July 17, 2025 • 13 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 Hacking your Leadership. On today's
discussion on employee engagement, we're completing the topics that we've
been discussing over the past several weeks on the kind
of maybe lesser known or insidious causes of low employee engagement.
Last week we talked about not having enough transparency. The
week before that, we talked about a lack of reward
or recognition. There's all these different kind of areas that
(00:23):
leaders can kind of dig into when it comes to
why a person may or may not be engaged in
their job or whether there might be a change to
the negative. On this last episode of the series, I
want to talk about what happens when employees feel unheard,
and I think this is it's fitting that it's the
last one in the list, because I think it's one
(00:44):
that the employees. A lot of employees would articulate as
a problem, even if they don't do that unsolicited, like
if you have to ask them. But if you were
to ask them, I think a lot of people would
say that it might not be something that they bring
up on their own because just kind of the irony
(01:05):
of the situation is that if a person is feeling unheard,
They're less likely to want to speak up about that
because they don't know that they'll be heard to begin with,
and so you're less likely to hear from employees one off,
that I don't feel like I'm being heard, especially if
the issue has been ongoing, you know, for more than
more than a few months, and the employeesn't think anything
can change.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Or get solved. But what I want to go over
when it comes.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
To employees feeling unheard is if you look at what
it means to feel heard, the priority or the kind
of the predominant kind of feature of feeling heard in
the context of business or whatever your work is, is
you gave a suggestion or an idea on how to
(01:51):
improve the business or to streamline a process, or to
remove a pain point or a roadblock on some thing,
and the leadership team that you report to or your
organization as a whole listened implemented that, and now you
have felt like you've contributed to the way the business
(02:13):
runs going forward because you spoke up. That's what it
means to feel heard by employees. It's not just you know,
your leaders sitting there like a therapist going I can
see how that would be hard. You know that this
is this is what it means where the rubber meets
the road of feeling heard is the employees make a
contribution with their own knowledge or experience, and that knowledge
(02:35):
is put into implementation with behaviors or a change in
the way things are done.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, I think it's such a it's such an important
piece there. I think sometimes you can have conversation I
think about in my own just my own leadership, in
my own conversations, like the important part of the implementation piece,
the follow up piece, the closing of the loop, the
making sure that as you are having conversations, die dialogue,
(03:00):
ideation sessions, round tables, town halls, whatever, you might have
to talk to people about what's going on, how they're feeling,
what about the work, what are their thoughts, what are
their ideas, what are their feedback, what are their insights,
whatever that might be, that you're doing something with it.
You are taking action, you are validating the proper behaviors.
(03:20):
You are you know, really making sure that they are
not just a part of the work, but also understand
and appreciate how that's informing the work. And I think
you know a lot of times this happens because it's
it's like there's a big need, there's a big thing
that we have to solve for. Hey, we're not good
(03:42):
at this. We're having trouble with that. We're delayed behind this,
we're having we're getting stuck in this space like there's
this big thing, and pull everybody together, like let's get
a let's get an all team meeting, all hands meeting,
let's get everybody in together, let's talk about this. What
are we gonna do. Thanks for your thoughts, thanks for
your ideas. Boom, let's go. And in the big you know,
situations that can feel like, oh, we're doing a good
(04:03):
job with this, that's not it for me. It's actually
in the small ones. It's it's in the day to day,
so the small tweeks, it's in the some individual may
have some insights or concerns about a specific thing, and
you could write it off and say, oh, maybe it's
just that person, instead of saying, okay, you know what,
thank you for that, and I'm gonna ask around, let me,
(04:24):
let me, let me see what's going on, let me ask,
And you start to ask a couple more people if
they're experiencing the same type of thing, and then you
can figure out, Okay, maybe it is just that one
person or there is some some element of this that's
impacting more people, and then say, okay, now that I
know that, let's then have some thoughts around what can
we do to address it? And then and then including
(04:44):
that person letting them know, Hey, you mentioned this to me.
I want to let you know. I followed up, I
had some more conversations. This is a thing that more
people are experiencing. So here's what I'm suggesting as far
as something we can do. What are your thoughts on this? Right,
and like you know, really making sure or that you're
doing that in the small day to day things. I
think for me, those things are much more impactful and
(05:07):
influential and making sure your team feels seen and heard.
