104: Feeling Disengaged at Work?

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Reality Based Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, CEO of Reality Based Leadership. I wanted to create an episode for whenever you're feeling disengaged at work. What sparked this episode is, again, I saw the stat from Gallup that just Just stabs me in the heart each year. And it was that nearly 70% of America is disengaged at work. 70%. That means only 30% are really leaning in, feeling fulfilled by, getting enjoyment of, feeling like they're contributing to their work. 30%. And then the one that gets me even worse is that 19% are actively disengaged in that data. That means 19%, as I looked at the definition, they aren't just going through the motions. They are basically sabotaging the efforts. They aren't for the company. They're definitely working against it, like trying to sabotage it. So these stats, I get thinking about times that I've been disengaged and how that felt, or when I was going through the motions, you know, it just felt like nothing matters and things like that. And it just is not a good way into long-term happiness. It really isn't. So hearing those stats, I'm hoping this group of listeners, we're often not disengaged at work because you're leaning in, trying to grow your leadership. You're trying to support your teams. You're trying to take the challenges in front of you, although unpreferred at times, and trying to make a contribution and stay connected. And so I don't know if this episode's really for, for all of us here, but maybe it's something that you can share. Maybe it's for someone that's coming to you consistently frustrated. You've built a relationship, you've loved them up. And you can just feel they need that, maybe not directly from you, but from a great podcast, that nudge to say, you can lean back in, you can get involved here. Don't miss what you're supposed to learn from this experience to be able to reengage in a challenging circumstance or to peacefully go to another opportunity. And I'm going to finish with that today is why this episode's so important is I want to give my most quick, simple, effective techniques that I use when I'm tempted to disengage or when there is drama that I feel, feel is unsolvable, unfigureoutable. We just can't get people on the same page. We're just talking in circles. What do I do to still stay engaged? And so to start off this episode, I want to break down my version through reality-based leadership of where disengagement happens. One of my core beliefs is that engagement at work is a choice. It's your choice. It's your team's choice. Now, as a leader, I can do things that disengage you. I can, you know, be pretty mean at times. I could trip you as you're walking down the office. I could, you know, purposely not involve you in a lot of meetings or things like that, that really horrible stuff, um, that can lead for someone to disengage, but even then a high accountable Could say, given all of that, how do I still engage? Or bigger question is, why do I continue to engage if that is consistent leadership or the culture at the organization I'm in? So hopefully that's not the case because then a high accountable would just go engage somewhere else and not stay in that toxic situation. So taking that aside, I want to look at the idea of where disengagement happens. And it really, the workplace in a weird way is designed at times to tempt you to disengage. Because when the going gets tough, we're asked to do more with less. Deadlines are coming. There's more change than ever. There's disruption. It's harder to communicate. We got people working in hybrid environments. There's ambiguity. There is, you know, I think I already said competing priorities, like the going's getting tough and it's feeling a bit dicey. You're feeling stressed. All of us, even if we're good at this stuff, we fantasize about quitting. We fantasize about winning the lottery. We fantasize about the Yacht in Bermuda. We don't even care if it floats. We're just going to go there. And for a moment, at least, we're like, there has got to be other good things to do. Grass is greener than what I'm currently needing to do in this situation. And when we disengage, it doesn't feel very good because it's not a proud moment because no one loves to go home and say, oh my gosh, hey, you know, honey, or if you're with a roommate, like, how was work today? None of us feel great to say, you know what? I completely slacked off. I deleted emails 30 at a time and I just, I call it bankruptcy. I'm just going to give it a go the next week. Like I just totally didn't engage, didn't contribute. And I just, you know, zoned out. Like none of us feel proud because we crave impact and we want to make a difference in the world. It's all of us as humans. Even if we lie to ourselves and say, you know what, it's just a job for me. It's just, you know, it is what it is. We actually deep down all want to make a difference. in the world, to our clients, customers, patients, um, to our colleagues. And we want connection, connection to something a little bit bigger than ourselves. When we disengage