People managers
What should I do when a good employee becomes disengaged?
Act sooner than feels comfortable. The instinct is to wait — to give it another month, to hope they settle, to avoid a conversation that might be awkward. By the time disengagement is obvious, it’s usually been building for a while. The earlier you address it, the more options you have. The conversation is almost always less difficult than the one you’ll eventually have to have if you leave it.
Framework: Brian Hartzer’s Leadership Star · Practices: Care, Context, Clear the Way
Talk to them directly — and listen first
Don’t open the conversation with conclusions. Open with a question: “I’ve noticed you seem less energised lately — is there something going on?” Then stop talking. Let them answer. Disengagement usually has a cause, and the cause is often something the manager doesn’t know about: a role change they haven’t processed, a relationship that’s become difficult, something outside work affecting them, or something about how they’re being managed that they haven’t felt able to raise.
Diagnose before you prescribe
Once they’ve talked, try to understand whether this is about the work itself (they’ve outgrown it, or it no longer plays to their strengths), the context (they’ve lost sight of why it matters), or something you can remove (an obstacle, a relationship, a process). The Five Cs give you a diagnostic: Care — do they feel genuinely supported? Context — do they understand why the work matters? Clarity — do they know what good looks like? Clear the Way — is something blocking them? Celebrate — when did you last recognise them specifically for something?
Be honest about what’s at stake
If the disengagement is serious and the person is valuable, say so directly. “You’re someone I want to keep, and I want to understand what would make this role work better for you.” That’s not a soft conversation — it’s a clear one. People respond to being wanted. They also respond to honesty about consequences, when the time comes for that.
Give the conversation time to land
One conversation rarely fixes disengagement that’s been building for months. Follow up in a week. Check in on what’s changed. If you agreed to remove an obstacle, go remove it. The follow-through matters as much as the conversation.
Where judgment matters
Sometimes disengagement is a signal that the role genuinely isn’t right for the person anymore — and the right answer is a different conversation about what comes next. That’s okay. Keeping someone in a role that’s wrong for them does nobody any good.
Is there someone on your team right now whose energy has shifted — and have you had a direct conversation with them about it?
Start with the book
The Leadership Star sets out all five practices in full, with the reasoning behind each one.