Start With A Win - Why Your Team is Disengaged — And How to Fix It

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

⚡️FREE RESOURCE: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?  ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/myleadershipWant weekly leadership content? Go here ➡︎ https://adamcontos.comIn this powerful episode of Start With a Win, host Adam Contos sits down with leadership expert and bestselling author Coach Kon to uncover the secret to unlocking true employee engagement. With decades of experience transforming workplaces, Kon shares eye-opening insights on why businesses—big and small—struggle with disengagement and what leaders can do to create a thriving, high-performance culture. From the impact of the Great Resignation to the staggering financial cost of lost productivity, this conversation dives deep into the reality of workplace motivation. But the real magic? Kon reveals the four key drivers that can turn disengaged employees into committed, high-performing team members. Don’t miss this engaging and thought-provoking discussion—it could change the way you lead forever!Konstantinos Apostolopoulos (Coach Kon) is the Founder & CEO of Fresh Biz Solutions, helping organizations develop talent, improve results, and drive change. An award-winning coach and international speaker, he is a Thinkers 360 Global Top-50 Thought Leader in resilience and performance.His best-selling books, The Engagement Blueprint and 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, equip leaders with strategies for building commitment and navigating challenges. With experience across North America and Europe, Konstantinos empowers businesses to lead with impact and adapt to transformation00:00 Intro03:01 Two trends that started his research!07:15 How can a leader run a small business if employees are disengaged?10:10 Deep level of disengagement, quiet quitting? 12:06 Four drivers of engagement!21:25 Don’t always have to move vertically.25:56 Start where everything starts…   ===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

And as a result of that, as a direct result of that relationship, people will engage or not engage. I found four key drivers that if you get those right, you're going to get engagement right. And it's going to make the biggest difference for your business. Welcome to Start With a Win, where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development, and how to build a better business. Let's go. What does it take to build a culture of commitment and performance in your organization? Today we talk about that on Start With a Win. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With a Win headquarters, it's Adam Kontos with Start With a Win.

We're joined by Konstantinos Apostolopoulos, otherwise known as Coach Khan, the founder and CEO of Fresh Biz Solutions. He's been transforming workplaces with his cutting edge talent management strategies. Known for his bestselling book, The Engagement Blueprint, Khan's insights are giving companies the competitive edge they need. With years of experience as a consultant and award-winning coach, he's here to share how you can improve resilience and performance within your teams. Get ready for some actionable wisdom

from a true expert in human capital management. Coach Khan, welcome to Start with a Win. So good to be here with you, Adams. Awesome. And for our listeners, we've got two Greek boys here having a nice conversation about employee engagement, one of my favorite topics. Coach Khan, as you are known, and by the way,

one of the top soccer coaches as well, congratulations on that. We really appreciate all you do for business. Tell us, how did you get into working on employee engagement and helping businesses find their way? Well, that's an interesting topic, and thank you for the question. You know, I wanna start off a little bit more lighthearted. You know, you mentioned the two Greek boys here.

It's funny, you know, most people think that when two Greeks get together, the first thing they do is open a restaurant. I'm hoping that we're gonna expand on that a little bit and kind of get into a little bit broader business stuff. Although it does impact the restaurant business. As far as engagement goes, you know, for the last three decades, I have been involved with one way or another in developing leaders, helping organizations build resilience, raise performance,

and so much of that is impacted by the level of engagement that people feel towards their work. And post pandemic, coming out of that whole great pause, if you will, and going into the period after that where we started getting impacted by the great resignation. People are leaving in droves and the millions from their work, unsatisfied by what's happening or the way that things were handled.

Many of them leaving and going, not sure where. I mean, just leaving and just trying to find something alternative. Everybody was looking at the headlines of the millions of resignations that were happening, or the firings or whatever else, the quiet quitting. To me, it's almost like if you stare at the campfire, it's hard to see everything else around it. You get blinded by the by the brightness of that. And the headlines are kind of like that campfire. To me, I started looking at the periphery around that. If you look either side of that and you start looking a little bit deeper, you realize that there's been some alarming trends as far as disengagement dropping.