and we quit mentally and we step down, we step out of that and it doesn't feel very good. So what we often do is go into BMW driving. I call it bitching, moaning, and whining. And we usually point to all the circumstances or other people for why it's okay to disengage. We justify it, why it's okay to remain disengaged, because who could step in and have impact given this hot mess? And then when it gets really bad, we start to wish for a different reality. We think, wow, I would be so happy and successful and engaged in my career if only I had completely different company, completely different leaders, leaders that actually gave a darn. If I had a completely different team that wasn't so incompetent, if there was less change, if I was consulted on all that change, If only reality were completely different, I would be awesome and engaged. And the average organization gets into this pickle because they try and perfect reality for every single person on a, in an organization. They can't do it. And that gives people more gas for their BMWs, which leads to more justification for quitting. And this is not just something I dreamed up in the middle of the night. This is the stress cycle in psychology. And you heard, as I said there, that a lot of leaders Or organizations led by leaders, those leaders came up the ranks as doers. So they see that list and they see people suffering or not being able to engage because of all the circumstances. And so then they grab that list because they're doers and they try and perfect reality and change those circumstances, but there's too many to fix and they're different for everyone. And so it is an illusion and that creates this vicious cycle that You know, looking at Gallup's data, I think for the last 15 years, it's been either 68 to 71% of America has been disengaged. So it's clear that something just isn't working in our approach. And so that's where I often look at this other side instead of trying to perfect and change reality. And I'll be honest, as leaders, there are certain barriers we want to remove eventually, but I want to first check, have we Updated our mindset? Has our team modernized their approach? Have they looked at several different ways to address some of these challenges in their mindset before we go out and just try and perfect reality? So it's a subtle reflection and call to greatness. Have we evolved ourselves to be more successful in this current reality? And then maybe reality doesn't need that much fixing. Or if we're at the top of that evolution and we're really leaning in and reality-based, we're ditching the drama. We're using advanced skills to find next right action. Given the circumstances, all the stuff we talk about on this podcast, well, then there actually might be a few parts in our reality we need to change. Maybe we need to update a system, change a process, you know, hire someone else, get a different partner. There might be some reality that needs changing, but we got to first check to see if we're at the top of our training skillset and licensure. And so that's where disengagement starts, is where that going gets tough. You'll feel it in your head as headaches or in your neck or in your chest. It's that stress. And that's where we're tempted to disengage. And I often talk about it as if things are going perfect, you really don't need a lot of what I talk about on this podcast because you're in flow state. Your teams are in flow state. You're clear on what to do. You know, there's not much drama ditching needed when you're in, when things are going good, when you're in the zone. Where disengagement happens is when people start to face things coming at them that create an unpreferred reality. It's a disruption to your day. It's something that's highly inefficient. It's when you have to use the legacy system and you know there's a better one available, but we can't invest in it yet. It is those annoyances where people aren't seeing eye to eye when you are facing competing priorities and it feels like people are working absolutely against you in your own organization. And those are unpreferred realities. And that's where the going gets tough. People either do one of two things. They argue with the unpreferred reality and they say, ain't it awful? Things shouldn't be this way. Who designs teams to be like this? This is absolutely ridiculous. Or in the worst cases, I hear, well, this is not how the world should work and this is not how an organization should function. And sometimes you might even be right in that case, but when you're right, we get righteous, it shuts all learning, and then we get into reasons, stories, and excuses, and you'll be totally justified. And why that unpreferred reality is holding you back, but there's still reasons, stories, and excuses. There's no progress there. So here's the magic is given that unpreferred reality, what would great look like? And I find this question, what would great look like when you're in a messy situation or it's not ideal or it's an unpreferred reality? A lot of us can say, well, here's how the process should be, or here's how the communication channel should work. Or here's what clear