The Power of Employee Well-Being by Mark C. Crowley Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams
What's it about?
The Power of Employee Well-Being (2025) argues for abandoning engagement metrics in favor of addressing workers’ full spectrum of needs, from emotional health to autonomy. This shift to well-being creates workplaces where both people and performance genuinely thrive, delivering results that engagement programs could never achieve.
Back in 2013, Gallup dropped a bombshell: only 30 percent of American employees felt genuinely engaged at work. For HR professionals, this was a wake-u p call – a clear signal that disengagement was quietly eroding productivity and inflating costs across organizations.
Fast forward over a decade, and you’d expect dramatic improvement. Engagement is now firmly on the corporate agenda, a bonafide buzzword. Yet the latest figures tell a sobering story: engagement rates have barely budged, hovering around 31 percent.
Why the stagnation? Too often, engagement has become a box-ticking exercise – think perfunctory surveys that generate metrics but little meaningful change. The truth is, asking employees to be more “engaged” misses the point entirely.
What’s needed is a fundamental shift from measuring engagement to nurturing well-being. When organizations support the whole person – their health, happiness, sense of belonging, and professional growth – the results speak for themselves. This approach isn’t just more humane; it’s more effective.
Here’s a question worth pondering: When did emotions get such a bad reputation in the workplace?
Wind the clock back to ancient Greece, and you’ll find Plato arguing that emotions and logic worked in harmony – two essential forces powering human behavior and decision-making. But this balanced view didn’t last. Over time, reason and emotion became separated, with logic elevated to the superior position. Descartes famously declared “I think, therefore I am” – not “I feel, therefore I am” – effectively sidelining emotions as unreliable and irrelevant to our existence.
Conventional office culture has largely followed Descartes’ lead. Reason and logic reign supreme, while emotions are treated as distractions to be managed, suppressed, or left at the door. Feelings, in this view, have no place in professional decision-making.
Except research tells us something quite different. Scientists at the Salk Institute have demonstrated that even when we believe we’re being entirely rational, our feelings are quietly steering our thought processes. Researchers at Yale go further, estimating that up to 95 percent of our decisions and behaviors are driven by emotion alone.
This matters enormously in the workplace. What truly drives productivity, loyalty, well-being, and commitment isn’t how managers make employees think – it’s how they make them feel. Emotions aren’t just background noise; they’re valuable data. Stress, anxiety, fear, and worry corrode well-being and performance. Happiness, confidence, and a sense of importance do the opposite – they inspire and energize.
So how do managers cultivate these powerful, positive emotions? By caring about employees as whole people. This means creating opportunities for growth and development, offering coaching and support, building confidence, and showing employees how their work creates genuine impact.
When organizations finally embrace emotions as central to workplace success, they unlock well-being’s true transformative power.
Here’s a truth that sounds obvious but gets forgotten surprisingly often: employees aren’t robots! They’re humans – interesting, messy, imperfect, gloriously unique humans. The degree to which managers can embrace this shared humanity, messiness and all, directly determines how well they can inspire genuine well-being.
In theory, everyone knows that colleagues arrive with different perspectives and backgrounds. In practice? One of the biggest frustrations managers face is when others behave in ways they don’t agree with, find appropriate, or frankly understand. There’s a reason for this disconnect. Despite the old saying that opposites attract, psychologists have found we’re actually hardwired to gravitate toward like-minded people. Overriding that impulse becomes essential when working in diverse teams.
And diverse they are. Employees bring vastly different life experiences, cultural backgrounds, personality types – some introverted, others extroverted – plus varying life stages and aspirations. The key isn’t just tolerating these differences but actively embracing them. When managers tap into diverse perspectives, they unlock creative problem-solving and innovation that homogeneous thinking simply can’t match.
Remember too that everyone has a life beyond the office walls. Perhaps someone’s navigating a divorce, supporting a child struggling at school, or caring for an elderly parent. Old-school corporate culture insisted people leave their troubles at the door. But showing compassion, expressing real interest, and making appropriate accommodations proves far more effective for fostering well-being and loyalty.
