This article is adapted from Ted's podcast episode 356: Let's Get Engaged (Leadership & Process).

The words woke me at 3 a.m., looping through my mind like a song I couldn't shake.

When you choose to be engaged, people choose you.

When you choose to be engaged, people choose you.

I lay there in the darkness, wondering what dream had planted this phrase so deeply in my consciousness that it pulled me from sleep. Then it hit me. My brain wasn't rehashing yesterday. It was preparing me for tomorrow. For the conversation I didn't know I needed to have. For the truth that someone desperately needed to hear.

I reached for the book on my nightstand, grabbed the pen I use for highlighting, and scribbled those words in the back pages. When I woke up this morning, my mind was still racing. Because everywhere I go, people ask me the same question in different forms: How do we deal with frustration, negativity, and pessimism in our teams?

The answer that came to me in the middle of the night is both simple and profoundly difficult. We can create the conditions for engagement, but we cannot force it. Like self-empowerment, engagement is a choice that only the individual can make. And here's the part that keeps me up at night: 69% of employees in the United States are either disengaged or actively working against their organizations.

Let me say that again. Seven out of ten people you work with have emotionally checked out.

But before you spiral into despair about the state of modern work, let me tell you a story about a phone call that changed everything.

The Principal Who Couldn't See the Storm

She called me on a Tuesday afternoon, and I could hear the edge in her voice before she even finished her greeting. She's a middle school principal at a large Midwestern school, the kind of leader who cares so deeply that the caring itself has become a weight she can barely carry.

"Ted, I'm so frustrated," she began, and then the floodgates opened.

The district communicated changes without warning. Leadership didn't understand what she faced every day. She felt unsupported, unheard, invisible. Her supervisor treated their meetings like checkbox exercises, all professionalism and no heart. Every piece of feedback felt like criticism with no solutions attached.

As she talked, her voice grew louder. I wasn't just listening to frustration anymore. I was witnessing the real-time transformation of disengagement into something darker. Something that Gallup calls "actively disengaged," which is a clinical way of saying someone is so resentful they might actually work against the organization's interests.

I felt like I was being shouted at, even though I knew her anger wasn't directed at me. It was directed at a system she believed had failed her. At leaders she thought didn't care. At circumstances she felt powerless to change.

"Can I interject?" I asked gently.

"Of course. That's why I called you."

"My interjection is that I'm going to call you back."

Silence.

"I want you to write down three questions to ask yourself. You're clearly elevated right now. This is not a good time for us to talk. I care enough about you to hang up, but I need you to think about these three things so that when I call you back, you're in a position to rationally respond."

She took a long breath. "Ted, I'm really sorry."

"There's no reason to apologize. You're in a unique situation and we're going to coach through it."

Three Questions That Change Everything

The questions I gave her that day are deceptively simple. They're the kind of simple that feels almost insulting when you first hear them. But they're also the kind of simple that can rebuild your entire relationship with your work, your team, and your life.

Question one: What can you do about this?

Not what should someone else do. Not what would happen in a perfect world. What can you do with the power and influence you actually have right now?

Question two: What do you have control over?

Not what you wish you could control. Not what you think you deserve to control. What do you actually, genuinely control in this moment?

Question three: Where are you stuck in a confirmation bias loop?

"What?" she asked.

"Where are you stuck in a confirmation bias loop where you're only looking for evidence to prove your negative narrative correct? You seem trapped in that loop."

Then I hung up.

I actually thought the call had dropped when I heard nothing but dead silence on the other end. Finally, she spoke.

"You don't need to call me back."

"No, I want to call you back. I want you to really think about it."

I reminded her of my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote: "When the facts change, I change my mind." I needed her to consider whether the facts supported her narrative, or whether she was hunting for facts that confirmed the story she'd already decided to believe.

She admitted she was clearly only looking for infractions against her. That's why she said I didn't need to call back.

"I know," I told her. "But the reflection is to see if those infractions far outweigh the benefits of what you have in your leadership, or if you're finding things to amplify your disengagement instead of your engagement. It's a mindset. It's an evidence piece. It's all about the questions you ask yourself."

If you ask yourself what the ways are that people are working against you, you'll only see that. But if you ask yourself what the ways are that people are helping you, you'll find that too. The key is balance. The key is reflection.

