When team members disengage, most leaders instinctively tighten the reins. It’s an understandable response, but rarely an effective one. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that 70% of the variance in team engagement stems directly from the manager.
How we respond to disengagement doesn’t affect just one person; it shapes the engagement of everyone around them. Research on Threat Rigidity Theory helps explain the instinct to assert control. When we perceive a threat, whether that’s pressure to deliver, resistance to change, or risk of failure, we naturally narrow our focus and become more directive.
The problem is that greater control creates compliance, not commitment.
What controlling disengaged employees looks like in practice
Sam was head of retail operations, with six area managers reporting to her. The business was in deep transformation: new systems, new targets, and new ways of working rolling out almost every month. Most of her team were finding their footing in it, except for one member. In team meetings, he’d challenged nearly every change, not by asking questions like some of her more engaged leaders did, but by undercutting it before it had a chance. Sam noticed the eye-rolling and the cutting remarks about head office. He’d respond to a new initiative announcement with heavy silence, and speak about the company’s direction with a kind of weary sarcasm.
He hit his targets. But he’d stopped doing anything beyond them. He used to flag problems before they became problems, push back on Sam directly when something didn’t make sense, and put his hand up for the harder rollouts. Now he did exactly what he was asked to do and no more.
Sam had already addressed the behavior with him in a one-on-one conversation. She made it clear that the negative comments, public resistance, and lack of support for the changes were not what she expected from one of her senior leaders. He acknowledged the feedback, but his behavior didn’t change. By the time she brought it to a coaching session, she’d decided what came next. She was going to put him on a formal performance plan, document every instance, and tell him plainly that his attitude was no longer compatible with his role. If it didn’t change, she’d start looking at whether he should still be on her leadership team at all.
What Sam was doing is what many leaders are tempted to do when our team members aren’t as engaged as we’d like them to be.
Control creates compliance, not commitment
Team members might comply because they have to, but compliance isn’t the same as commitment. They’re less likely to be genuinely invested in the change, take ownership, or contribute beyond what their role requires. Research also tells us that autonomy is one of our three basic psychological needs. According to Self-Determination Theory , when team members feel controlled rather than involved, their intrinsic motivation, sense of ownership, and willingness to contribute decline.
Perhaps most importantly, a controlling approach focuses on the behavior rather than what’s driving it. Disengagement is often a symptom of something deeper: uncertainty, a loss of confidence, feeling unheard, disagreement with the direction, or simply not understanding the “why.” Asserting control can suppress the behavior for a while, but it rarely resolves the underlying issue.
Seek understanding before taking action
Now, the answer isn’t to lower your expectations or avoid holding your team members accountable. After all, accountability still matters. But before deciding what action to take, effective leaders pause long enough to understand what’s really happening.
One of the most powerful shifts you can make is to become compassionately curious. That means being willing to seek to understand before seeking to solve. It’s choosing empathy over assumption and recognizing that there is usually more to someone’s behavior than you can see on the surface. Instead of assuming a team member is simply resistant, difficult, or no longer committed, get curious about what may have changed. What are they experiencing? What concerns do they have? What might they be seeing that you’re not?
Create ownership together
Once you understand what’s really happening, you can shift from trying to control the outcome to creating it together. Rather than prescribing the solution, involve your team member in finding it. Ask questions like:
What do you think needs to happen from here?
What support would help?
What are we both willing to commit to?
When team members help shape the solution, they’re far more likely to take ownership of it. That doesn’t mean every conversation ends with the outcome you’d hoped for. Sometimes behavior doesn’t change, and you still need to introduce accountability measures. But when you’ve first taken the time to understand what’s driving the behavior, you can make decisions that are better informed and more respectful. This is also far more likely to preserve trust.
The next time one of your team members appears to have checked out, resist the temptation to manage harder. Get curious first. Work on solving the problem together.
Because the behavior you’re trying to change is rarely the real problem.
