Apathy about employee engagement erodes performance, but it does something else, too: It sends strong messages about your culture and leadership.
The biggest disruption in commercial integration right now likely isn’t the latest technology or even market uncertainty. It’s the slow, quiet erosion of team engagement.
What’s far more dangerous than losing a project or missing a technical milestone? Your team losing its sense of purpose, unity, and accountability.
Employees Not Engaged? Don’t Look Away
Many integrators are watching the bulk of their employees check out, jump ship, or show up to work disengaged. Instead of figuring out why, they chalk it up to market forces or unrealistic employee expectations.
But this kind of thinking makes engagement seem impossible. As Robert “Cujo” Teschner described a few years ago at BLC 2023, it also sets a low bar for what “good” employee engagement truly is. For example, companies start to congratulate themselves if even half their staff seems invested in the work.
Apathy about employee engagement erodes performance, but it does something else, too: It sends strong messages about your culture and leadership. It tells your team that your company culture is okay with people “just getting by.” And it signals an absence of strong leadership, which means even the best employees will start looking for their next job.
It’s time for honest leaders to ask: “Are employees leaving because of me?”
This level of reflection is where real growth starts. Leaders who are willing to face the truth can fix what’s broken within their teams, rebuild trust, and drive real business change as a result.
What a “Team” Really Is
Teams drift apart when leaders treat them simply as a group of people who have come together to share and work toward a common goal. But it’s much more than that. If everyone thinks the same way and just follows last year’s playbook, stagnation follows quickly.
Building a “team” should be a focused, deliberate effort to gather people with complementary skills, diversity of thought, and a willingness to challenge the norms that breed complacency.
But these elements only work after they’re activated as part of relationship-building and regular interaction. When teams stop spending time together (formally and informally), professional rivalries can take root. Shared experiences, whether they’re “mandatory fun” or project postmortems, keep teams seeing each other as allies rather than adversaries.
Sharing a Purpose Builds Resilient Teams
Having a clear, authentic purpose is also critical to bring your team together—and keep it that way. Sharing a purpose helps align decision-making, prevent mission drift, and build resilience during setbacks.
Here’s a powerful way to test alignment: Can every member of your team articulate their purpose in a way that matches the rest? Ask each team member, anonymously, to define their team’s purpose. If answers diverge widely, unity is missing and effort is being wasted. Lack of alignment breeds frustration and drives disengagement.
When employees see the red thread between daily tasks and a greater mission, even setbacks become opportunities for learning and renewal. For example, if the goal is to improve the client experience, then a missed deadline is not only a setback but also a chance to analyze the process, share lessons learned, and brainstorm new ways to stay on track.
Accountability: A Tool for Team Progress
High-functioning teams talk about values … and they also enforce them with consistency and courage. Integrity, service, and excellence can sound like corporate speak unless they’re drilled into every interaction, decision, and moment of conflict. The true test of values comes when pressure mounts and shortcuts seem tempting.
To put those values into action, teams need clear standards for behavior and performance.
If you want teams to trust each other and work well, you can’t ignore problems or let bad behavior slide. When people know exactly what’s expected, and they see leaders stepping in right away when someone messes up, they feel safer and more willing to help each other.
But, if everyone lets the small things go (minor conflicts or missed deadlines, for example), it’s only a matter of time before “okay” or “good enough” becomes normal. Leaders who keep an eye out for trouble and step in early can keep standards high and teams strong.
Once those standards are set, accountability becomes a shared responsibility, not just a manager’s job. This is what accountability looks like: everyone in the group agreeing to hold each other to those standards. If someone is slacking or acting in a way that hurts the team, it’s up to everyone to speak up and help address it. In the end, a team’s strength depends on how well people keep each other honest, especially when things aren’t going well.
But remember: Accountability can be a double-edged sword when it’s wielded as blame rather than learning. The highest-performing teams use accountability as a way to learn and get better together. Everyone takes responsibility for their part, helps fix problems, and looks for ways to improve.
When something goes off track, they talk openly about what happened so everyone can learn from it without anyone feeling attacked or singled out.
These open debriefs should seek out the root causes of what went wrong, not just immediate fixes. This will help make sure people are more willing to try new things, share honest feedback, and help each other out, even when things don’t go perfectly. The result is a team that’s not just getting things done but always getting better at working together.
5 Practical Tips for Leaders to Build Employee Engagement
Here are some practical ways leaders and teams can build stronger engagement and accountability every day:
- Get honest feedback from your team about what they think the company’s purpose is, and talk it out until everyone is on the same page.
- Regularly evaluate how your teams are organized. Break down barriers between departments or groups (have project managers shadow install teams, for example) to make sure people actually talk to each other about the real problems outside of scheduled meeting times.
- Make sure everyone understands what good behavior looks like on the team. Call things out early when that standard isn’t being met.
- Create team habits that encourage people to share responsibility for results. Celebrate when the whole team gets better, not just when a single person does well.
- Share stories about bouncing back after mistakes or setbacks. Help people understand that being able to recover and improve is just as important as getting things right the first time.
These steps make everyone feel like they’re working toward something together, even on rough days.
