June 5, 2025 • 12 mins
Sometimes the most common causes of low employee engagement aren't actually what is causing it on your team. Over 8 episodes we'll cover some of the less-obvious causes so you can take steps to mitigate them.
Welcome to the Engagement Exchange.
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Welcome to the Engagement Exchange.
Patreon Account: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=22174142
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/hacking-your-leadership-podcast--4805674/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Chris with Acking your Leadership. On today's
discussion on employee engagement. We're continuing the discussion we started
last Thursday on insidious or kind of maybe not so
obvious issues that would be causing a decline or drop
an employee engagement on your team. Last week we talked
about excessive red tape being an issue, and I know
that's something I've encountered in my job, both both as
(00:22):
an employee and as a leader. You know, trying to
eliminate excessive red tape as a leader can be challenging too.
If you don't know where to start on today's episode,
I want to talk about the next item in that list,
which is managers and supervisors with very poor communication skills.
And this might seem like a very obvious one, like
not insidious, not kind of hidden from from view and
(00:44):
one of the first places to look. But the reason
why I think this is an insidious cause of low
employee engagement is because the managers who have poor communication skills,
the supervisors, and the individual leaders of people at the
lowest level of leadership level of leading people. Those people
who have poor communication skills and poor leadership skills oftentimes
(01:07):
they don't know it if they've been in role for
you know, longer than a few months, because at some
point in time, maybe somebody tried to tell them that
and they didn't listen, and now no one's talking to
them anymore about it, And so they might be going
through their day not thinking that their communication skills, their
way of interacting with employees and talking to them and
(01:27):
communicating with them, they might not think there's an issue
there at all, and that can make that problem very
difficult to solve.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, exactly. I think that it seems so obvious to
talk through it. But also when people don't have great
communication skills, or when people have learned to level up
their communication skills to different audiences, I see that more
often or interesting. Yeah, whell you talk to a leader
or someone and how they show up or how they
represent themselves into conversation or how they speak to you know,
(01:58):
the strategies the priority is, the KPIs whatever the case is.
How they show up in meetings with other leaders at
the same level, like, how they show up and how
they communicate in those spaces is vastly different than how
they show up and communicate locally or with their direct
team on a day to day basis, and if you,
you know, if you're not as a leader of leaders
(02:19):
observing those things, or if you're not figuring out ways
to make sure that you have space for that team
to communicate maybe some of those opportunities. To your point, it,
it could be really really bad and it would be
like outside of the local team with that leader who
maybe lacks that communication skills, you you might not know
(02:40):
about it for a really really long time and then
it's shocking and it's like, well, what do you mean right?
And and so I think that it's one of those
situations where it requires a lot of observation as a leader,
and as if you lead leaders, you really have to
look for and find out ways spend time with and
(03:02):
really assess whether that person has quality communication skills and
then if not, you've really got to spend time kind
of role modeling that for them and or being really
clear with any type of you know, any type of
coaching that you give to them, any type of recognition
for the right stuff, or you know, accountability when it's
not you know, correct, Like, it is critical if you
(03:25):
want to shape communication skills that you are in a
position to notice in multiple places to be able to
understand how good somebody is with them.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Actually, now, I just want to clarify something here. When
you say they they have different levels of communication, you know,
different skill sets, or it looks like they communicate differently
with their own peers or senior leaders than to the
people reporting to them. Are you saying that if you
just look at one half of that it will look fine.
If you look at how they communicate with senior leaders
or their boss or their peers, that you might think
(03:54):
there isn't a problem, And the problem exists when it
comes to just their their direct reports.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Absolutely, that's exactly what I'm saying. Definitely happen.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So then when I when I when I hear that,
when you say that to me, what that says is
it's lack. It's less about an ability to communicate. Well,
it's that that sounds like a respect issue. That sounds
like I'm I'm viewing these people as lesser or lower
and I'm almost talking down to them, you know, whereas
someone I view as having you know, more respect for
or more more reverence for, or you know, a belief
(04:24):
that they can somehow positively impact my career more. Now,
all of a sudden they get the good stuff, which
means that the good stuff is there, right, that that's there.
