What Does Engagement Really Mean in an Engineering Team?
Recently, I came across a No Fluff Jobs article comparing employee engagement across countries. The reported differences were interesting, but they left me with a more basic question: were all respondents—and all managers reading the results—using the word engagement in the same way?
That got me thinking — and asking. I reached out to fellow leaders in my company and asked a simple question: Do you think your teams are engaged?
The answers were mixed. The disagreement turned out to be more useful than a simple yes or no, because we were evaluating different behaviours while using the same label.
We identified two common interpretations:
Reactive engagement: Employees wait for tasks or actively seek them from their manager. Once they complete a task, they ask for the next one.
Proactive engagement: Employees take initiative, challenge the status quo, and look for ways to improve processes. They raise emerging risks, suggest improvements, and take ownership within agreed boundaries.
I prefer the proactive definition, but that preference is not the main lesson. A manager using the proactive definition may call a reliable task-follower disengaged. The employee may be surprised: from their perspective, they complete every assignment and regularly ask for more.
Before assessing someone’s engagement, I now try to describe the behaviour I expect instead of using the abstract label. Do I expect the person to complete agreed work reliably? Raise risks early? Propose improvements? Challenge priorities? Take responsibility for a result without being prompted?
The label also cannot tell you why a behaviour is missing. A person may lack context, capacity, or permission to act. Check those conditions before treating initiative as a personality trait.
That creates a fairer conversation. First agree on what engagement looks like in this team and role. Only then evaluate it—and decide whether anything needs to change.
For the next conversation, make the expectation concrete with FUKO feedback. If you expect more independent action, also clarify what ownership includes.