Actively Disengaged

This autumn I will be stumbling from one leadership related seminar to the next for certain work reasons and the first one took place last week.

While I knew much of the stuff already, for example the Tuckman model describing the phases groups go through – forming, storming, norming, performing, mourning – one model was relatively useful, if only a variation of others.

There is a famous “model” that says that in every company there are 20% achievers, 60% followers and 20% blockers whom you’d like to fire. Another model (somewhere in some Gallup report, I don’t remember which one) calls those three groups, engaged, not engaged and my favorite “actively disengaged”. Ain’t that a cool expression – actively disengaged = they’re complaining, complaining, complaining and are very inventive to find whatever reason to not do their tasks.

So the new “model” I learned, which relates to the engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged categories, speaks of “ability” (a or A) and “motivation” (m or M) – there are four groups here, not only three, and the “dream category” is AM: someone who is highly able and highly motivated too.

Next up are the two imbalanced groups of x) aM – not so able (or experienced) but highly motivated, often ambitious but inexperienced younger employees. And y) there are the Am people – highly able (or experienced) but not so motivated anymore, often your older employees who’ll retire in a few years anyway.

Last but not least is the blocker / actively disengaged group, the “am” group, neither able nor motivated.

Sounds familiar? That’s why I like these models, they indeed do fit to real life.

Models are fine, but in the end, what the heck do you do to get the “am” people to perform? How do you manage to get the actively disengaged people to at least not disturb the rest of the team…? None of the leadership seminars I have gone to so far could give an answer and I am pretty sure that none of the seminars I will be going to in the coming months will have an answer either.

Models generalize in the attempt to help us understand the world around us, but they cannot help with the individual problem of the actively disengaged dude in your team. His or her reasons for being actively disengaged are so diverse that there is no common recipe for how to deal with such people. You have to find a solution for every individual case.

Nevertheless, I shall “enjoy” the bunch of seminars that yet await me and look out for more interesting models describing our daily predicaments at work and elsewhere too