People also aren’t predictable. There’s a lingering misconception that the workplace operates on pure rational objectivity. But employees don’t just bring skills, ambition, and dedication to their desks. They bring fears, misperceptions, past experiences, and sensitivities – strong emotions that can sometimes hijack even the most level-headed professional. Understanding that workplace behavior isn’t solely a response to work situations, but also reflects accumulated emotional baggage, transforms how managers lead.
Try managing humans as robots, and progress stalls. Accept and embrace your team’s full humanity, and watch well-being flourish.
Picture a typical manager’s day. They probably have reports to write, budgets to oversee, key stakeholders to placate, and roughly a thousand unread emails lurking in their inbox. In this chaos, ensuring that team members feel deeply connected to each other probably sits somewhere near the bottom of the to-do list – if it’s written there at all. But here’s why it deserves top billing.
A 2022 Gartner survey found something striking: when organizations intentionally help employees build relationships, those employees are five times more likely to be on a high-performing team and 12 times more likely to feel connected with their colleagues. Put simply, close relational bonds – and the feeling that the organization genuinely values these connections – are directly tied to employee health and happiness.
The COVID-19 pandemic weakened these bonds considerably, and they need attention now more than ever. Thirty years ago, nearly half of all Americans had a best friend at work. Today? Only one in five. This workplace trend mirrors broader social patterns – rising isolation, declining community participation, and fewer spontaneous interactions. We’re more digitally connected yet somehow more alone.
Why does this matter so much? Because belonging – that feeling of being part of a larger group we’re aligned with, where we make an important contribution – is fundamental to human flourishing. Social support consistently emerges as the greatest predictor of happiness and well-being, and a crucial source of resilience when times get tough.
So what can managers do? Find creative ways to bring teams together, beyond the standard video call. Embed meetings and gatherings with small rituals – perhaps opening check-ins, shared celebrations, or closing reflections. Sociologist Émile Durkheim called this “social electricity”: the energy generated when people come together in meaningful, repeated ways that strengthen collective bonds.
When managers prioritize connection, they’re not adding another task to an impossible list – they’re investing in the foundation that makes everything else possible.
Relationship expert Dr. John Gottman conducted a landmark study on what predicts whether married couples will stay together. His most intriguing finding? The ratio of positive to negative interactions. Thriving couples maintained a positivity ratio of roughly 5:1 – for every negative interaction, there were five positive ones.
What counted as positive? Showing genuine interest in a partner, maintaining regular open communication, listening attentively, praising and expressing appreciation, and working collaboratively on shared projects. Simple behaviors, yes – but powerful ones.
Gottman’s magic 5:1 ratio has since been found to apply to workplace relationships too. The challenge? Much of work involves inherently stressful elements – tight deadlines, difficult conversations about performance, demanding tasks, and necessary policy enforcement. But here’s the thing: these workplace realities aren’t incompatible with being a positive force in leadership.
Managers can intentionally increase positive interactions by adopting Gottman-inspired strategies. Start meetings by acknowledging recent wins, however small. Make time for brief one-on-ones focused purely on listening to employees’ ideas and concerns. Express specific, genuine appreciation – not generic praise, but recognition of particular contributions. Celebrate milestones and progress, not just final outcomes. Ask about employees’ lives outside work and remember the details. These moments accumulate.
Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden and build” model explains why this matters so much. Positive emotions don’t just feel good in the moment – they fundamentally expand our thinking and build lasting resources. When employees experience positivity, their creativity increases, they problem-solve more effectively, and they build stronger relationships. This creates an upward spiral: positivity generates more positivity, which generates better performance, which creates more opportunities for positive recognition.
The workplace will always contain stress and challenge. That’s not going away. But when managers consciously cultivate a 5:1 positivity ratio, they create an environment where employees don’t just survive the difficulties – they genuinely thrive despite them.
