Engagement Has a Pulse. You Can Feel When It’s Gone.

I once walked into an organization where the engagement survey scores were excellent. High marks across the board. Leadership was celebrating.
But the halls were silent.
People were polite, professional… and emotionally absent.

The truth hit me quickly:
Engagement has a pulse. And this culture had flatlined.

Leaders often confuse engagement with satisfaction. They confuse agreement with alignment. They confuse quiet with commitment. But the people inside the system always know the truth, because engagement is not a metric — it’s an energy.

You can feel engagement when people lean in.
You can feel it in the speed of collaboration, the quality of debate, the courage to challenge an idea, the willingness to carry a little more than the job description requires.

And you can feel disengagement just as fast.
In the shallow conversations.
In the rehearsed answers.
In the eyes that dart toward the door when a meeting runs long.
In the way people shut down, not because they are overwhelmed, but because they are under-inspired.

Engagement is not something you do to people.
It’s something people offer when they trust leadership, believe in the mission, and feel seen, valued, and protected.

When engagement collapses, it’s rarely because of workload.
It’s because the cultural contract has been violated — promises broken, truths avoided, leadership absent, accountability selective.

If you want engagement to rise, fix the culture.
When people feel safe, challenged, and connected, engagement returns.
Not as a survey outcome — but as a heartbeat.

If you want to reignite engagement at its source and build a culture people can feel, explore my new book, The Making of a Strong Culture: Intentional Organizations