The Walk That Changed Two Careers

I called her back the next day. The transformation in her voice was startling.

She told me she'd gone for a long walk that afternoon with her assistant principal. They walked in circles around the building, talking through everything. They discussed the three questions and realized they were both doing the same thing to their district leadership that certain staff members did to them.

Then the assistant principal said something that stopped them both in their tracks: "I think you do it to me."

They had an honest conversation about what they were missing. They lacked clarity, curiosity, and candor. They needed to confront their growing negative narratives with the people they served and who served them. They needed to stop trying to control things outside their purview. They needed to be more candid and offer feedback in positive forms instead of critical ones. They needed to give up trying to control what they couldn't.

And most importantly, they realized they were only looking at every issue through one lens: They're doing this to us. They're making our lives harder. They don't understand what it's like to be us.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"I need to write out my thoughts and go talk to my supervisor."

I shared one more mindset shift with her. I asked her to prepare for the best, not the worst. Our brains will paralyze us with fear if we walk into difficult conversations unprepared. We'll get angry. We'll back ourselves into corners. We'll mentally negotiate ourselves out of the very things we knew we needed to say.

Then we hung up again.

Saturday Morning at 6:45 a.m.

I was running on the treadmill, watching a show, when my watch buzzed with an urgent message: "Please call me ASAP."

My mind went to a dark place immediately. I thought she'd gotten herself in trouble. I hit stop, paused the show, and called at 6:45 in the morning.

She was out walking with her husband.

"Are you okay?" I asked, bracing myself.

"Yes. I had the conversation with my supervisor. Halfway through, she told me to stop. She walked out of the room. Five minutes later, she gathered the entire district cabinet, including the superintendent, and told me to repeat everything I'd just shared with her."

My heart sank. I thought this had gone terribly wrong.

"I thought I might've gone too far with my candor. I thought I might be in big trouble."

Then she laughed.

"Nope. The cabinet was grateful that I'd come in armed with ideas and advocated for myself and others. Their culture was so hierarchical that people were afraid to talk to leadership. I was afraid to talk to leadership. And no one ever confronted it. The cabinet asked me what I'd done to get myself to this point of clarity. I told them I reflected on the situation and decided I needed to do something different."

I felt my entire chest fill with pride for this woman I'd never met in person.

"This is what engaged employees do by their nature," I told her. "Engagement is not compliance. It's the belief that you're supported, that you have the opportunity to provide solutions, that you have what you need to do your job well, and that you can get what you need from those who serve alongside you."

The Truth About Engagement That Nobody Wants to Hear

Here's what Gallup tells us about engagement in 2024, and it's sobering.

Only 31% of employees are engaged. That means involved, enthusiastic, and committed to their work and workplace. That's the lowest engagement has been in a decade.

52% are disengaged. They're emotionally detached. They show up and go through the motions, but nothing more.

17% are actively disengaged. These employees are disgruntled, resentful, and may actively work against their company's interests.

When I share these numbers with leaders, I watch their faces fall. They want to know what's wrong with their teams. What's wrong with this generation. What's wrong with modern culture.

But here's the question I always ask back: What's wrong with you?

Because the only way to change another person is to first change yourself. Carl Jung said it twenty different ways in 1932, and it's still true almost a century later.

If you want to increase your engagement, your happiness, and your sense of control, there are three things you must start doing:

Stop blaming others.

Control what you can control.

Check your biases.

That's it. That's the whole list. And it's also the hardest work you'll ever do.

The Question That Reveals Everything

Let me give you a practical example of how this works. One of the questions on Gallup's Q12 engagement survey asks: "My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person."

This is tricky, right? If you don't feel cared for, what can you possibly do about it? You can't force someone to care about you. You can't mandate empathy.

But here's where the engagement choice comes in. Recently, I was talking with a CEO from a global company (humble brag, I know), and we discussed how most people use AI as a search engine when they should be using it as a transformation tool.

So I decided to test it. I dropped this prompt into ChatGPT:

"I have low engagement on the following question from Gallup's Q12. Please provide me a list of strategies that I can employ to increase my personal engagement: My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person."

Twelve seconds later, I had a response that reorganized my entire understanding of the question.