Curious leaders don’t just ask better questions – they build stronger teams, spark innovation, and create workplaces where employees genuinely thrive. When managers embrace curiosity, they signal that learning matters more than always having the right answer, and that openness trumps rigid certainty. The payoff? Higher engagement, better problem-solving, and a culture where well-being naturally flourishes.
We all enter the world extraordinarily curious. It’s what allows us to learn, grow, develop, even survive. When leaders embrace lifelong learning, question the status quo, and stay open to change, they become not only more innovative but also more adaptable and emotionally intelligent – essential qualities for effective leadership in complex environments.
Yet somewhere along the way, many adults become actively anti-curious. What transforms questioning children into uncurious adults?
Several forces conspire against curiosity. Our adult egos prefer feeling knowledgeable and successful to admitting uncertainty. Confirmation bias keeps us seeking information that reinforces existing beliefs rather than challenging them. There’s also the fear of appearing “stupid” – particularly acute in professional settings where competence feels like currency. Admitting you don’t know something can feel dangerously vulnerable.
But curiosity requires exactly that vulnerability. It means listening attentively, which research suggests most people struggle with dramatically. Studies show we listen with only about 25 percent effectiveness – distracted by devices, preoccupied with formulating our own responses, more concerned with sharing our perspective than absorbing someone else’s.
Committing to curiosity means committing to wholehearted listening. Not just telling employees their perspective is valued, but actively showing them through sustained attention and actual engagement with their ideas.
When people feel truly heard, they recognize their perspective matters. This contributes to a culture of curiosity, where employees feel safe participating actively in discussions, projects, and problem-solving. They take intellectual risks, share unconventional ideas, and bring their full creative capacity to work.
Curious leadership isn’t a soft skill – it’s the foundation for building workplaces where well-being and performance rise together.
It’s no secret that managers and C-suite executives earn the most money and enjoy the best perks. The downside? More stress – or so conventional wisdom would have us believe.
Sir Michael Marmot, professor of public health at UCL, challenges this assumption entirely. In an epic multi-decade study, he discovered something counterintuitive: the lower someone’s rank, the higher their stress level. How could this possibly be true? After all, managers carry more ownership, more responsibility, more at stake. Surely that creates more stress?
Marmot’s crucial finding was this – lower-ranked workers had the least control over their workdays and tasks. And lack of control, it turns out, is profoundly stressful. More ownership, counterintuitively, led to less stress, not more.
The implications for employee well-being are striking. When workers gain empowerment, flexibility, autonomy, and responsibility, their well-being improves drastically. Yet many managers remain reluctant to loosen their grip, fearing that without direct control, employees will underperform or let things slip.
This fear is understandable but easily mitigated with the right approach.
Start by communicating clear expectations. When employees understand what success looks like, they can self-direct effectively. Ambiguity creates anxiety; clarity creates confidence.
Learn to trust, perhaps building gradually. Begin by delegating smaller tasks, then expand responsibility as a relationship of mutual trust develops on both sides. Trust isn’t given blindly – it’s earned and extended incrementally.
Measure performance and share metrics openly. Transparency about how work is evaluated removes uncertainty and empowers employees to self-correct and improve.
Be flexible about when and where employees do their work. Rigid schedules and locations often serve managerial convenience rather than productivity or well-being.
Finally, schedule regular weekly check-ins. These aren’t about micromanaging but maintaining connection, offering support, and ensuring alignment.
When managers loosen their grip strategically, they don’t lose control – and they gain something far more valuable: a team of empowered, lower-stress employees who perform better and feel more invested in their work.
In the early 2000s, Microsoft implemented a performance management system called stack ranking. Here’s how it worked: managers were forced to rank employees against each other, with a fixed percentage destined for the bottom – regardless of actual performance. The result? A brutal internal competition where colleagues became rivals. Teamwork disintegrated as employees sabotaged each other to avoid the dreaded bottom ranking. Talented people fled in droves. Microsoft had inadvertently created the opposite of a high-performing team.