To me, that's even worse problem than a person who
just because because if a manager or supervisor has poor
communication skills, but it's consistently poor no matter who they're
talking to, that could be just a lack of knowledge,
(04:45):
a lack of training. That could be you know, I've
seen that too. That what you're talking about, I think
is more insidious, and that that has more to do
with that that one might be harder to fix than
than a person who communicates poorly to everybody, because it
implies that they just view they view other people differently,
and that's that's the kind of a change of heart
(05:06):
that is required, not just a skill set to learn.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, exactly, because I'm not saying it's with full on
intent like that that they are intentionally treating other people
better than other people. But to your point, because I've
seen it where people you get in a large room
or with different layers of leadership, and people are nervous,
people are more sheltered or more protected of what they
share and how they share. Like it's just a difference
(05:31):
of the audience that's there. So I think that it's
but it's those two things you could have the intention
of I'm doing it on purpose, and I feel that
the people that work for me like they work for me,
and I get to do whatever I want. There's that
piece of it, and there's also the piece where it's
like lack of self awareness or understanding or or or
they need to reset their lens on why communication is
(05:55):
even more impactful with your direct reports and your team
than it is to be maybe and presented in a
place where you have a larger audience.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Right, right, So I want to go over something that
people can do if you are trying to if you're
a leader of leaders, you're trying to kind of gauge
whether or not the leaders reporting to you have good
communication skills or poor communication skills, or if you're trying
to level up your own communication skills set, I want
to go have a couple of things you can do
to make those better. But first let's get up from
(06:23):
over sponsors. All right, If you're a leader of people
or a leader of leaders, and you believe that yourself
or somebody reporting to you has poor communication skills, and
you're trying to help them fix it or try to
fix it in yourself. This really has to go back
to watching a modeling of what good looks like. And
sometimes that has to be kind of, you know, foist
upon you. And sometimes if you kind of have the
(06:46):
self awareness to think this is a problem you have
to get better at, then you can seek out the
solution on your own before it is sought out for
you or forced upon you. And what that looks like
is reaching out to a partner or a peer that
you believe does this well. And you know who these
people are, You know, the people who seem to have
just away with words when it comes to you know
whoever they're talking to, and you seek those people out
(07:08):
and you ask them if you can hang out with
them while they give a presentation, or hang out with
them while they're talking to their team or having an
open dialogue with a group of people. You know, the
people who seem to do those things well, watch what
they do and take notes, not take notes on what
they said, but take notes on things like how often
do they talk, how often do they listen? You know,
(07:31):
where did they fall in the room in terms of
the amount of words that they said compared to everybody
else if they're a leader or if they're just a
contributor in the conversation, and that might look differently. Ask people.
Ask those same people to be with you and watch
you while you deliver something like this and give you
feedback on how to do it. Some people that I
know that are really good communicators, it took them a
(07:52):
while before they could articulate why they were able to
do that well, and it was it was being forced
into situations where they were watching others and having to
give feedback on what looks good and what didn't look
good that gotam to actually have the kind of self
awareness to think, Okay, this is why I'm good at
doing this compared to my other people might might not
be good at doing it. So getting people involved in
(08:12):
the process, helping you along on this journey is the
only way to do this correctly. But it will work
if you do it enough times with enough people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I think this is one of those things where over
my career and growth as a person, like I think
there's certain aspects where you are a good communicator with
certain people in certain spaces, and then you make some
mistakes and you show up in the wrong way. You
say the wrong things. You you know, you get some
(08:41):
type of a coaching from someone around that and so
you adjust or sometimes you shut down. You say, like, well,
if I can't say or sound the way that I
should with this audience, then I'll just be really quiet.
Like there as these things that happen over your life
and time where you self adjust, and it could be
very difficult to learn in these spaces because you're truly
(09:04):
exposing yourself. You're exposing how you speak, how you talk,
You're opening yourself up for people's opinions, and it could
be a hard place to really want to spend time.
Like I'll just kind of start with that. And I
think though, as you are a leader of people and
you're building your leadership skills, what you find out is
that you get forced in some of these spaces and
(09:25):
then you just have to show up and do the
best that you can do and talk how you talk,
and you know, share how you share, and if it's good,
then you'll get it. If it's not, then you'll also
get it. So like at the end of the day,
you're just continually shaping these spaces. But to your point,
the only way to really get better here from a
skill standpoint, or if you have a person on your
team or leader on your team that you know struggles
(09:48):
with some of these things. In my opinion, the only
way to get better at that is you've got to
have somebody there that is attentive to what they are sharing,
how they're sharing, how they're presenting, what they're talking about,
and then is immediately giving them that coach. I think
that's critical. Like I think that we're not going to
learn on our own. Here you can take you can
(10:09):
go to classes, you can figure out ways to do
better presentations and sound more professional and sound like a leader,
and you can do all these things that are helpful,
and I think that they can very easily help to
build some of the skill. But much of how you
know it's going better is from the opinions of other people.
