Five Toxic Behaviors That Make Good Employees Stop Caring
Gallup repots that only about 31% of employees in America are “engaged.” Only 40% believe that someone at work cares about them as a person. And managers account for 70% of engagement variance on teams. Writer Manuel Schwantes says, “Sometimes the problem is the job. More often, it’s the manager.”
Please tune in this week as Wayne reviews five toxic behaviors that cause otherwise good employees to turn off – or maybe even leave your company. And he lasers in on one super-common contractor program that almost always counter-produces the behaviors it is designed to promote. What do you think? What other poor management behaviors have you observed? Please email us your comments at [email protected].
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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi, everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about five toxic behaviors that make good employees stop caring. This came from Arlin, and he referenced a blog from Marcel Schwantes in September of 2026. It started with some statistics that grabbed my attention from Gallup. Gallup says that only 31% of employees are engaged. That's mind-blowing. Three out of 10 of your employees are engaged. Only 40% said that someone at work cared about them as a person. Four out of 10, six out of 10 of your employees think no one cares? And this was the most startling, I think, managers account for 70% of the engagement variance on teams. Schwantes wrote, "Sometimes the problem is the job. More often, however, it's the manager." So these are five toxic behaviors that can cause good employees to quit caring.
Number one, people are treated as objects, not human beings. Pawns, you might say, that take up a place on a chessboard. The focus is on tasks, workloads, and not employee well-being. Managers shouldn't be therapists. That's not part of the job description. But they do have to recognize when people are struggling at work, and sometimes the struggles result from things going on at home. Either way, it's a struggle, and managers should be aware about that and care about their folks as people.
Number two, employees are forced to compete against one another. Where does this happen the most in construction companies? Incentive comp systems. All my career, I've had contractors, "Wayne, how do I get the behaviors that I want from my people?" "Oh, back in the day, it was incentive comp. If you incentivize your project managers to finish on time and on budget, they'll get a big bonus for that particular project." Well, wait, wait. What if the company lost a ton of money because none of the other jobs went well that year, you're going to have a PM earning a large bonus because of one individual project when 10 other projects collapsed alongside it.
Incentive programs cause people to... We've talked about this before. They cause people to hoard resources and do all kinds of unproductive things, things that work for that job, for that PM perhaps, but don't work in the context of the overall company. If the overall company doesn't succeed, nobody should succeed, right? That's the only way to have a fair incentive comp system. If collaboration matters, not on time, on budget, but collaboration matters, there should be rewards for that. When the company succeeds and there's great collaboration among whoever in your organization, then that's what you want. That's the rule of the day.
Third thing, managers focus only on what went wrong, not what went right. When things go well, I heard somebody say in a peer group, "Why should I appreciate Jim or Sally or whoever? Why should I do that? They're just doing their jobs. That's what I expect them to do." That's not real life anymore in 2026. That may have worked in 1976. In 2026, that no longer works, that no longer motivates, it no longer encourages. Find ways to appreciate the little things that your people are doing in your organization and it'll pay dividends for you. Positive feedback has been demonstrated to improve performance among employees. Negative feedback, however, changes nothing. Do they learn? Perhaps, but it doesn't change productivity among employees.
Number four, managers who steal the spotlight, they use the word I a lot. So the department or the team hits a goal, hits a target, maybe even exceeds the target, and they say, "I did this," giving no credit to the 5 or the 50 people that also made that achievement happen. They may enjoy the limelight with the senior leaders for a little while, but they'll pay for it in the long run with reduced trust.
The fifth thing, managers go missing when they're most needed. We talked about the book Crucial Conversations ages ago, and when that employee is struggling, when a team is struggling, when there's a deadline looming or a budget threatening to blow up, that's when managers need to be there for their people. That's when they need to pay the most attention and be the most present.
I've been quoting Warren Buffet a lot here lately, but Warren Buffet, "Employers should look for integrity, intelligence, and energy, but without integrity, the other two could become liabilities." Make sense? If you're losing employees, examine not the individual employee potentially, but who's managing them. Are your managers costing you good people? Are they costing you reduced enthusiasm and engagement at work? Let me know what you think. Email me, [email protected].
This is Wayne Rivers at PCA where We Build Better Contractors.(DESCRIPTION)
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