The lesson? “We” beats “me” every time.
When teams are highly cooperative, other-oriented, and genuinely altruistic, both they and their organizations perform demonstrably better. Yet many workplaces still cling to star performer cultures that pit employees against each other in zero-sum competitions for recognition, bonuses, and promotions.
There’s a better way. Rather than celebrating individual stars while leaving others in the shadows, focus on collective achievement. Address underperformers not through public shaming or forced rankings, but through coaching, support, and genuine development opportunities. When someone struggles, the question shouldn’t be “How do we rank them lower?” but “How do we help them improve?”
This collaborative approach isn’t just nice, it’s deeply rooted in human nature. Collaboration and mutual support are wired into our DNA – evolutionary instincts that allowed our ancestors to survive and thrive. Humans succeeded not as isolated individuals but as cooperative groups who shared resources, protected each other, and solved problems collectively.
When people work in groups that feel familial – where psychological safety and genuine care exist – something remarkable happens. They take intellectual risks, knowing failure won’t mean isolation. They innovate freely, building on each other’s ideas rather than hoarding their own. They make themselves vulnerable, admitting mistakes and asking for help without fear of judgment.
Microsoft eventually abandoned stack ranking, recognizing the damage it caused. The shift toward collaborative, supportive cultures isn’t just ethically sound – it’s what unlocks teams’ full potential and drives sustainable organizational success.
In this lesson to The Power of Employee Well-Being by Mark C. Crowley, you’ve learned that the shift from measuring employee engagement to nurturing holistic well-being represents a fundamental reimagining of workplace culture. This means embracing employees’ full humanity – their emotions, diverse perspectives, need for connection, and desire for autonomy – rather than treating them as rational actors to be managed and measured. When organizations prioritize positive interactions, curious leadership, empowerment, and collaboration over competition, they create environments where people don’t just perform better but truly thrive.
The Power of Employee Well-Being (2025) argues for abandoning engagement metrics in favor of addressing workers’ full spectrum of needs, from emotional health to autonomy. This shift to well-being creates workplaces where both people and performance genuinely thrive, delivering results that engagement programs could never achieve.
Back in 2013, Gallup dropped a bombshell: only 30 percent of American employees felt genuinely engaged at work. For HR professionals, this was a wake-u p call – a clear signal that disengagement was quietly eroding productivity and inflating costs across organizations.
Fast forward over a decade, and you’d expect dramatic improvement. Engagement is now firmly on the corporate agenda, a bonafide buzzword. Yet the latest figures tell a sobering story: engagement rates have barely budged, hovering around 31 percent.
Why the stagnation? Too often, engagement has become a box-ticking exercise – think perfunctory surveys that generate metrics but little meaningful change. The truth is, asking employees to be more “engaged” misses the point entirely.
What’s needed is a fundamental shift from measuring engagement to nurturing well-being. When organizations support the whole person – their health, happiness, sense of belonging, and professional growth – the results speak for themselves. This approach isn’t just more humane; it’s more effective.
Here’s a question worth pondering: When did emotions get such a bad reputation in the workplace?
Wind the clock back to ancient Greece, and you’ll find Plato arguing that emotions and logic worked in harmony – two essential forces powering human behavior and decision-making. But this balanced view didn’t last. Over time, reason and emotion became separated, with logic elevated to the superior position. Descartes famously declared “I think, therefore I am” – not “I feel, therefore I am” – effectively sidelining emotions as unreliable and irrelevant to our existence.
Conventional office culture has largely followed Descartes’ lead. Reason and logic reign supreme, while emotions are treated as distractions to be managed, suppressed, or left at the door. Feelings, in this view, have no place in professional decision-making.