would look like in a well-functioning team. And we can tell someone that we're like, they would communicate, they would set priorities, they would have goals clear, they would have measurement of those goals, they would have roles clear, they would have good processes to get there that everyone's following. Like we can just lay out what would great look like, but then we use that as the standard in which to judge others and what other people should be doing. Instead of That's the ideal. I can see it. So that's a reference point. Now, can I be the bridge builder from unpreferred reality and where we're not there yet, where we're at to where we want to be? And that's what I call the space for impact. And I often joke that as a leader on your team, when you're out there in the workplace, this space of impact is sometimes so small, you got to turn sideways, suck your gut in and shimmy in there. But that's the space for leadership. That's the space where we add value. And most people just stay out arguing with the unpreferred reality, wishing for a different future, but taking no action. And they wonder why they're disengaged. That is a recipe for disengagement. But when you're finding the space for impact between those 2 spaces, and you're taking action out of that next right action, you can't not be engaged even in a messy circumstance. And that's why I often say, Engagement is a choice. And that's why the Gallup stats hurt me so much that people are choosing disengagement. And so I want to talk about finding that space for impact. I often have 2 boxes on the outside. That's the unpreferred reality argument, the wishing for a different future. And then I just put a small space and I make it whatever color you want. I like yellow recently because it's a little happier. It's a little more hopeful. I call it finding the yellow, the space of impact. That's where if our mind is there, our thoughts are there on how we can go from an unpreferred reality to a different future, we can engage and help the situation. And if you're operating most of your week out of the yellow, you're going to be engaged at work. And the best is as you engage more and more, you can figure out as you lean into it, whether this is the place for you. That's the ultimate benefit is that as you actually don't go through the motions, And kind of play defense and just lay back and just say, it's all right. Everyone's disengaged. That's what people do. It's just a paycheck. You actually figure out if this is the place for you, the environment for you, the container for your skills and your unique abilities. And if it isn't, I had a mentor of mine that I'll appreciate forever. They said, Alex, if you can't get into something, get out of it. And if you can't get out of it, get into it. But don't spend your day and your career on the fence on either of those. And what I call the third option is like half in, half out, not going to try. And that was so powerful. And I was an ex-athlete. I didn't love doing sprints at the end of practice for like 30 minutes, but I had to trick myself. And maybe this is a trauma response, but I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go all in and be like, I love sprinting. You know, we were born to run. And some of my teammates thought it was annoying, but that was my way to get through suicides. And if you don't know what suicides are, just look them up and you'll never want to do them in your life, but it's a lot of running. And I found that just that going all in made it actually somewhat enjoyable. It wasn't so bad, but when you're going half in, half out, going to lead to disengagement, going to lead to a ton of suffering at work. And that's the unfortunate thing is I think a lot of the workforce is in that space. And it leads to some other problems, both at work and at home when we're not working through that process to find the right place for us to work. So with all that setup, I get it. I guess sometimes you can't be all in, fully engaged all the time. You know, there's, there's, there's phases of life. There's seasons of life. Um, there's times we're handling other things on one side, but the idea is in general, are we able to choose engagement each and every day? And I promise you'll get better results and be a lot happier in what you do. So let's get 5 techniques out there. The first one, I call it in that model, the unpreferred reality to the ideal future. I call it given that, and I know I talk about this a lot, but just, I want to reiterate how important this idea of given that, what would great look like and what could I do to help us get there? And I like to say in the short term, a few easy steps, Maybe in the midterm, maybe it's looking at a process that needs to be improved or a pattern that's coming up that annoys a lot of us in the team. And then the long-term is how do we submit this issue? Because it is a bigger issue into continuous improvement. And so people come to me all the time and they're like, well, here is all of the mess around this challenge. And they want us to be over here. They want us to be fully fluent on the system by the end of the month, or they want us to be