Then some of the big things that have to happen
where we then celebrate and rah rah. We had this
issue and we had an idea, and people gave some
ideas and we use one of them. Isn't that awesome? Yeah,
that is also awesome and you need that. But for me,
it's the smaller day to day things that are the
more important ones.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, like anything in life, the little things are the
most important because they add up. I think what you're
saying is spot on, and I want to go over
some of the things that leaders can do to make
sure this happens and the causes of maybe why it
doesn't happen in a lot of space. But first, let's
get up toward from all our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
All right, if you're leader of people.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And you're trying to influence this positively on your team,
you have to start with the knowledge that the reason
why it's easier to happen in the larger spaces, like
Lorenzo was describing, is because those spaces are prescribed to
you by your organization, and there's an agreed upon problem
that needs to be solved from people in a leadership role.
(06:05):
But the people who are executing may not be bought
in that it's a problem to solve, like it's a
problem that's been articulated to them. They have a responsibility
to solve it. But if they don't actually see it
as a problem, then they're not going to be as
invested in coming up with a solution to it as
you might be. The person who's in charge of leading
the team as a whole. But when a person brings
(06:26):
up something to you one on one. By definition, that
means it's a pain point for them, or it's a
problem that they see, or it's a problem that they
want to try to solve, and they have kind of
spearheaded the conversation because they want to make a contribution
to the organization as a whole. But they also are
trying to just solve a problem that they've experienced, and
(06:49):
the buy in for getting it fixed is far higher
when you have both of those things at play as
opposed to just one of them, And so it's important
from a leadership perspective that you validate that. The reason
why it's hard to validate that is because, let's be honest,
a lot of these things that are brought to the
attention of leaders by employees are not great ideas. All right,
(07:12):
let's be blunt about it. They're not great ideas. But
why are they not great ideas? They're not great ideas
because the person who brought the idea up to you
doesn't have the knowledge, or the context, or a broader
set of data available to them that would have allowed
them to inform their own decision on the right way forward.
So maybe it's a it's got a seed or a
(07:33):
kernel of a good idea in it and it needs
to go a different route or kind of be you know,
kind of cooked for a while before it's good, or
it could be just a totally off base idea because
of a lack of context or knowledge. The way to
make sure that you are not spending your days coming
through one hundred bad ideas for one good one and
allowing employees to kind of disengage in the process because
(07:54):
they don't feel like they're being heard. The way to
do this is to arm employees with the data they
need to make sure that the things they're bringing up
are better. That's to give them the transparency needed, the
information they need. Is to invite them into the conversation
as much as you can when you're talking about the business.
To not assume that because maybe this thing doesn't impact them,
(08:16):
they don't need to know about it. No, let them
in if they're showing a thirst for that information at all.
Invite them into the conversation and have that with them.
Arm them with the information and they will self select
to not bring up things that are not good ideas
that they may have brought up before.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
The number of times.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I can think back to ideas I brought up to
leaders in my career where I look back and I
cringe on it now, thinking what was I thinking to
bring that up?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Well, in the moment, it.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Seemed like a good idea, but it seemed like a
good idea because I didn't know anything, and now that
I do, I would have brought it up differently or
not at all. So give your people the knowledge they
need to make better decisions, and you will find over
time the ideas get curated better for you, and you
will have a an easier time making your employees feel heard.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Then feel like you're.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Constantly saying, oh, my gosh, ho I tell this person
that their idea is you know, not good. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
It was making me laugh a little bit because I
was thinking the same thing of like time to my
career where I probably made comments, had an idea suggest
this strategy, and looking back on it, I was like, oh,
that was just just trash because I didn't have the perspective,
like I had no right, Like I just I didn't
know any better, and I was being driven by like
kind of short term thinking, immediate need, elements of emotion,
(09:31):
probably pieces of ego, like so many things that are
just like, this is my now, this is what I
want to do, this is my thoughts on this and
not thinking you know, as you grow in your career,
with maturity, with larger you know perspective and partnerships and
things like that, I still have that same energy from
time to time on certain things, but they are a
(09:52):
lot more informed, and I take the time to make
sure that my position is such that it makes sense
and that I understand the larger you know approaches or
strategies or reasons. Before that I can still not like it.
I can still have a different opinion. I can still
have a different idea, but I think they're much more
(10:13):
informed over time. So I love that you called that
out because I think it's not about It's not about
eliminating the bad ideas. It's about creating a space for
all ideas and having that be something that people get
used to, and then over time they will refine their
ideas and you can help them move faster if you
(10:34):
take the time to walk through the idea, ask questions,
be curious, provide insight or context, allow them the space
to change their mind or adjust or think about things differently.
