A possible List
There are many ways to kill employee engagement. Here’s a possible list:
- Do not communicate about the company’s goals, vision, …
- Never give feedback about what people are doing.
- Check every move people make.
- Put yourself first.
- Don’t apply the team/company rules on yourself.
- Be dishonest. If the truth is inconvenient, hide it.
- Undermine team culture by having many side-conversations that impact others, without letting them know.
- Make people systematically ask for permission before doing something. And decide at will.
- Show no interest whatsoever in who people are.
- Talk negatively about the company.
- Do not care for people’s wellbeing.
- Put people under pressure as motivation technique. Tell them the assignment is decisive for their career, even when it’s not true.
- Leave the office before other people do (every day). Arrive after them.
- Think it’s normal that people put in extra hours (but don’t expect that from yourself).
- Allow incompetent and disengaged people to stay on board.
- Accept that people who do not respect values stay on board as long as they achieve their targets.
- Make arbitrary decisions, don’t bother to explain them.
- Do not allow people to benefit from the company’s flexible work arrangements.
- Tell people they’re useless.
- Don’t show vulnerability, don’t allow others to show vulnerability.
- If others show vulnerability, use that to your own advantage.
- Never make exceptions for certain people.
- Always make exceptions for yourself and some others.
- Change the rules of the game. Make people neurotic.
- Treat people differently without a genuine reason but based on favouritism.
- Hire people who are weaker than you. And keep them weaker.
- Insist on people doing things your way.
- Never surprise people.
- Don’t show respect for your customer.
- Talk negatively about your own boss.
- Never apologize for things you’ve done.
- Never say thank you.
- Be a micro-manager. Intervene in everything. Be omnipresent.
- Measure everything.
- Rank & yank people.
- Don’t have team meetings. Do everything in one-to-one meetings.
- Don’t keep your promises.
- Forbid people to show emotions at work.
- Never talk informally.
- Manage people with to-do-lists.
- Don’t show courage in difficult times.
- Forget birthdays (of some members of your team).
- Hide behind the mandate that you (do not) have.
- Hide things from people.
- Don’t look into their eyes.
- Never help people when they are in trouble.
- Run away from conflicts.
- Say to people you’d like to fire them, but that HR won’t let you.
- Never defend people when they are under attack.
- Abandon people when they are no use to you (anymore).
- Don’t make use of people’s talents and strengths. Look at people like pawns on your chess board.
- Write people emails at night, asking for answers by 8:00 am.
- Keep files on people, and make sure they know this. Keep track of everything they do.
- Blame them publicly. Praise them privately (if ever).
- Think the H in HR stands for Humiliation.
- Think you’re irreplaceable.
- Never ask how people feel. And if you do, sound like a tax auditor knocking at their door.
- Take credit for what they’ve done right.
- Be indifferent to people’s proposals and ideas, unless you can take advantage of them. If not, don’t bother to give feedback.
- Think you have (to have) all the answers, and if you don’t, make them up.
- Ask people to sty late (Hey, you’ve ordered the pizza).
- Build a culture of internal competition (win-lose).
- Don’t trust people. And make sure they know it.
In one word: be a lousy leader.
Empathy
Someone’s engagement cannot be built by a leader alone. But a leader can destroy engagement. People do not leave companies, but they do leave a leader. There is no leader that combines all of the above behaviours. However, all of us might have behaved like this probably without knowing. And we need to be able to see our own behaviour from the point of view of the others. That’s empathy. If leaders can add empathy to our behaviour they will become modest, servant, genuine.
