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You are here: Home / Employee Engagement / Employee Engagement: Disengagement as Self-Protection

Employee Engagement: Disengagement as Self-Protection

June 7, 2016 by David Zinger 2 Comments

Let’s view employee disengagement as self-protection.

Larissa Thurlow sent me an image from Brene Brown’s book, Rising Strong. Larissa underlined one short sentence.

We disengage to self-protect.

I got to know Larissa when I was doing some work on employee engagement in Doha, Qatar for the College of the North Atlantic – Qatar. I appreciate her sending this sentence.

Rather than looking at disengagement as laziness, malingering, or apathy I encourage you to think about disengagement as self-protection. What might the employees in your workplace be protecting through disengagement?

Disengagement as Self Protection

Let’s transform disengagement from a punishable offence into a trigger for a conversation. Let’s also increase the level of psychological safety in our organizations so that employees will feel less need to protect and more need to express and engage.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement Tagged With: David Zinger, employee disengagement, Employee Engagement, engaging conversations, self-protection

Comments

  1. Shane Farrugia says

    June 12, 2016 at 11:10 pm

    I like what you mention David about organizations increasing the level of psychological safety. I am interested in exploring this concept further

  2. David Zinger says

    June 13, 2016 at 12:25 am

    Hi Shane: It is so vital. You know an organization has robust psychological safety when they can stop using anonymous surveys.

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David Zinger

Email: david@davidzinger.com
Phone 204 254 2130

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