But yeah, I think that it's way more important that
you make sure that you have those spaces for people
and for your teams, knowing and anticipating that there will
(10:57):
be some bad ideas, not again not out of intent,
but just out of lack of of perspective, understanding, you know,
experience knowledge, that type of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, it's the example that you gave where you said,
you know, the the bad ideas that you cringe back
on on looking back on were rooted in a lot
of other things like there. You know, there was a
little bit of ego in there, there was a lack
of context, a lack of knowledge about the situation. But
there's one thing you didn't mention that was also in
there too, and that was a desire to improve things.
(11:29):
So with even with all of those things that you mentioned,
if you didn't give a crap about the business, you
still wouldn't brought up the.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Idea, right you.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
You also have to have with you a genuine care
about how the business needs are, about the business needs,
about how the outcomes are. You care about that, and
it could be it could be self serving. You could
care about the business outcomes because you're trying to get promoted.
That's fine, but in general, you're you're making suggestions to
(11:57):
try to make the business better, and and the worst
thing that you can do as a leader is be
so preoccupied with making sure that you don't have to
shoot down terrible ideas all the time that you go
the route of making employees feel unheart altogether, and then
you stop getting the ideas, you stop getting the engagement
(12:18):
from the employees to try to make the organization better,
because once you've lost that, it's almost impossible to get
it back from an individual employee. You almost have to
find a way to you know, cut bait and replace
the team or replace the individual. The the buy into
getting it done is what needs to be preserved and protected,
and the way to do that long term is to
(12:40):
arm them with information and make sure that you give
them the tools they need to refine their visions before
they bring them to you. And then it will be
far less detrimental when you can give more context because
it's not coming from a perspective of your ideas is
coming from respective of Wow, that was I love that
(13:03):
you care about the business. That's a fantastic idea. You know,
I had the exact same thought in my mind last
year and and someone told me this thing too, and
I went, oh, I get give them that information.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Give it to them in advance, and you will.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
You will make them more prepared to kind of to
kind of refine their own experience and also feel heard.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Thank you for joining us on this episode.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
As we complete this series on little known or lesser
known causes of a decline and employee engagement.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
We'll see you next Thursday for our next episode. You
have a good day.
Hey, this is Chris with Hacking your Leadership. On today's
discussion on employee engagement, we're completing the topics that we've
been discussing over the past several weeks on the kind
of maybe lesser known or insidious causes of low employee engagement.
Last week we talked about not having enough transparency. The
week before that, we talked about a lack of reward
or recognition. There's all these different kind of areas that
(00:23):
leaders can kind of dig into when it comes to
why a person may or may not be engaged in
their job or whether there might be a change to
the negative. On this last episode of the series, I
want to talk about what happens when employees feel unheard,
and I think this is it's fitting that it's the
last one in the list, because I think it's one
(00:44):
that the employees. A lot of employees would articulate as
a problem, even if they don't do that unsolicited, like
if you have to ask them. But if you were
to ask them, I think a lot of people would
say that it might not be something that they bring
up on their own because just kind of the irony
(01:05):
of the situation is that if a person is feeling unheard,
They're less likely to want to speak up about that
because they don't know that they'll be heard to begin with,
and so you're less likely to hear from employees one off,
that I don't feel like I'm being heard, especially if
the issue has been ongoing, you know, for more than
more than a few months, and the employeesn't think anything
can change.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Or get solved. But what I want to go over
when it comes.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
To employees feeling unheard is if you look at what
it means to feel heard, the priority or the kind
of the predominant kind of feature of feeling heard in
the context of business or whatever your work is, is
you gave a suggestion or an idea on how to
(01:51):
improve the business or to streamline a process, or to
remove a pain point or a roadblock on some thing,
and the leadership team that you report to or your
organization as a whole listened implemented that, and now you
have felt like you've contributed to the way the business
(02:13):
runs going forward because you spoke up. That's what it
means to feel heard by employees. It's not just you know,
your leaders sitting there like a therapist going I can
see how that would be hard. You know that this
is this is what it means where the rubber meets
the road of feeling heard is the employees make a
contribution with their own knowledge or experience, and that knowledge
(02:35):
is put into implementation with behaviors or a change in
the way things are done.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, I think it's such a it's such an important
piece there. I think sometimes you can have conversation I
think about in my own just my own leadership, in
my own conversations, like the important part of the implementation piece,
the follow up piece, the closing of the loop, the
making sure that as you are having conversations, die dialogue,
(03:00):
ideation sessions, round tables, town halls, whatever, you might have
to talk to people about what's going on, how they're feeling,
what about the work, what are their thoughts, what are
their ideas, what are their feedback, what are their insights,
whatever that might be, that you're doing something with it.