Except research tells us something quite different. Scientists at the Salk Institute have demonstrated that even when we believe we’re being entirely rational, our feelings are quietly steering our thought processes. Researchers at Yale go further, estimating that up to 95 percent of our decisions and behaviors are driven by emotion alone.
This matters enormously in the workplace. What truly drives productivity, loyalty, well-being, and commitment isn’t how managers make employees think – it’s how they make them feel. Emotions aren’t just background noise; they’re valuable data. Stress, anxiety, fear, and worry corrode well-being and performance. Happiness, confidence, and a sense of importance do the opposite – they inspire and energize.
So how do managers cultivate these powerful, positive emotions? By caring about employees as whole people. This means creating opportunities for growth and development, offering coaching and support, building confidence, and showing employees how their work creates genuine impact.
When organizations finally embrace emotions as central to workplace success, they unlock well-being’s true transformative power.
Here’s a truth that sounds obvious but gets forgotten surprisingly often: employees aren’t robots! They’re humans – interesting, messy, imperfect, gloriously unique humans. The degree to which managers can embrace this shared humanity, messiness and all, directly determines how well they can inspire genuine well-being.
In theory, everyone knows that colleagues arrive with different perspectives and backgrounds. In practice? One of the biggest frustrations managers face is when others behave in ways they don’t agree with, find appropriate, or frankly understand. There’s a reason for this disconnect. Despite the old saying that opposites attract, psychologists have found we’re actually hardwired to gravitate toward like-minded people. Overriding that impulse becomes essential when working in diverse teams.
And diverse they are. Employees bring vastly different life experiences, cultural backgrounds, personality types – some introverted, others extroverted – plus varying life stages and aspirations. The key isn’t just tolerating these differences but actively embracing them. When managers tap into diverse perspectives, they unlock creative problem-solving and innovation that homogeneous thinking simply can’t match.
Remember too that everyone has a life beyond the office walls. Perhaps someone’s navigating a divorce, supporting a child struggling at school, or caring for an elderly parent. Old-school corporate culture insisted people leave their troubles at the door. But showing compassion, expressing real interest, and making appropriate accommodations proves far more effective for fostering well-being and loyalty.
People also aren’t predictable. There’s a lingering misconception that the workplace operates on pure rational objectivity. But employees don’t just bring skills, ambition, and dedication to their desks. They bring fears, misperceptions, past experiences, and sensitivities – strong emotions that can sometimes hijack even the most level-headed professional. Understanding that workplace behavior isn’t solely a response to work situations, but also reflects accumulated emotional baggage, transforms how managers lead.
Try managing humans as robots, and progress stalls. Accept and embrace your team’s full humanity, and watch well-being flourish.
Picture a typical manager’s day. They probably have reports to write, budgets to oversee, key stakeholders to placate, and roughly a thousand unread emails lurking in their inbox. In this chaos, ensuring that team members feel deeply connected to each other probably sits somewhere near the bottom of the to-do list – if it’s written there at all. But here’s why it deserves top billing.
A 2022 Gartner survey found something striking: when organizations intentionally help employees build relationships, those employees are five times more likely to be on a high-performing team and 12 times more likely to feel connected with their colleagues. Put simply, close relational bonds – and the feeling that the organization genuinely values these connections – are directly tied to employee health and happiness.
The COVID-19 pandemic weakened these bonds considerably, and they need attention now more than ever. Thirty years ago, nearly half of all Americans had a best friend at work. Today? Only one in five. This workplace trend mirrors broader social patterns – rising isolation, declining community participation, and fewer spontaneous interactions. We’re more digitally connected yet somehow more alone.
Why does this matter so much? Because belonging – that feeling of being part of a larger group we’re aligned with, where we make an important contribution – is fundamental to human flourishing. Social support consistently emerges as the greatest predictor of happiness and well-being, and a crucial source of resilience when times get tough.