And for the first time in over 10 years around the pandemic, right after that engagement dropped. It took a different turn. It was rising up steadily, and then all of a sudden it started dropping. And so to me, that was a big question that I needed to answer. I also combine that with the fact that the companies that I've been working with were impacted either not at all or very minimally, by a lot of this great resignation. If anything, they became a beacon for a lot of those disenfranchised

and disengaged employees that were looking for something better. So to me, those two points became a fascination for me and I researched. So I spent about 18 months researching the topic, looking into things, talking to smart people and global CEOs and leaders and trying to find out are there trends, are there other points of reference between big companies,

small companies, the industries, etc. etc. And what I found is the issues are global. The things, the challenges that we face when it comes to engagement are global. If anything, they're a lot worse outside. If we think that it's bad here having only one in three people really saying that they are engaged at work, across the globe it's closer to one in five. So you realize that when you're sitting around the table and you look to the left and to the right, only one of you, one of those three people is truly coming up and showing up to give their best. The rest are either there to kind of make do with what they've got, get through the day, or some are actually so unhappy with things that they're actually trying to sabotage actively.

It's incredible. I'm sorry, keep going. Yeah. And people think that engagement is one of those fluffy things. They, they, they think it's one of those soft things. They get a paycheck, don't they? I mean, a lot of the, you hear a lot of the old school people or a lot of our audience that might be small business owners that work hard. They're motivated to work hard and they put their life and soul into things. One of their biggest fears is that they're investing in people that are not

invested back in their business. And that's hard for a leader to accept at any level. So to me, when you look at it and you start figuring out, okay, I'm struggling to make payroll on Friday. I'm trying to make sure that I keep my business afloat and I do well for my clients, for my people. But here I've got this disengagement problem. And if you want to know how big it is, globally, last year, $8.9 trillion with a T in lost productivity due to lack of engagement. $8.9 trillion. That's almost 9% of the global GDP.

Now if that number is too big for you and you say, okay, that's irrelevant to me, I have a small business, let me give it to you in a different way. For every 10,000 that you pay an employee that is not engaged, it's costing you 3,400. Wow. That's the number that you're playing with right now. That is the number that you're looking at. So again, when you are trying to make your numbers work, and when you are looking at making payroll on Friday or making your goals or trying to break through in your business, you cannot afford to have people disengaged in your business. That's incredible. I've been following the Gallup Q12 and the employee engagement surveys over the decades. They've surveyed millions of employees, hundreds of thousands of different businesses. And I'm sure that's some of the research that you've conducted as well. It baffles me personally,

somebody who I truly believe I have work ethic and I'm interested in creating success for the businesses that I'm part of, that there are people who are coasting, that you're essentially carrying around on your shoulders every day as an engaged employee. So it's interesting. One in three people are engaged in the US. One in five. And these are obviously ballpark statistics. Globally, how do we run a small business, in your opinion,

if we have five to 10 employees, and out of that five to 10, we only have two to three that are engaged. Is that possible? It is in the sense that when you have a small business, the impact that you have directly with your employees is so much stronger. You're not talking about layers of management now where you have a senior leadership or you've been a CEO, where you have layers below you and you're overseeing hundreds of people. That connection is a lot harder to build. That connection that people have is directly with their supervisor. When you're a small business owner, you have that connection directly with your people.

You have a say in who you bring on board, how you inspire them, how you work with them, how you treat them. And as a result of that, as a direct result of that relationship, people will engage or not engage. Okay. And it's important to understand that. But it's also important to understand that when we talk about the q 12, the Gallup survey, or some of the behavioral sciences and the data that's behind this Maslow's hierarchy of needs or different,

different pieces of established science that we pull on. You realize that in the simplest terms, if you're a fisherman and you go out to fish, the same bait will not catch the same fish, all the different fish that you want to catch. So you want to be able to vary the bait to catch the right fish. It's the same thing with people. People are not motivated by the same things. You take pride in what you do. If it's your business, you're going

to be so much more invested in it. You can't expect your employees that are there to collect a paycheck to have the same investment with you unless you can tap into what truly motivates them. I love that. And that's where the motivation and what I call the four drivers of engagement really come into play in tapping into that. Now there could be a lot of different things that play a part in driving engagement, but to me, I use the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule.

I found four key drivers that if you get those right, you're going to get engagement right. And it's going to make the biggest difference for your business. OK, and we'll get into those four drivers here for the listeners. This is from Conn's book, The Engagement Blueprint, Building a Culture of Commitment and Performance. There are some powerful words in that title that mean a lot and tie into this.