You are taking action, you are validating the proper behaviors.
(03:20):
You are you know, really making sure that they are
not just a part of the work, but also understand
and appreciate how that's informing the work. And I think
you know a lot of times this happens because it's
it's like there's a big need, there's a big thing
that we have to solve for. Hey, we're not good
(03:42):
at this. We're having trouble with that. We're delayed behind this,
we're having we're getting stuck in this space like there's
this big thing, and pull everybody together, like let's get
a let's get an all team meeting, all hands meeting,
let's get everybody in together, let's talk about this. What
are we gonna do. Thanks for your thoughts, thanks for
your ideas. Boom, let's go. And in the big you know,
situations that can feel like, oh, we're doing a good
(04:03):
job with this, that's not it for me. It's actually
in the small ones. It's it's in the day to day,
so the small tweeks, it's in the some individual may
have some insights or concerns about a specific thing, and
you could write it off and say, oh, maybe it's
just that person, instead of saying, okay, you know what,
thank you for that, and I'm gonna ask around, let me,
(04:24):
let me, let me see what's going on, let me ask,
And you start to ask a couple more people if
they're experiencing the same type of thing, and then you
can figure out, Okay, maybe it is just that one
person or there is some some element of this that's
impacting more people, and then say, okay, now that I
know that, let's then have some thoughts around what can
we do to address it? And then and then including
(04:44):
that person letting them know, Hey, you mentioned this to me.
I want to let you know. I followed up, I
had some more conversations. This is a thing that more
people are experiencing. So here's what I'm suggesting as far
as something we can do. What are your thoughts on this? Right,
and like you know, really making sure or that you're
doing that in the small day to day things. I
think for me, those things are much more impactful and
(05:07):
influential and making sure your team feels seen and heard.
Then some of the big things that have to happen
where we then celebrate and rah rah. We had this
issue and we had an idea, and people gave some
ideas and we use one of them. Isn't that awesome? Yeah,
that is also awesome and you need that. But for me,
it's the smaller day to day things that are the
more important ones.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, like anything in life, the little things are the
most important because they add up. I think what you're
saying is spot on, and I want to go over
some of the things that leaders can do to make
sure this happens and the causes of maybe why it
doesn't happen in a lot of space. But first, let's
get up toward from all our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
All right, if you're leader of people.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And you're trying to influence this positively on your team,
you have to start with the knowledge that the reason
why it's easier to happen in the larger spaces, like
Lorenzo was describing, is because those spaces are prescribed to
you by your organization, and there's an agreed upon problem
that needs to be solved from people in a leadership role.
(06:05):
But the people who are executing may not be bought
in that it's a problem to solve, like it's a
problem that's been articulated to them. They have a responsibility
to solve it. But if they don't actually see it
as a problem, then they're not going to be as
invested in coming up with a solution to it as
you might be. The person who's in charge of leading
the team as a whole. But when a person brings
(06:26):
up something to you one on one. By definition, that
means it's a pain point for them, or it's a
problem that they see, or it's a problem that they
want to try to solve, and they have kind of
spearheaded the conversation because they want to make a contribution
to the organization as a whole. But they also are
trying to just solve a problem that they've experienced, and
(06:49):
the buy in for getting it fixed is far higher
when you have both of those things at play as
opposed to just one of them, And so it's important
from a leadership perspective that you validate that. The reason
why it's hard to validate that is because, let's be honest,
a lot of these things that are brought to the
attention of leaders by employees are not great ideas. All right,
(07:12):
let's be blunt about it. They're not great ideas. But
why are they not great ideas? They're not great ideas
because the person who brought the idea up to you
doesn't have the knowledge, or the context, or a broader
set of data available to them that would have allowed
them to inform their own decision on the right way forward.
So maybe it's a it's got a seed or a
(07:33):
kernel of a good idea in it and it needs
to go a different route or kind of be you know,
kind of cooked for a while before it's good, or
it could be just a totally off base idea because
of a lack of context or knowledge. The way to
make sure that you are not spending your days coming
through one hundred bad ideas for one good one and
allowing employees to kind of disengage in the process because
(07:54):
they don't feel like they're being heard. The way to
do this is to arm employees with the data they
need to make sure that the things they're bringing up
are better. That's to give them the transparency needed, the
information they need. Is to invite them into the conversation
as much as you can when you're talking about the business.
