Employees Checked Out? How Leaders Get Performance Back
Your People Stayed but Stopped Bringing Their Best: How Do You Motivate Employees Who Have Checked Out?
The resignations you were bracing for this year mostly didn’t come. The team that started January is largely the team finishing it, and yet the numbers haven’t moved the way they should have, the same three people are carrying the hard projects, and the last meeting where you asked for new ideas ended in polite silence. Your people stayed; a lot of them just stopped bringing their best with them.
That’s the third of the three problems we’ve worked through this month, and in some ways it’s the most expensive, because it never shows up as a line item. A vacancy has a cost you can calculate and a resignation has a date you can point to, while a team that is present but holding back simply looks like a slow year.
Our recent article explains why hiring, retention and performance share one cause. Since then we’ve looked at why you can’t find good people and why your best people leave, so this week is about everyone else: the people who stayed, and how a leader gets their full effort back before 2027 begins.
Why Do Good Employees Stop Performing?
Rarely all at once, and almost never for the reason a leader assumes. People don’t wake up one morning and decide to coast; they pull back a little at a time, usually after they’ve offered an idea that went nowhere, watched a teammate get away with less, or gone months without anyone asking where they’re headed.
In Solve the People Puzzle I described the shift that matters as the point where employees begin to adopt an ownership mentality. It’s still the most useful way I know to think about performance. A person with ownership cares about the result, while a person who has checked out cares about the task, does it to the letter and goes home, and from the outside the two can look surprisingly alike until the day you need someone to go further.
The current data says most leaders have more of the second group than they’d like to admit:
- 31% of U.S. workers are engaged at work, the lowest level in a decade, according to Gallup’s fourth-quarter 2025 survey published in March 2026.
- 49% say they’re struggling and 46% say they’re thriving, the first time in Gallup’s tracking that struggling has outnumbered thriving.
- Globally, Gallup puts the cost of low engagement at roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity, about 9% of global GDP, in its State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report.
Find out where performance is leaking. The free five-minute assessment scores your organization across the five stages where companies lose people, including the everyday experience that decides whether people bring their best. Take the free assessment.
Key takeaway: good people stop performing gradually, in response to how they’re led, which means the slide can be reversed by the same people who caused it.
Is a Checked-Out Team a Motivation Problem or a Leadership Problem?
Most leaders frame it as motivation, which quietly places the problem inside the employee. In my experience it’s almost always a leadership problem, because the things that drain a person’s willingness to give more (unclear expectations, constant second-guessing and no sign that their effort is noticed) are set by the person they report to.
Gallup’s 2026 global report found that engagement among the people who lead teams fell from 27% to 22% in a single year (Gallup’s term is managers). Tired leaders lead tired teams, and when the person in the middle has checked out, it isn’t realistic to expect the people who report to them to stay all in.
There’s also a pattern I’ve watched for decades: a leader hires a capable adult and then treats them like a risk to be managed. In Solve the People Puzzle I contrasted two ways of starting someone in a role. The common one sounds like this: “This is the way you’re going to do it. This is the way we do things, here. This is a checklist.” The better one sounds like this: “I trust you. I believe in you. I hired you for your credentials and my belief that you can lead this operation or function. Here’s your job. Go do it. Let’s check in once a week.”
As I wrote then, think of all the creativity that is destroyed by the first attitude. People who are told exactly how to do everything eventually do exactly that, and nothing more and the leader ends up killing innovation of any kind.
Key takeaway: a checked-out team is usually telling you something about how it’s being led. Before asking how to motivate your people, ask what they’ve learned about whether extra effort is worth it here
How Do You Get Performance Back From People Who Have Checked Out?
You change the experience that taught them to hold back, one conversation at a time. None of what follows requires a new program or a large budget; all of it requires a leader who is willing to go first.
Ask, and be ready for the answer
The fastest way to learn why someone has pulled back is to ask them, and most leaders don’t, because they suspect the answer will involve them. As I wrote in Solve the People Puzzle, it takes courage to ask the questions because you will have to deal with the answers. A few of the questions I’ve relied on for years:
- What makes you feel valued for the work that you do?
- How does your role contribute to the results we’re trying to reach?
- What are the most important resources you need to do your job well?
- Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
- How do you best respond to feedback?
Then do something with what you hear. If the answer is something you can’t change, say so and explain why, because people will only keep telling you the truth if they can see you’re listening.
Set the expectation, then get out of the way
In Dare to Care in the Workplace I put it simply: start to build trust by giving it. Micromanaging creates frustration and low job satisfaction, and it trains capable people to wait for instructions. The alternative isn’t a free-for-all; it’s what I call a safety net, which means setting clear performance expectations and inspecting the end product, while trusting your people with the path they take to get there.