And if you have somebody that you can talk to
(10:30):
that can help you with that with intention, I think
you can move a little bit faster.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, I agree with that completely. And you know, if
you look at all the data that's out there available,
it says that somewhere between a fourth and a third
of managers of people leaders of people receive actual specific
training on doing these things. And so for a lot
of leaders out there, especially leaders who are at the
beginning of their leadership journey in their career, a lot
(10:55):
of them are going into these things blind, and you know,
whatever you can do to help them get better at
this earlier on in their career, the more it will
serve them long term and the and the the less
likely they will be to encounter, you know, career stalling
or career ending issues when it comes to keeping employees engaged.
And then the last thing I want to say about this,
which I think is you know, really important, is that
(11:18):
this has to be done from a standpoint of of
you know, purity when it comes to what the goal is.
And so if a person who is being watched and
giving feedback to on their communication skills believes they're being
held accountable or they're being performance managed on getting better
communication skills, that will that will impact the potential outcome
(11:42):
from the very beginning before it even starts, because they're
going to be approaching this from a from a very
defensive standpoint. But if you're approaching it from a standpoint
of hey, I noticed this, let me, let me let
me help you, I'm happy to kind of sit in
and watch, and I'll give you some feedback and on
how you can get better, make make it sound a lot,
a lot less formal and more easy going so that
(12:04):
the person who you're giving feedback to, you're more likely
to see them in the light in which they really are,
as opposed to something they made up on the spur
of the moment because they were worried they were being giving,
you know, having feedback after the session, and they were
trying to be somebody different than who they are. So
the more authentic the person can be, the more accurate
the feedback will be, and the more likely they are
to get a kernel of knowledge or truth from you
(12:28):
that might help them along on their journey. And thank
you for joining us on this discussion and employ engagement.
We'll see you next Thursday as we continue this discussion
on kind of insidious ways that employ engagement can be
hurt that you may not be you know, might be
the front of mine as a leader. You have a
great day.
Hey, this is Chris with Acking your Leadership. On today's
discussion on employee engagement. We're continuing the discussion we started
last Thursday on insidious or kind of maybe not so
obvious issues that would be causing a decline or drop
an employee engagement on your team. Last week we talked
about excessive red tape being an issue, and I know
that's something I've encountered in my job, both both as
(00:22):
an employee and as a leader. You know, trying to
eliminate excessive red tape as a leader can be challenging too.
If you don't know where to start on today's episode,
I want to talk about the next item in that list,
which is managers and supervisors with very poor communication skills.
And this might seem like a very obvious one, like
not insidious, not kind of hidden from from view and
(00:44):
one of the first places to look. But the reason
why I think this is an insidious cause of low
employee engagement is because the managers who have poor communication skills,
the supervisors, and the individual leaders of people at the
lowest level of leadership level of leading people. Those people
who have poor communication skills and poor leadership skills oftentimes
(01:07):
they don't know it if they've been in role for
you know, longer than a few months, because at some
point in time, maybe somebody tried to tell them that
and they didn't listen, and now no one's talking to
them anymore about it, And so they might be going
through their day not thinking that their communication skills, their
way of interacting with employees and talking to them and
(01:27):
communicating with them, they might not think there's an issue
there at all, and that can make that problem very
difficult to solve.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, exactly. I think that it seems so obvious to
talk through it. But also when people don't have great
communication skills, or when people have learned to level up
their communication skills to different audiences, I see that more
often or interesting. Yeah, whell you talk to a leader
or someone and how they show up or how they
represent themselves into conversation or how they speak to you know,
(01:58):
the strategies the priority is, the KPIs whatever the case is.
How they show up in meetings with other leaders at
the same level, like, how they show up and how
they communicate in those spaces is vastly different than how
they show up and communicate locally or with their direct
team on a day to day basis, and if you,
you know, if you're not as a leader of leaders
(02:19):
observing those things, or if you're not figuring out ways
to make sure that you have space for that team
to communicate maybe some of those opportunities. To your point, it,
it could be really really bad and it would be
like outside of the local team with that leader who
maybe lacks that communication skills, you you might not know
(02:40):
about it for a really really long time and then
it's shocking and it's like, well, what do you mean right?