To not assume that because maybe this thing doesn't impact them,
(08:16):
they don't need to know about it. No, let them
in if they're showing a thirst for that information at all.
Invite them into the conversation and have that with them.
Arm them with the information and they will self select
to not bring up things that are not good ideas
that they may have brought up before.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
The number of times.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I can think back to ideas I brought up to
leaders in my career where I look back and I
cringe on it now, thinking what was I thinking to
bring that up?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Well, in the moment, it.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Seemed like a good idea, but it seemed like a
good idea because I didn't know anything, and now that
I do, I would have brought it up differently or
not at all. So give your people the knowledge they
need to make better decisions, and you will find over
time the ideas get curated better for you, and you
will have a an easier time making your employees feel heard.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Then feel like you're.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Constantly saying, oh, my gosh, ho I tell this person
that their idea is you know, not good. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
It was making me laugh a little bit because I
was thinking the same thing of like time to my
career where I probably made comments, had an idea suggest
this strategy, and looking back on it, I was like, oh,
that was just just trash because I didn't have the perspective,
like I had no right, Like I just I didn't
know any better, and I was being driven by like
kind of short term thinking, immediate need, elements of emotion,
(09:31):
probably pieces of ego, like so many things that are
just like, this is my now, this is what I
want to do, this is my thoughts on this and
not thinking you know, as you grow in your career,
with maturity, with larger you know perspective and partnerships and
things like that, I still have that same energy from
time to time on certain things, but they are a
(09:52):
lot more informed, and I take the time to make
sure that my position is such that it makes sense
and that I understand the larger you know approaches or
strategies or reasons. Before that I can still not like it.
I can still have a different opinion. I can still
have a different idea, but I think they're much more
(10:13):
informed over time. So I love that you called that
out because I think it's not about It's not about
eliminating the bad ideas. It's about creating a space for
all ideas and having that be something that people get
used to, and then over time they will refine their
ideas and you can help them move faster if you
(10:34):
take the time to walk through the idea, ask questions,
be curious, provide insight or context, allow them the space
to change their mind or adjust or think about things differently.
But yeah, I think that it's way more important that
you make sure that you have those spaces for people
and for your teams, knowing and anticipating that there will
(10:57):
be some bad ideas, not again not out of intent,
but just out of lack of of perspective, understanding, you know,
experience knowledge, that type of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, it's the example that you gave where you said,
you know, the the bad ideas that you cringe back
on on looking back on were rooted in a lot
of other things like there. You know, there was a
little bit of ego in there, there was a lack
of context, a lack of knowledge about the situation. But
there's one thing you didn't mention that was also in
there too, and that was a desire to improve things.
(11:29):
So with even with all of those things that you mentioned,
if you didn't give a crap about the business, you
still wouldn't brought up the.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Idea, right you.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
You also have to have with you a genuine care
about how the business needs are, about the business needs,
about how the outcomes are. You care about that, and
it could be it could be self serving. You could
care about the business outcomes because you're trying to get promoted.
That's fine, but in general, you're you're making suggestions to
(11:57):
try to make the business better, and and the worst
thing that you can do as a leader is be
so preoccupied with making sure that you don't have to
shoot down terrible ideas all the time that you go
the route of making employees feel unheart altogether, and then
you stop getting the ideas, you stop getting the engagement
(12:18):
from the employees to try to make the organization better,
because once you've lost that, it's almost impossible to get
it back from an individual employee. You almost have to
find a way to you know, cut bait and replace
the team or replace the individual. The the buy into
getting it done is what needs to be preserved and protected,
and the way to do that long term is to
(12:40):
arm them with information and make sure that you give
them the tools they need to refine their visions before
they bring them to you. And then it will be
far less detrimental when you can give more context because
it's not coming from a perspective of your ideas is
coming from respective of Wow, that was I love that
(13:03):
you care about the business. That's a fantastic idea. You know,
I had the exact same thought in my mind last
year and and someone told me this thing too, and
I went, oh, I get give them that information.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Give it to them in advance, and you will.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
You will make them more prepared to kind of to
kind of refine their own experience and also feel heard.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Thank you for joining us on this episode.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
As we complete this series on little known or lesser
known causes of a decline and employee engagement.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
We'll see you next Thursday for our next episode. You
have a good day.
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