have put their hearts on the line in the past, either in this organization or some other place in their lives.
I find that an appreciative discovery process helps them, and us, identify and celebrate the best of their experiences in the organization and its people from the past. This highlights and revitalizes their connection to what they loved, invested in, and want to have again. When this discovery is linked to an authentically empowering visioning, design and implementation process, in classic appreciative inquiry style, a goodly portion of these most disgruntled can become your most convincing cheerleaders. However, this requires a fully committed OD effort at whatever level of the organization you are working at. I’ve facilitated it across a $26B global division, domestic organizations, divisions, and teams as small as five employees. Extraordinary results ensue when the lead manager(s) truly commit over the long term.
However, it may be that the organization feels it is doing well, in general, and leadership doesn’t see a need for initiating a broad empowerment/engagement initiative. The alternative is to work with the individual employees, to help them rediscover what they love, what they are great at, and to help them rewrite their storyline to focus on how they can feel powerfully effective, successful and productive. This entails giving them an individual appreciative inquiry experience- something we were asked to design as a follow-on process for the global cultural reinvigoration effort, based on an essential element of our executive coaching for promotion. It can be applied in single pairs, or in very large groups facilitated for a great many simultaneous pair-experiences.
• Individual employees work in pairs to conduct in-depth structured interviews of each other that highlight their experiences of highest effectiveness, impact and satisfaction and provide each other with a graphic map of those high-point experiences and the qualities they exhibited in those events.
• They then engage in a carefully facilitated visioning process that leads them into a clear written picture of what they could be achieving if they continuously, consistently drew on and leveraged those powerful qualities over, say, the next three years.
• They follow up with crafting individual statements of the daily operating rules they will bring into play when they are exhibiting these positive qualities, and then
• they move into writing commitments to specific actions they need to take to best manifest their strengths in the organization and/or in their lives overall.
• The pairs generally stay in communication with each other as supportive accountability partners, with regular conversations to re-stimulate their connection to their positive strengths and visions, as well as their working commitments.
The key to the process is the rekindling of hope and commitment to personal effectiveness and satisfaction, grounded in what they have already experienced in their lives, what we call “Discovering Your Positive Core™” http://bit.ly/HmtXz0 . Employees develop a very personalized picture and plan for their development which can be tightly woven into the organizational opportunities around them, or that empower them to go out in the world to pursue their passions in their communities, personal pursuits, or even other organizations. Paradoxically, losing some of these employees is a real bonus for the organization, as they have uncovered the dysfunctional match between their desires and their current work opportunities. As baseball great, Casey Stengel, suggested, sometimes getting people who can’t commit separated from those who still could commit is a big win.
So, long story short, I’m convinced that the “actively disengaged” are, most often, rationally protecting themselves from painful disappointment. I think the vast majority can, in fact, reengage with their best qualities and very productively invest in your, or another, organizational mission if offered a way to reconnect with what they love and do best. And, watching them light up with enthusiasm is enormous fun!
