Hey Reader,

I was reading through Gallup’s latest employee engagement data recently, and one number hit me like a ton of bricks:

Only 20% of workers are engaged at work.

Jaw-dropping.

At first, I found that surprising. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized disengagement probably doesn’t look the way most of us imagine it does.

When we think about someone being disengaged at work, we usually picture someone who’s visibly checked out. Someone missing deadlines, contributing the bare minimum, or clearly unhappy being there.

But I don’t think that’s always true.

Over the course of my career, I’ve had periods where I was doing great work and still felt less connected to it than I used to. The work was getting done. The results were there. From the outside, everything probably looked fine.

Internally, though, something had shifted.

As I reflected on that more, I realized I’ve had versions of this conversation with a surprising number of senior leaders over the years. A lot of us spend years chasing goals that genuinely mattered to us at the time. Promotions, titles, bigger opportunities, more responsibility. And then one day, we hit a point where the external markers still look successful, but they don’t carry the same feeling they used to.

That doesn’t mean we stop caring.

If anything, I think high performers are often the best at continuing to function even when that connection starts fading a little. We still show up. We still deliver. We still know how to sound motivated in meetings.

And I think our teams learn to do the same thing.

That’s part of why engagement is harder to measure than most organizations realize.

We run surveys, look at retention numbers, and try to understand how people are feeling…through the data available to us. Sometimes those numbers genuinely are helpful. But they’re also shaped by how safe people feel being honest.

Most people know how to soften what they really think in a workplace environment. They know how to avoid sounding negative or difficult. Even anonymous surveys can feel risky when you’re working closely with the same group of people every day.

So sometimes the data tells us people are “fine” when what it’s actually telling us is that people know how to adapt.

Which brings me to the part I’ve been thinking about the most lately:

If leaders are quietly experiencing this kind of disconnect themselves, there’s a good chance members of our teams are too.

They’re not lazy. They still care. But work feels different when someone loses their sense of connection to what they’re doing.

I don’t think there’s a perfect fix for this, but I d think curiosity matters more than we sometimes realize.

Not just checking in on deliverables or progress updates, but genuinely understanding how someone is experiencing their work right now. What’s energizing them. What’s draining them. Where they feel challenged. Where they feel stuck.

Some of the most useful conversations I’ve had in one-on-ones have come from asking questions like:

• What’s something you’re proud of that we haven’t talked about yet?
• Where do you feel like you’re adding the most value right now?
• Is there anything creating stress that I should know about?
• Am I supporting you in the right way?

Those conversations don’t solve everything overnight, but they do create space for honesty. And I think that matters more than most engagement surveys ever will.

We may not be able to change that 20% number globally, but we can still influence the experience people have inside our own teams.

And that feels worth paying attention to.

When do you feel most connected to your work? Hit reply and let me know. I read every message.