Have the honest conversation, with care
Some of the people who have checked out need a direct conversation, and avoiding it is not kindness. Your strongest people are watching how you handle it, as we covered in last week’s piece on why good employees leave, and every month the conversation is postponed teaches them that effort doesn’t matter.
The line from Dare to Care I come back to often is this: “No one can be led by a wishy-washy leader. Lead with empathy, understanding, and no judgment, but be decisive.” That’s the heart of being a carefrontational leader: you name the gap plainly, you ask what’s getting in the way, and you agree on what changes and by when. Care and accountability belong in the same conversation.
Invest in growth before it becomes a last resort
Here is something I wrote years ago that still describes most companies I walk into: professional development “only becomes part of the plan when we are about ready to let somebody go. It is used as a last-resort proof of concept.” By then it’s too late to change much, and everyone involved knows it.
Development offered early sends the opposite message. In my own company we’ve paid for outside coaching for some of our highest performers and specific training for our more technical people, in each case because they raised their hand and asked, and it has paid off for them and for TalenTrust every time. Growth doesn’t have to be expensive, either; a well-run mentoring program, or simply developing leaders instead of sending them to training, can change how a team shows up.
Before you finalize your 2027 budget. “When you have budget constraints, training should be the last thing you cut.” Underfunding development tells your people they aren’t worth the investment, and they’ll respond by investing less of themselves.
“When good people stop giving their best, I want leaders to ask a difficult question: What have we done to make them believe their best isn’t worth giving? You can’t demand ownership from people you micromanage, ignore, or fail to develop. If you want your people to step up, you have to create an experience that makes them want to.”
Key takeaway: performance comes back when people see that their ideas are heard, their expectations are clear, the hard conversations actually happen and someone is investing in where they’re headed.
What Can a Leader Do Before the Year Ends?
December is a natural reset, which makes it the right month to start. Work through this list with your leadership team before your 2027 plan is final:
☐ Name the people who have pulled back. Not to label them, but to notice when it started and what changed around that time.
☐ Ask one person one question this week. “What makes you feel valued for the work that you do?” is a good place to start.
☐ Rewrite one set of expectations as outcomes. Describe the result you need and the check-in rhythm, and leave the method to the person doing the work.
☐ Have the conversation you’ve been postponing. Decide this week, put it on the calendar and go in curious rather than angry.
☐ Protect development in the 2027 budget. Ask each person what they’d like to learn next year, and fund at least one answer.
☐ Thank someone specifically. Tell one person exactly what you noticed them do this year and why it mattered.
Start 2027 With a Team That’s All In
Every January, leadership teams write goals for revenue, margin and growth, and then hand them to people who may have stopped bringing their best months ago. A plan for the year is only as strong as the people who carry it out, and the leaders who get the most from their teams in 2027 will be the ones who designed for it this winter.
That’s the work of the KQV Designed to Care™ Masterclass, built on the framework: one stage of the employee experience at a time, in a small group of leaders working on their own companies rather than a case study. Our next cohort begins in January 2027.
You don’t have to commit to anything to see whether it fits ~ take these two steps:
- Take the free assessment. Five minutes, and you’ll know where you’re losing people and performance. Take the assessment.
- Talk with me directly. Tell me what’s happening on your team, and I’ll tell you what I see. Contact Kathleen.
FAQ
Q: How do you motivate employees who have checked out?
Start by asking what changed, rather than assuming. Most people pull back after their ideas went nowhere, their effort went unnoticed or they were managed too closely to take ownership. Clear expectations, regular check-ins, honest conversations and visible investment in their growth bring most people back faster than any incentive program.
Q: Is low performance the employee’s fault or the leader’s?
Usually it’s shared, but the leader has more of the levers. The person someone reports to sets their expectations, their level of trust and whether their effort gets noticed, so that’s the place to look first.
Q: How do you talk to an employee who isn’t performing?
Be direct and be kind in the same conversation. Name the gap plainly with specific examples, ask what’s getting in the way, agree on what will change and by when, and set a date to check in. Avoiding the conversation is harder on the employee and on the teammates carrying their work.
Q: Should I let go of an employee who has checked out?
Not before you’ve had an honest conversation and given them a fair chance to re-engage with clear expectations. Some people will come back once they’re asked and supported. If someone still isn’t a fit after that, helping them exit with dignity is better for them and for everyone who stays, a lesson we covered in depth in our series on exits.