And and so I think that it's one of those
situations where it requires a lot of observation as a leader,
and as if you lead leaders, you really have to
look for and find out ways spend time with and
(03:02):
really assess whether that person has quality communication skills and
then if not, you've really got to spend time kind
of role modeling that for them and or being really
clear with any type of you know, any type of
coaching that you give to them, any type of recognition
for the right stuff, or you know, accountability when it's
not you know, correct, Like, it is critical if you
(03:25):
want to shape communication skills that you are in a
position to notice in multiple places to be able to
understand how good somebody is with them.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Actually, now, I just want to clarify something here. When
you say they they have different levels of communication, you know,
different skill sets, or it looks like they communicate differently
with their own peers or senior leaders than to the
people reporting to them. Are you saying that if you
just look at one half of that it will look fine.
If you look at how they communicate with senior leaders
or their boss or their peers, that you might think
(03:54):
there isn't a problem, And the problem exists when it
comes to just their their direct reports.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Absolutely, that's exactly what I'm saying. Definitely happen.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So then when I when I when I hear that,
when you say that to me, what that says is
it's lack. It's less about an ability to communicate. Well,
it's that that sounds like a respect issue. That sounds
like I'm I'm viewing these people as lesser or lower
and I'm almost talking down to them, you know, whereas
someone I view as having you know, more respect for
or more more reverence for, or you know, a belief
(04:24):
that they can somehow positively impact my career more. Now,
all of a sudden they get the good stuff, which
means that the good stuff is there, right, that that's there.
To me, that's even worse problem than a person who
just because because if a manager or supervisor has poor
communication skills, but it's consistently poor no matter who they're
talking to, that could be just a lack of knowledge,
(04:45):
a lack of training. That could be you know, I've
seen that too. That what you're talking about, I think
is more insidious, and that that has more to do
with that that one might be harder to fix than
than a person who communicates poorly to everybody, because it
implies that they just view they view other people differently,
and that's that's the kind of a change of heart
(05:06):
that is required, not just a skill set to learn.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, exactly, because I'm not saying it's with full on
intent like that that they are intentionally treating other people
better than other people. But to your point, because I've
seen it where people you get in a large room
or with different layers of leadership, and people are nervous,
people are more sheltered or more protected of what they
share and how they share. Like it's just a difference
(05:31):
of the audience that's there. So I think that it's
but it's those two things you could have the intention
of I'm doing it on purpose, and I feel that
the people that work for me like they work for me,
and I get to do whatever I want. There's that
piece of it, and there's also the piece where it's
like lack of self awareness or understanding or or or
they need to reset their lens on why communication is
(05:55):
even more impactful with your direct reports and your team
than it is to be maybe and presented in a
place where you have a larger audience.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Right, right, So I want to go over something that
people can do if you are trying to if you're
a leader of leaders, you're trying to kind of gauge
whether or not the leaders reporting to you have good
communication skills or poor communication skills, or if you're trying
to level up your own communication skills set, I want
to go have a couple of things you can do
to make those better. But first let's get up from
(06:23):
over sponsors. All right, If you're a leader of people
or a leader of leaders, and you believe that yourself
or somebody reporting to you has poor communication skills, and
you're trying to help them fix it or try to
fix it in yourself. This really has to go back
to watching a modeling of what good looks like. And
sometimes that has to be kind of, you know, foist
upon you. And sometimes if you kind of have the
(06:46):
self awareness to think this is a problem you have
to get better at, then you can seek out the
solution on your own before it is sought out for
you or forced upon you. And what that looks like
is reaching out to a partner or a peer that
you believe does this well. And you know who these
people are, You know, the people who seem to have
just away with words when it comes to you know
whoever they're talking to, and you seek those people out
(07:08):
and you ask them if you can hang out with
them while they give a presentation, or hang out with
them while they're talking to their team or having an
open dialogue with a group of people. You know, the
people who seem to do those things well, watch what
they do and take notes, not take notes on what
they said, but take notes on things like how often
do they talk, how often do they listen? You know,
(07:31):
where did they fall in the room in terms of
the amount of words that they said compared to everybody
else if they're a leader or if they're just a
contributor in the conversation, and that might look differently. Ask people.
