It's experienced in meetings. It happens in the office. Most professionals don't even realize it. Professionals become disengaged. Disengaged professionals are ones who just go through the motions of their job. They are always busy and will tell you how busy they are but they don’t seem to accomplish much. Their contributions to conversations are marginal. They are physically present but aren’t contributing to helping the organization move forward. The signs of a disengaged professional:
1. Disengaged professionals are distracting. Instead of being focused on the subject at hand, disengaged professionals interject irrelevant comments that contribute nothing.
2. Disengaged professionals can't tell if people are connecting in the conversation. They miss the other person's body language, continually blathering and ignoring of signals that “I'm not interested in what you're saying.”
3.. Disengaged professionals never have anything to say. When asked the disengaged professional replies to every inquiry with some variant of 'I dunno, sort of, I guess.'"
4. Disengaged professionals will tell you how much they have to do, but they don’t get things done. Disengaged professionals can give a long list of what they are doing but when you look for meaningful contributions toward organization goals there aren’t results.
5. Disengaged professionals don't know how to tell a good story. They tell the same stories over and over and over, never coming up with a different perspective.
6. Disengaged professionals don't have anything new to add. Research into our brains reveals that we're basically hard-wired to seek novelty. Disengaged professional are not interested in anything new.
7. Disengaged professionals don't include anybody in the conversation – they want the spotlight. They are afraid if they are not in the spotlight, their lack of results will be noticed. So they talk and talk about what they are doing while not getting anything done and ignoring others.
Disengaged professionals can be new employees or seasoned pros – disengagement has nothing to do with time in the job. Disengaged professionals hamper an organization but are often not dealt with as people say “that just the way they are”. The problem is disengaged professionals impact the level of engagement from others. If not dealt with, organizations soon find engaged professionals become disengaged.