But I want to dig into those four drivers of engagement and how leaders can leverage these drivers to address the needs of the individuals on their team. But before we do that, I do have a question back to a little bit earlier in our conversation. You talked about the whole process of us emerging from the pandemic and the great resignation, things like that.

And then you talked about people dropping into this deep, deep level of disengagement. Was that what we were calling quiet quitting? Yes, quiet quitting is another way of saying people that are not engaged or actively disengaged. So essentially what you're talking about, I mean, the way that I liken it to people, imagine that you're on a boat, right?

If we do the numbers ballpark, right? Let's imagine that you and five friends are on a boat. There's six of you in this boat and you're going down the river. One of you or two of you are actively paddling. So you're going along, you're engaged with this thing, you're paddling, you're working hard to kind of move the boat.

Three are kind of along and every now and again they'll dip, or four of them, they'll basically dip their paddles in the water. And there's one in the back that's actually poking holes in the boat. So that's the difference that we're talking about here. And the level of disengagement can become very toxic. And if you have enough of those people,

they can really damage your business. But even the people that are along for the ride, you wanna be able to understand that people use their discretionary effort. If you approach it as a transactional thing and you say, you know what, here's your job description, I pay you to do this. And you start harping on people, do your job, do your job, you get a transactional thing and you say, you know what, here's your job description, I pay you to do this. And you start harping on people, do your job, do your job, you get a paycheck, don't you?

That's what you're going to get. You're going to get that level of transactional exchange between you. And you say, you know, not on my job description, not my problem. And now your culture is really suffering. So that quiet quitting is, I'm dipping my paddle in the water every now and again. I'm collecting my paycheck. I'm doing the basic things that you're expecting me to do so I don't get fired.

But in the meantime, my head is elsewhere. My discretionary effort goes to other things. I'm not going to give you my best. I'm just going to give you my basic. OK, that completely makes sense now. And you mentioned a couple of key words there, transactional versus culture. And that ties right into your four drivers of engagement

because these four drivers don't seem to be a transaction. They seem to be a feeling that people have. So let's dive into the first one of those. What's the first driver of engagement? Well, the first driver that I identify in the book and to me is so important is the need we all have to feel valued.

We all want to be valued as people, as workers, as members of a team. Feeling valued is essential part of who we are, being appreciated. And there are simple things that really don't cost anything that leaders can do. When you look at it, first and foremost, create a safe environment. Now, some jobs, like I work with the construction industry a lot, for example, safety is baked into it. You've been in workplaces with law enforcement, with other areas where safety is baked into the culture

and the way you do things. But there's more than just the physical safety. That's just the basic thing. I mean, nobody wants to show up at work and not go home in one piece. I mean, that's hard to engage people if that's the case. But you want to be able to be in a situation where you create psychological safety as well, where people don't feel like they're constantly threatened and on edge and walking on eggshells. So create a safe environment for people to operate in. Create an environment where people feel welcome

and belong, where they can bring their whole self to work. And so they can bring their best self to work. Create an environment where people feel, for example, that they are appreciated. A thank you, a thank you goes so far. And the kind of recognition that not just a thank you, but a thank you specifically, reinforce the behaviors that you want to see.

If you're in a situation and you like what somebody is doing, recognize that. Say thank you, this is what I appreciate about what you just did. I really appreciate the fact that you're asking some really pointed questions at them and it helps us have a great conversation. What do you think I'm going to get more of? More of that. Because I'm catching them doing the right thing. Right. And so ultimately these are simple things that we can do

at any given time and ultimately the last piece to show people you value them time. Give them your attention. Even if you have five minutes a day, be there for five minutes. Stop checking your phone, stop checking the email, stop looking around at other things. Make the eye contact, be present in those moments with people, and they will feel valued. So those are four or five simple things that you can do now as a leader to really show people that you value them. So powerful. It even goes back to the Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Two things we can't give ourselves that we need the most are personal attention and appreciation.

That's exactly somebody feeling valued. Correct. That's exactly right. And when we talk about the drivers, I mean, I want to, I want to make sure people understand these things are not just workers needs. These are human needs. Right. These, these transcend workplace and they go into our lives in general and try it with your kids, with your family, with your spouse, with your partners. You realize that when people feel valued, they, they come to the table very differently. Yes, certainly. All right, let's get into the second driver.