So what can managers do? Find creative ways to bring teams together, beyond the standard video call. Embed meetings and gatherings with small rituals – perhaps opening check-ins, shared celebrations, or closing reflections. Sociologist Émile Durkheim called this “social electricity”: the energy generated when people come together in meaningful, repeated ways that strengthen collective bonds.
When managers prioritize connection, they’re not adding another task to an impossible list – they’re investing in the foundation that makes everything else possible.
Relationship expert Dr. John Gottman conducted a landmark study on what predicts whether married couples will stay together. His most intriguing finding? The ratio of positive to negative interactions. Thriving couples maintained a positivity ratio of roughly 5:1 – for every negative interaction, there were five positive ones.
What counted as positive? Showing genuine interest in a partner, maintaining regular open communication, listening attentively, praising and expressing appreciation, and working collaboratively on shared projects. Simple behaviors, yes – but powerful ones.
Gottman’s magic 5:1 ratio has since been found to apply to workplace relationships too. The challenge? Much of work involves inherently stressful elements – tight deadlines, difficult conversations about performance, demanding tasks, and necessary policy enforcement. But here’s the thing: these workplace realities aren’t incompatible with being a positive force in leadership.
Managers can intentionally increase positive interactions by adopting Gottman-inspired strategies. Start meetings by acknowledging recent wins, however small. Make time for brief one-on-ones focused purely on listening to employees’ ideas and concerns. Express specific, genuine appreciation – not generic praise, but recognition of particular contributions. Celebrate milestones and progress, not just final outcomes. Ask about employees’ lives outside work and remember the details. These moments accumulate.
Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden and build” model explains why this matters so much. Positive emotions don’t just feel good in the moment – they fundamentally expand our thinking and build lasting resources. When employees experience positivity, their creativity increases, they problem-solve more effectively, and they build stronger relationships. This creates an upward spiral: positivity generates more positivity, which generates better performance, which creates more opportunities for positive recognition.
The workplace will always contain stress and challenge. That’s not going away. But when managers consciously cultivate a 5:1 positivity ratio, they create an environment where employees don’t just survive the difficulties – they genuinely thrive despite them.
Curious leaders don’t just ask better questions – they build stronger teams, spark innovation, and create workplaces where employees genuinely thrive. When managers embrace curiosity, they signal that learning matters more than always having the right answer, and that openness trumps rigid certainty. The payoff? Higher engagement, better problem-solving, and a culture where well-being naturally flourishes.
We all enter the world extraordinarily curious. It’s what allows us to learn, grow, develop, even survive. When leaders embrace lifelong learning, question the status quo, and stay open to change, they become not only more innovative but also more adaptable and emotionally intelligent – essential qualities for effective leadership in complex environments.
Yet somewhere along the way, many adults become actively anti-curious. What transforms questioning children into uncurious adults?
Several forces conspire against curiosity. Our adult egos prefer feeling knowledgeable and successful to admitting uncertainty. Confirmation bias keeps us seeking information that reinforces existing beliefs rather than challenging them. There’s also the fear of appearing “stupid” – particularly acute in professional settings where competence feels like currency. Admitting you don’t know something can feel dangerously vulnerable.
But curiosity requires exactly that vulnerability. It means listening attentively, which research suggests most people struggle with dramatically. Studies show we listen with only about 25 percent effectiveness – distracted by devices, preoccupied with formulating our own responses, more concerned with sharing our perspective than absorbing someone else’s.
Committing to curiosity means committing to wholehearted listening. Not just telling employees their perspective is valued, but actively showing them through sustained attention and actual engagement with their ideas.
When people feel truly heard, they recognize their perspective matters. This contributes to a culture of curiosity, where employees feel safe participating actively in discussions, projects, and problem-solving. They take intellectual risks, share unconventional ideas, and bring their full creative capacity to work.
Curious leadership isn’t a soft skill – it’s the foundation for building workplaces where well-being and performance rise together.
It’s no secret that managers and C-suite executives earn the most money and enjoy the best perks. The downside? More stress – or so conventional wisdom would have us believe.