Full compliance on this new workflow, um, in 2 weeks, but here's why we can't. And people feel like they're adding value by just giving all the reasons why we can't get there. That's actually good information if you have this technique called given that. So I like to validate that, you know, thanks for bringing that up. And I got a couple of things to add to that, that this is what will be tough about that. Um, and we got to think through this. I want to validate that there is a lot to think about there. But given this unpreferred reality, we see what great would look like. Let's spend the next 45 minutes finding each of our action steps to get there. Like, what could we do to help? What's next right action? And that is one given that with a question into how can we help? It wraps the unpreferred reality and acknowledges it. And in one swoop puts us right into the yellow, the hopeful place of impact. If our team goes there, And doesn't default back, which the ego will love to do, default back into venting and complaining and arguing with reality, which by the way, I say when you argue with reality, you'll lose, but only 100% of the time. That's why this technique is so effective because it keeps us from arguing with reality and wishing for a different future. Now we're in the space of impact. And if people go there, and I call it toggle up into their high self and welcome what might come through self-reflection, there's going to be 3 or 4 answers of what we could do with our choices to impact it. If you take action on that, by definition, you're engaged in fixing the problem. Now, will it fully get fixed right away? Probably not, but you are on your path. And this starts to build energy. There is a connection to some sort of source. Depends what you believe in, whether you're religious or not. There is some sort of source when you ditch the drama and you actually lean in and engage wholeheartedly with given that, that there's unlimited ideas for how we could, there's increased, increased collaboration, innovation, and you'll have a bunch of energy. It's this boundless access to energy. So I love given that unpreferred reality, what would great look like? How can we get there? Now, number 2, I sometimes realize that if I'm not clean in my thinking, I take next wrong action. And sometimes I look like I'm taking a lot of steps and I'm moving fast and I'm busy, but it's next wrong action on top of next wrong action on top of next wrong action. And you have a bigger mess to clean up after. So one of my favorite techniques that when I'm in my most reality-based self and I feel like I'm working my program the best is I, whenever I'm stressed or facing an unpreferred reality, I first write down everything I'm thinking and believing about the situation. Who's not doing their part, what they're probably thinking, why I'm frustrated, why I'm annoyed. I get my feelings in there because I want to work on feeling my feelings and understanding those feelings. But I write even the, you know, when I'm really mad, there might even be a curse word in there. Like, I'm so annoyed and I'm not going to say it on this podcast, but just get everything in your head on paper because you're thinking it. It's going to come out in your feelings and your actions if you don't clean it up. And it comes out as our lips up a little bit. As our body language. It comes out in our breath, in our tone. If you're not looking at that stressful story you're believing. So I call it edit your story, get all the story down there. It could be a page long about the problem. And then I just get down to the facts. And boy, is that fascinating? Because when you get down to what do you know for sure? And you had to cross out assignments, emotive judgments in those stories. I'm like, this always happens to me every Friday. And it's like, always as I get clear, it's like, this has happened 3 times in the last year. Now, maybe that's still too much, but it's not always, it's not so charged. And when I'm down to the facts, it's so wild because next right action becomes obvious. I call it stop judging, get down to what do we know for sure? And then it's easy to start helping. It is a powerful tool. It's called editing your story, separating out facts from fiction, from now and not now. And I find when you're in the not now, the story, the drama, there's no next right action. It's unfigureoutable. It's unsolvable. But when you're down to the facts, it becomes clear what to do next. Now, it doesn't mean that those facts that remain, there might be a hard conversation still. I might need to bring something up that I've been avoiding. I might need to address a business issue that people say when you bring it up, they're like, oh, that particular thing. We just don't talk about that. That's just one of those things that you could be new here. You, yep, we get it. Don't bring it up. It might be that we need to bring that up, but it'll be from a place of clarity and I can trust that clarity. Now, back to engagement. If you're taking action from an edited story and you're taking, how can I help, 3 steps there, you're engaged. You're engaged in trying to learn more or