The AI didn't tell me how to make my supervisor care more. It told me how to create the conditions where I could better experience and recognize care. It gave me three tiers of strategies:

Build self-awareness and receptivity. Reflect on what being cared for actually means to you. Notice small acts of care happening around you. Share your needs openly but tactfully. Seek feedback intentionally.

Strengthen connection and reciprocity. Show authentic interest in others' lives. Express appreciation frequently. Find and nurture a trusted colleague. Initiate regular one-on-ones with your supervisor focused not just on tasks but on development and wellbeing. Be vulnerable in measured ways.

Shape your environment and culture. Join or start wellness initiatives. Recognize caring behaviors publicly. Align work with your strengths. Seek mentorship.

Do you see what just happened? The question shifted from "Why doesn't anyone care about me?" to "What can I do to create and recognize caring relationships?"

That's engagement. That's the choice.

The Midnight Truth Returns

When you choose to be engaged, people choose you.

This isn't mystical thinking. It's practical leadership grounded in human behavior. When you show up engaged, curious, solution-oriented, and willing to own your experience, people want to work with you. They want to promote you. They want to collaborate with you. They choose you for the team, the project, the opportunity.

But when you show up blaming others, trapped in confirmation bias, convinced that everything is being done to you rather than with you, people avoid you. They route around you. They choose someone else.

The principal I coached was stuck in a doom cycle. Every district decision became evidence that leadership didn't understand her. Every policy change became proof that she wasn't valued. She was right about some things. Leadership could have communicated better. They could have been more empathetic.

But she was also trapped in a narrative that prevented her from seeing all the ways the system was working exactly as designed. All the resources she did have. All the support that was actually present. All the opportunities she could seize if she stopped waiting for permission.

When she chose engagement, everything shifted. Not because the district suddenly became perfect. Not because her supervisor magically transformed. But because she transformed. And when she transformed, the organization chose her. They brought her into the cabinet meeting. They listened to her ideas. They made her a partner instead of a recipient.

What Buffalo Leaders Do

We call ourselves Buffalo leaders on this podcast because buffalo do something that almost no other creature does. When a storm approaches, buffalo turn and face it. They run directly into the storm instead of trying to outrun it.

Why? Because they've learned that the fastest way through difficulty is straight through. Not around. Not away. Toward.

Engagement is a Buffalo leader move. It's turning toward the discomfort of taking responsibility for your own experience. It's running into the storm of self-reflection. It's choosing to examine your biases, control what you can control, and stop waiting for the world to engage you.

Because here's the truth nobody wants to hear: if you're sitting around waiting for the world to engage you, you're going to be waiting a very long time. No one is thinking about you as much as you think they are. And that's actually liberating, because it means you have far more power than you realized.

You don't need anyone's permission to choose engagement. You don't need perfect conditions or an exceptional leader or an ideal culture. You just need to make a different choice about how you show up.

Your Three Questions

So let me leave you with this. Wherever you are in your leadership journey, whatever your current level of engagement, I want you to pause and honestly answer three questions:

What can you do about your current situation? Not what should happen. Not what you wish would happen. What can you, with the power and influence you have right now, actually do?

What do you have control over? Make a list. It's probably longer than you think. Your attitude. Your questions. Your relationships. Your learning. Your responses. Your choices about where to focus your energy.

Where are you stuck in a confirmation bias loop? Are you only noticing evidence that confirms your negative narrative? Are you hunting for infractions while ignoring support? What would you see if you looked for evidence of the opposite story?

These questions aren't comfortable. They weren't comfortable for the principal. They won't be comfortable for you. But they're transformative.

Because engagement isn't something that happens to you. It's something you choose. And when you choose it, when you truly choose it with everything you have, people notice. They lean in. They invest. They choose you back.

This week, the storms will come. They always do. But you get to decide how you face them. You can face them with the same tools, perspectives, and narratives you had last week. Or you can face them as someone who's made a different choice.

Someone who's chosen engagement.

Someone who's chosen to control what they can control.

Someone who's turned toward the storm instead of away from it.

When you make that choice, everything changes. Not immediately. Not magically. But truly and completely.

So make the choice. Then watch as people start choosing you back.

The world is waiting for engaged leaders. It's waiting for you.

Now turn, face your storm, and show them what a Buffalo leader looks like.