I really like this one. Yeah, so the next driver is feeling connected. I mean, we all want to feel connected. We're tribal creatures. I mean, you see that in a situation where you show up at a ballpark at a stadium and you're wearing the same jersey as half the stadium or more.

You automatically feel a connection to these people. You bump into somebody that went to the same alma mater, grew up in the same neighborhood. You have connection and that's a powerful thing. You and I started the conversation, the fact that we're both Greek boys and we have a shared history, a shared culture that we can brought back on.

We feel an instant connection to people, and we strive for that. The things that are similar about us connect us. And that's what you want in a team. When you're building a high-performing team, you need to build those connections. First of all, between you as the leader and each one of the members of your team, you create that strong connection with each other. But if you think of it members of your team, you create that strong connection with each other.

But if you think of it like a wagon wheel, like a wheel with a hub and spoke, if you are the hub as the leader, kind of connecting each one of those spokes out to one of your people, the wheel won't only turn once you start connecting all of the outside rim. So build the strong connections between you

and each one of your team members, and then encourage them to build that connection between each other. And you do that by establishing certain ground rules, if you will, the way that we operate, the values that we bring, the vision that we share, the goals that connect us from that piece. And when people realize that I can be successful

for myself and the team, and I have this shared journey that we're going on, that creates team spirit, that creates connection. Because now I can strive for myself, but I can also strive for the person next to me. The strongest teams are always the ones that are not just doing the same kind of work next to each other, but truly care about each other.

There's that connection between the leader and each person and the team between themselves. You've been part of that. That's how it works. And at any given moment, any one of those people can become the leader in the circumstances, in the situation that we have, because they might be the one that holds the answers. And that's the power of building a strong team and the connection that we all need to feel successful. You want to know that I'm going to a place where there are

people that I'm connected to. I'm going to a place that I feel good about. It's my tribe. It's my people. So good. I love that. If we're connected, we're not going to work. We're going to be with people. Correct.

Big difference there. So let's jump into the third one here. And this one is absolutely necessary because we've got busy versus productive going on in so many work environments. So I'll give it away to everybody here. It's the need to feel productive. Why did you put that in here?

Because when you think about engagement, all you have to do is look at the eyes of a volunteer. When people feel like they're contributing, like they're making a difference, they will give you their best. And it's not about the money. People that volunteered to do something important to them, they don't do it for the money.

They do it for the contribution. So when you can change your people from just consumers of your instructions and direction to contributors to the vision, that's a very powerful thing. People want to know that when I show up at work, I'm not just staying work, I'm not just staying busy. I'm not just one foot in front of the other doing the same thing. That gets really old really fast. People want to know what they're doing and when

you create that that that parallel between connection and productivity, you realize that people want to be part of something bigger. I mean, in my classes, in my workshops, or when I speak about this in keynotes, I explain to people, think about a group photo that we just took. If we were all together at the end of this session and take a group photo, and then I hand you the photo a few days later, what's the first thing you're going to do? Look for yourself. Well, most people will look for themselves, right? Yeah.

Where am I in this picture? Where do I fit in? And that's the question that we need to answer to people. Your work, even the most basic work, I have you sweeping a floor, I have you putting staples and papers and connecting them. I have you doing data entry. That has a purpose. What is the purpose? Connect the dots for people so they understand that the inputs that they do here has an output that has a bigger impact on everybody. The quality of the data that you input, the accuracy, the speed makes a difference

in how we respond to our customers and everything else. The fact that you swept the floor saved us from an accident and somebody getting hurt. These are things that people understand and bring greater value. They want to know that they are contributing, that they are being productive. I show up to work, I earned the right to feel the dignity of a day's work and contribution. I love this. And I mean, just thinking through these first three drivers of engagement, we're climbing Maslow's hierarchy of needs as we progress through these.

And we're at the top here with the self-actualization, which actually goes kind of one step further, which is improvement and personal growth and things like that, which is your fourth driver. I mean, this is a great way to take a look at your employees, take a look at how you're getting things done or not getting things done within your organization. And frankly, I mean, hold up the mirror, folks.

This is how well you're leading if you're able to stimulate these different drivers within your team. So talk to us about number four, the need to feel supported, to learn, and grow. Because frankly, that's what I'm hearing more from millennials and Gen Z, is they just don't want to go to work and produce something.

