#111 - Pull closer not push away!

20 May 26

Disaffected team members are often managed incorrectly. Many leaders instinctively create distance by reducing involvement, limiting responsibility, and excluding disengaged individuals from the core of the team. While this may feel like protecting performance or morale, it often deepens frustration and accelerates disengagement.

Effective leaders understand that isolation rarely improves commitment.

Instead, they work to bring disaffected individuals closer into the team through communication, ownership, trust, and purposeful inclusion whilst still maintaining standards and accountability.

Teams become stronger when leaders focus on reintegration rather than exclusion.

What?

Every team experiences periods where individuals become disconnected from the group.

Sometimes this appears as:

• Reduced enthusiasm,
• Withdrawal from discussions,
• Negative attitudes,
• Minimal effort,
• Resistance to change,
• Declining reliability.

The natural reaction from many leaders is to distance themselves from these individuals.

They may:

• Stop involving them in important conversations,
• Limit opportunities and responsibilities,
• Reduce communication,
• Exclude them from decision-making,
• Keep interactions transactional.

Whilst understandable, this approach often reinforces the very behaviours the leader is trying to correct.

Disengagement grows in environments where people feel isolated, ignored or distrusted.

Why

Teams operate on connection, trust, and shared purpose.

When someone feels pushed to the edge of the group, several things begin to happen:

• Their commitment weakens further,
• Accountability reduces,
• Resentment grows,
• Team cohesion suffers,
• Other team members notice the exclusion,
• Culture slowly deteriorates.

In high-performing environments, this becomes particularly dangerous.

Whether onboard submarines, inside engineering teams, or across corporate organisations, disconnected people create operational friction. Communication suffers, trust declines, and collaboration weakens.

Importantly, many disaffected employees are not inherently difficult people.

Often, disengagement is a symptom of:

• Feeling unheard,
• Lack of recognition,
• Poor leadership communication,
• Unclear expectations,
• Loss of meaning or purpose,
• Feeling disconnected from the wider mission.

When leaders fail to address these underlying causes, they risk losing capable people who may simply need reconnection rather than rejection.

What leaders tolerate and how they respond to disengagement ultimately shapes organisational culture.

How?

Effective leaders focus on reintegration before exclusion. This does not mean lowering standards or tolerating poor behaviour. Accountability remains essential.

However, effective leaders recognise that rebuilding connection is often more productive than creating distance.

Practical ways to do this include:

1. Increase communication - Disengaged people often receive less communication when they actually require more clarity, feedback and dialogue. Frequent, calm, professional conversations help rebuild trust.

2. Give meaningful ownership - Responsibility creates investment. Providing ownership over tasks, projects, or outcomes helps individuals reconnect with purpose and contribution.

3. Listen before judging - Many leaders move too quickly to label individuals as difficult. Taking time to understand frustrations, obstacles, or concerns often reveals solvable issues beneath the surface.

4. Reinforce standards clearly - Bringing someone closer into the team does not mean compromising standards. Clear expectations combined with support creates accountability without alienation.

5. Reconnect them to the mission - People disengage when they no longer see how their role matters. Strong leaders consistently reinforce the importance of the team’s mission and each individual’s contribution towards it.

In Summary

Leadership is not tested when teams are functioning smoothly. It is tested when individuals begin drifting away from the group.

Weak leadership isolates disaffected people and unintentionally deepens the divide. Strong leadership works to pull people back towards the centre of the team before disengagement becomes permanent.

Not every individual can be retained. But leaders should never contribute unnecessarily to isolation when communication, trust, and inclusion may still recover both the individual and the wider team.

People who feel like outsiders eventually behave like outsiders.

The best leaders recognise this early and act before the damage spreads!

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