fix the problem. That's why, again, engagement's a choice. Let's go to number 3. I call this resiliency buddies or resiliency boards. These are super simple. Whenever I run into an obstacle, I don't try and figure it out myself. Well, I do for a little bit, but then I don't stay there very long. Because if I notice that I am closing off the world and I'm canceling appointments for me to try and think through it and figure it out, I'm getting really small with my world. I realize this isn't resilience. And this is going to lead to giving up and disengagement. This is persistence, grit, and it's the old school resilience where I have to be the smartest one and figure it out myself. That's not how the world works anymore. Whenever I'm stuck, I get really clear on what I'm stuck on. And then I start to Google or ChatGPT my people. Meaning I am putting that online on LinkedIn to people that I have connected with often that are business owners. They're leaders. They've been clients of mine practicing reality-based leadership for a while. And I put out and say, hey, we're stuck on this challenge. What's your one best tip to overcome this obstacle? As you're listening to this podcast, please write down somewhere or put it in your phone, or just think about what's your one best tip to overcome this barrier. Now, when you ask, it's a psychology thing. What's your one best tip? Human beings love giving advice. They love giving advice. Now, if you say, hey, how would you solve this? Too much. I don't got time for that. People are busy. They got their own problems they're dealing with. But if you say, hey, what's your one best tip to go through this? People often jump in and give you a podcast, an article. Here's a book. Here's a phone number. Call this person. I mean, we just, before this podcast, I met someone at the studio I'm at and I said, here's what I'm trying to do. Get more connected in this area with other business leaders. Boom. He goes, I already know 30 people to connect you with. Let's just exchange details. It just happened there. You just be courageous and put it out there and then say, what's your one best tip? Boom. That's resilience. And then you just work the list. If you're working that list after you crowdsource and ask for your one best tip, you're engaged and you're working on resilience. You're overcoming obstacles or you're learning more about where you're stuck. Another great technique. Number 4, similar to what I covered before, but I've noticed that a lot of disengagement comes when we're trying to execute something, or maybe your company's announced a change or something that's going to be a different workflow. And someone on the team, maybe devil's advocate, maybe someone with a lot of experience, or maybe it's you at times, says, well, here's the 7 to 10 to 20 to 50 reasons why that won't work. Why it's a dumb idea, why it's never going to happen. And you see the whole meeting go into this, why it won't work. And then naturally, I mean, I'll be honest, I would disengage. I tend to be high accountable. So what I would do, and this isn't good either, I would just say, I'm not getting involved with that hot mess with Bill and his team. And I'll just figure it out later without them. You know, we'll just try and figure it out, muscle through, and then get righteous and be mad that they never participate as we want them to. You know, that's my righteous, high accountable, you know, which is actually drama approach to that. But someone just starts to list out all the reasons why it won't work. I love to reengage, to say, let's keep listing those. I'm going to draw a box and you can do this on your hand, piece of paper. If you have a marker board, I draw a box and I say, thank you for sharing all these reasons why we can't. Specific. And I just write, there could be on each side of that box, imagine there's 10 reasons we can't on each side. And then I just clarify, what's our goal? Our goal is to be fully compliant on the new system by in a month. That's what the organization needs. And we do have these real constraints. So I want to be mindful of them. These are all great ideas to bring up. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. So now, given these constraints and given our goals to be fully compliant, How could we? Let's think inside the box. I know some of you that have been around me a long time, you know, I'm— it's probably my favorite tool and it absorbs the unpreferred reality. It makes it visual. So it's out beyond the ego. And we've listed and heard everybody's fears, their constraints, their challenges, their things that we might lose in this process that will keep us from our goal. But now it's out in front of us. Any idea in that box? Is a way to make it happen given what's going on. And this, when you call people to that or bring yourself to that, if you take action from inside that box, you're engaged by definition. So I love inside the box thinking, given that, using the same technique, but drawing it out in the box. Now, the last one is probably one of my most direct favorites that you can use with teams that are experiencing disengagement. And this happens a