Sir Michael Marmot, professor of public health at UCL, challenges this assumption entirely. In an epic multi-decade study, he discovered something counterintuitive: the lower someone’s rank, the higher their stress level. How could this possibly be true? After all, managers carry more ownership, more responsibility, more at stake. Surely that creates more stress?
Marmot’s crucial finding was this – lower-ranked workers had the least control over their workdays and tasks. And lack of control, it turns out, is profoundly stressful. More ownership, counterintuitively, led to less stress, not more.
The implications for employee well-being are striking. When workers gain empowerment, flexibility, autonomy, and responsibility, their well-being improves drastically. Yet many managers remain reluctant to loosen their grip, fearing that without direct control, employees will underperform or let things slip.
This fear is understandable but easily mitigated with the right approach.
Start by communicating clear expectations. When employees understand what success looks like, they can self-direct effectively. Ambiguity creates anxiety; clarity creates confidence.
Learn to trust, perhaps building gradually. Begin by delegating smaller tasks, then expand responsibility as a relationship of mutual trust develops on both sides. Trust isn’t given blindly – it’s earned and extended incrementally.
Measure performance and share metrics openly. Transparency about how work is evaluated removes uncertainty and empowers employees to self-correct and improve.
Be flexible about when and where employees do their work. Rigid schedules and locations often serve managerial convenience rather than productivity or well-being.
Finally, schedule regular weekly check-ins. These aren’t about micromanaging but maintaining connection, offering support, and ensuring alignment.
When managers loosen their grip strategically, they don’t lose control – and they gain something far more valuable: a team of empowered, lower-stress employees who perform better and feel more invested in their work.
In the early 2000s, Microsoft implemented a performance management system called stack ranking. Here’s how it worked: managers were forced to rank employees against each other, with a fixed percentage destined for the bottom – regardless of actual performance. The result? A brutal internal competition where colleagues became rivals. Teamwork disintegrated as employees sabotaged each other to avoid the dreaded bottom ranking. Talented people fled in droves. Microsoft had inadvertently created the opposite of a high-performing team.
The lesson? “We” beats “me” every time.
When teams are highly cooperative, other-oriented, and genuinely altruistic, both they and their organizations perform demonstrably better. Yet many workplaces still cling to star performer cultures that pit employees against each other in zero-sum competitions for recognition, bonuses, and promotions.
There’s a better way. Rather than celebrating individual stars while leaving others in the shadows, focus on collective achievement. Address underperformers not through public shaming or forced rankings, but through coaching, support, and genuine development opportunities. When someone struggles, the question shouldn’t be “How do we rank them lower?” but “How do we help them improve?”
This collaborative approach isn’t just nice, it’s deeply rooted in human nature. Collaboration and mutual support are wired into our DNA – evolutionary instincts that allowed our ancestors to survive and thrive. Humans succeeded not as isolated individuals but as cooperative groups who shared resources, protected each other, and solved problems collectively.
When people work in groups that feel familial – where psychological safety and genuine care exist – something remarkable happens. They take intellectual risks, knowing failure won’t mean isolation. They innovate freely, building on each other’s ideas rather than hoarding their own. They make themselves vulnerable, admitting mistakes and asking for help without fear of judgment.
Microsoft eventually abandoned stack ranking, recognizing the damage it caused. The shift toward collaborative, supportive cultures isn’t just ethically sound – it’s what unlocks teams’ full potential and drives sustainable organizational success.
In this lesson to The Power of Employee Well-Being by Mark C. Crowley, you’ve learned that the shift from measuring employee engagement to nurturing holistic well-being represents a fundamental reimagining of workplace culture. This means embracing employees’ full humanity – their emotions, diverse perspectives, need for connection, and desire for autonomy – rather than treating them as rational actors to be managed and measured. When organizations prioritize positive interactions, curious leadership, empowerment, and collaboration over competition, they create environments where people don’t just perform better but truly thrive.
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