Bernadette BoasExecutive Leadership Coach, Trainer and Speaker, Ball of Fire Coaching · Become the Leader Everyone Wants to Follow and No One Can Overlook.

Unlock Workplace Engagement: Define Winning for Your Team

29 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this presentation, the speaker highlights a stark gap between employee effort and engagement, noting that while 95% of workers strive to do their best, only 27% feel truly engaged. The core issue identified is the lack of a clear definition of "winning"—specific outcome expectations that give employees agency and ownership over their work. As organizations adopt artificial intelligence to automate tasks, the speaker warns that AI can amplify existing organizational "fog," a metaphor for unclear goals and processes, making it harder for teams to navigate and achieve results. The speaker emphasizes that without defined winning criteria, the increased speed and scale brought by AI will exacerbate confusion, posing a significant challenge for workplace engagement.

Chapters

I believe 95% of the people come to work every day trying to do the absolute best job they can. And yet 27% of the workforce feels engaged. So what's the breakdown of that? I would argue that it is a matter of we haven't defined what winning looks like. And we haven't defined what winning looks like in terms of outcomes, which gives people the agency to own their stuff. And we're now entering this world with artificial intelligence. Where we are starting to think about how do we automate tasks. But when AI hits fog, it scales the fog. In most of our organizations, from my view at least, they're just sitting in fog. It's San Francisco Bay on a Saturday morning. You're not getting the plane to land. You can't see the runway. And yet now we're using speed and scale at an increased clip. I think it's going to be challenging.