lot with groups that actually take a formal engagement survey that we work with. And what we find is like, they're disengaged in certain elements. And so what we would do is if you imagine 3 sheets of paper on the first sheet of paper, the question is back to the same question I always bring up. What would great look like if you were going to be engaged for years, not want to leave, tell everyone you know that this is the place to work so we can help with our retention problem and our hiring problem because we're trying to grow. Like imagine this was the perfect workplace. That, um, you know, you were going to engage for a long time at? What would great look like? So we took some of your engagement survey responses. We heard those loud and clear. We listed those on the first sheet of paper, better communication, more transparency, you know, all the way down. What else would you add? That's what it'd take to be fully engaged. What would great look like? And then the other sheets of paper are visual for a reason. The second sheet of paper, after we have that long list, is what are you willing to do to get that? Not throwing it back in your face, but what would you be willing to do to engage and lean into that? And what's funny is when you ask that question for personal accountability, you're introducing shared accountability for your own engagement. One of my biggest struggles with a lot of approaches to engagement is we ask as leaders, what would it take for you to engage? Team members give us a list and they basically say, I'll wait for it when you're back. You go out and fix the list and then we'll be engaged. And I've seen so many groups go on this journey where they go out and fix the list. They do a pretty good job. And they say, now, are you engaged? And the team goes, funny enough you ask, here's another list. And that's why we often say engagement without shared accountability creates entitlement. Have you noticed? So I want that second list to have ideas for how, if you want to improve communication, maybe on the second list, I've seen this a lot. Maybe you'd be willing to read your email when change announcements come out. I mean, imagine that you have change communications coming out on email from internally, but then people aren't reading the internal emails. So how are they supposed to know about the changes and they want better communication if they're not reading their email? And so that would be a nice thing to put on the second list, given you want more communication around change. And then the third list is really important, especially as leaders. I'm not just throwing back engagement. Harshly into your face. I'm trying to get that shared accountability. So then the third list is now that we're all leaning in together, engaging as a team towards what would great look like. Now, how can I support that? What specific barriers could I remove on sheet 3? So for example, that better communication around change example, well, they, this organization I was working with had emails coming out. They had pictographs. They had created visuals. They had a podcast about change. They had all hands. They were doing all these things to announce the changes happening. And when I said, what would you be willing to do to get that? Everybody was quiet and someone raised their hand and said, I guess I'd be willing to read my email. They were a little bit shy because they were just avoiding these changes. So now the third sheet was, well, that email comes out on Monday. It's swamped on Monday. Can we move it to Tuesday? And this is where it's effective for that leadership team to go and move the email to Tuesday, change reality and circumstances, given we have shared accountability to actually read it. And so I love this. I call it accountable engaged action planning tool that you can use with your teams. And I'll link it in the episode notes of the podcast as the last way to say, team, I'd love that engaging workplace in sheet 1. I'm trying to create that. Now, how can you lean in with us? And then how can I support that? This creates a beautiful relationship towards engagement. So that gives you 5 ways if you're feeling disengaged or if your team is to share this with them and say, let's use some of these techniques. So we know fully at our core that engagement is always our choice. And it's not just solely to better improve your organization. I really bring this up because it's about your own happiness. I, in my career, have had a moment where I was showing up to work pretty disengaged and almost playing defense all day. And it's not fulfilling. It leads to really low times. And so use these tools, lean in, start engaging. And the best part is, as you try and do that wholeheartedly, you might find another gift that where you're currently at isn't where you're meant to be. So I often say, stay in joy. Engage with these tools or leave in peace. Both are peaceful, but now you'll know. And so good luck with this journey. You can do it. Lean in tomorrow. Let's keep ditching the drama and remember to love people up. And now you got 5 ways to call 'em up to engagement and greatness. I'll see you on the next episode.