They want to feel like they're getting better doing that. Correct. And there's an element of wanting to grow. And there's an element of duration, career, if you will. If I go to work and I'm capped out, I'm never gonna change my title, I'm never gonna learn anything new, I'm never gonna grow, that's a curse.

That's not a career. And so to me, I explain it to people this way. I said, when you think of water, water is a life source, but there's a big difference between a swamp and a river. Nobody wants to be caught up in a swamp and feel like they are stagnant in their careers. People want to feel like a river, sometimes a creek, a stream that's kind of going meandering around. And sometimes they want those rapids, they want those opportunities for fast growth, but they want movement. People don't want stagnation.

When you are trying to engage people at your job, show them what is there, is there a career path? Is there a growth opportunity? Is there something they can learn to get better? Even if you have a small operation, there are a ton of things that people can be learning and constantly being challenged in the way that they do things, in the way that they think. If there's a path to ownership, if there's a path to career advancement, communicate that, talk to people about that, share that with them. Even if you don't have room vertically,

you may have room horizontally. Move them into other areas where they can feel challenged. People want to know. And if I've reached the pinnacle of my abilities in one area and there's nowhere else for me to move, let me become the teacher for the next generation. There's always ways that we can grow and challenge people so they can feel better about things. And that's the part that sometimes we overlook. Again, this is a need that we have. You talked about millennials and the younger generations,

Gen Z now and Gen Alpha coming in soon into the workplace. I mean, these are generations of people that are gonna look at your job and say, where am I gonna go next? I don't want it something for just today. Right, so important. This has been an incredible conversation, Constantinos. I really appreciate all that you've delivered to us

on helping to improve our employee engagement. And frankly, this is an invaluable resource for leaders, managers, HR professionals, really anybody who's in the workforce, both as a reflection piece, as well as a leadership piece. Thank you, thank you. Where can we find more information about you and your book and your business? So let's start with with connecting with me. I'm very

active on LinkedIn. So you'll find me on LinkedIn under coach con and I spell it as you can see with a K for obvious reason. It's hard to get people to trust you when you spell it with a C. So that's one place. My website, my business is called Fresh Biz Solutions, and it's a human capital management, talent management, and engagement provider. And ultimately, so outside of freshbizsolutions.com and LinkedIn, the book is available on Amazon, and it will be available in other outlets as well. Ironically or interestingly enough, we are speaking right now, we're coming up almost on a year since it was published and went to the

number one on the bestseller list on Amazon. So for anybody that's interested in accessing it, I'd love to get their feedback, I'd love to get their thoughts. The book is full of not just data love to get their thoughts. The book is full of not just data and statistics and information, but also stories from my own 30 years of experience, stories and interviews from leaders from across the globe and understanding that this is a challenge and an opportunity, if you will, that transcends continents and countries and boundaries. I love it. And this book is full of value, everybody. This is a full-size book.

It's over 200 pages. It's not one of those little 100 page read on the airplane books. This one is robust, and it has a lot of great information. And I encourage everybody to go out and grab a copy. Coach Khan, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on Start with a Win. And I do have a question I ask all the great leaders who come to our show.

And that's how do you start your day with a win? Interesting. I think I start where everything starts with a deep breath and appreciation. where everything starts with a deep breath and appreciation. I like to start my day with that first breath that says, I'm here, I'm grateful, I'm ready. And then I go ahead about making my day the way that I want it to be. I love that. Intentionality and awareness and appreciation.

That's very helpful. You start with your mind in the right place. And frankly, that creates some great engagement and productivity. So thank you so much for delivering this value to us today. We really appreciate it. Everybody make sure you check out Coach Khan's book and check out Coach Khan on the internet.

He's been making his way around a certain podcast and videos and things like that, so you can find him out there. This is a topic that people think about but don't realize. This makes you more money in your business. This creates longevity in your employees. It creates a great succession plan to work on and build because you get to see the talent emerge in your people.

And it's great for your customers. This really increases the customer engagement, consumer interaction with your business. So these concepts work. They're great leadership foundational aspects. There's no leader that can survive without these things. So please make sure you check it out. Coach Khan, it's great seeing you today. Thanks for all you do.

And thanks for being on Start With a Win. Thank you.