Underperforming Managers Should Stop Focusing on 'Employee Engagement' and Address Something Much Deeper
Experts preach that "engagement" is the solution to management woes. Before you spin your wheels on another engagement strategy, here's what you should focus on instead.
You know how Gallup has been preaching about the employee engagement crisis for over 40 years? Well, can I be totally honest with you? Most leaders think they have an engagement problem.
They don’t.
They have a frustration problem.
As in, frustration keeps piling up with their employees to the point where they become “actively disengaged.” So, what we really have is an “employee frustration problem.”
And until you understand that distinction, nothing you try is going to work.
Because frustration doesn’t show up all at once. It builds quietly over time.
It starts when expectations aren’t clear.
When workloads creep up.
When good work goes unnoticed.
When growth conversations never happen.
When managers are too busy to actually lead.
None of these things feels urgent in the moment. But stack them together, and you get something far more dangerous than disengagement.
You get indifference.
The data is clear: the employee experience is shaped far more by the person you report to every day than by company policies, perks, or even good salaries.
Your manager determines:
whether work feels meaningful or draining
whether growth feels possible or blocked
whether feedback builds confidence or creates anxiety
whether people stay… or start looking
This is why companies that invest heavily in AI, while ignoring manager development, keep losing good people. They’re solving the wrong problem.
Employees ultimately leave because their day-to-day experience feels frustrating as heck. And frustration is almost always tied to management.
What most leaders miss and what actually works
You can’t fix engagement at the organizational level if you haven’t fixed leadership at the team level. That’s where frustration lives. And that’s where culture is actually experienced. That’s where people decide, often subconsciously, whether this is a place they want to stay.
If you’re a CEO or you sit in the C-suite and you want to improve retention, performance, have a great culture, and get results, the most practical move you can make is simple:
Develop better managers.
Not more training for the sake of training. I get tired of having conversations with executives who want better managers but aren’t willing to invest financially in their long-term development. Listen, one-off training or coaching as a band-aid, quick fix for an underperforming manager, is not sustainable. On top of that, many of them will resent their senior leaders if feeling forced to “get coaching with Marcel” or else.
What is sustainable is a leadership development strategy built on the foundational elements of effective people-leadership. The kind that builds a high-performing leadership culture to help you identify, hire, and promote future leaders. The kind of leaders that employees will run through walls for.
If I’m sitting down with an executive in a strategy call, this is what I would tell them (and you) to shoot for. To lessen current frustration at the employee level, focus on how managers:
manage workload and burnout
create growth and career progression
recognize and value people
communicate clearly and provide support
build trust through connection and culture
Because when those five things improve, frustration will drop. Drastically. I guarantee it.
And when frustration drops, everything else starts to move in the right direction.
To go deeper into what’s actually frustrating employees RIGHT NOW—and where leaders are getting it wrong—I developed a Leadership Performance Audit that gives you a full breakdown of the five areas of focus above. You can use it to self-assess and rate yourself against a set of evidence-based questions. Or make copies for all your managers to do the same. It will be eye-opening. But remember: honesty is the best policy on this audit.
👉 Upgrade your subscription below to download the full audit. It’s only $8.00 per month, and I’ll give you tons of resources, tools, and strategies straight out of my work with global leaders. Upgrade below.