Ask those same people to be with you and watch
you while you deliver something like this and give you
feedback on how to do it. Some people that I
know that are really good communicators, it took them a
(07:52):
while before they could articulate why they were able to
do that well, and it was it was being forced
into situations where they were watching others and having to
give feedback on what looks good and what didn't look
good that gotam to actually have the kind of self
awareness to think, Okay, this is why I'm good at
doing this compared to my other people might might not
be good at doing it. So getting people involved in
(08:12):
the process, helping you along on this journey is the
only way to do this correctly. But it will work
if you do it enough times with enough people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I think this is one of those things where over
my career and growth as a person, like I think
there's certain aspects where you are a good communicator with
certain people in certain spaces, and then you make some
mistakes and you show up in the wrong way. You
say the wrong things. You you know, you get some
(08:41):
type of a coaching from someone around that and so
you adjust or sometimes you shut down. You say, like, well,
if I can't say or sound the way that I
should with this audience, then I'll just be really quiet.
Like there as these things that happen over your life
and time where you self adjust, and it could be
very difficult to learn in these spaces because you're truly
(09:04):
exposing yourself. You're exposing how you speak, how you talk,
You're opening yourself up for people's opinions, and it could
be a hard place to really want to spend time.
Like I'll just kind of start with that. And I
think though, as you are a leader of people and
you're building your leadership skills, what you find out is
that you get forced in some of these spaces and
(09:25):
then you just have to show up and do the
best that you can do and talk how you talk,
and you know, share how you share, and if it's good,
then you'll get it. If it's not, then you'll also
get it. So like at the end of the day,
you're just continually shaping these spaces. But to your point,
the only way to really get better here from a
skill standpoint, or if you have a person on your
team or leader on your team that you know struggles
(09:48):
with some of these things. In my opinion, the only
way to get better at that is you've got to
have somebody there that is attentive to what they are sharing,
how they're sharing, how they're presenting, what they're talking about,
and then is immediately giving them that coach. I think
that's critical. Like I think that we're not going to
learn on our own. Here you can take you can
(10:09):
go to classes, you can figure out ways to do
better presentations and sound more professional and sound like a leader,
and you can do all these things that are helpful,
and I think that they can very easily help to
build some of the skill. But much of how you
know it's going better is from the opinions of other people.
And if you have somebody that you can talk to
(10:30):
that can help you with that with intention, I think
you can move a little bit faster.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, I agree with that completely. And you know, if
you look at all the data that's out there available,
it says that somewhere between a fourth and a third
of managers of people leaders of people receive actual specific
training on doing these things. And so for a lot
of leaders out there, especially leaders who are at the
beginning of their leadership journey in their career, a lot
(10:55):
of them are going into these things blind, and you know,
whatever you can do to help them get better at
this earlier on in their career, the more it will
serve them long term and the and the the less
likely they will be to encounter, you know, career stalling
or career ending issues when it comes to keeping employees engaged.
And then the last thing I want to say about this,
which I think is you know, really important, is that
(11:18):
this has to be done from a standpoint of of
you know, purity when it comes to what the goal is.
And so if a person who is being watched and
giving feedback to on their communication skills believes they're being
held accountable or they're being performance managed on getting better
communication skills, that will that will impact the potential outcome
(11:42):
from the very beginning before it even starts, because they're
going to be approaching this from a from a very
defensive standpoint. But if you're approaching it from a standpoint
of hey, I noticed this, let me, let me let
me help you, I'm happy to kind of sit in
and watch, and I'll give you some feedback and on
how you can get better, make make it sound a lot,
a lot less formal and more easy going so that
(12:04):
the person who you're giving feedback to, you're more likely
to see them in the light in which they really are,
as opposed to something they made up on the spur
of the moment because they were worried they were being giving,
you know, having feedback after the session, and they were
trying to be somebody different than who they are. So
the more authentic the person can be, the more accurate
the feedback will be, and the more likely they are
to get a kernel of knowledge or truth from you
(12:28):
that might help them along on their journey. And thank
you for joining us on this discussion and employ engagement.
We'll see you next Thursday as we continue this discussion
on kind of insidious ways that employ engagement can be
hurt that you may not be you know, might be
the front of mine as a leader. You have a
great day.
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