Managers need belonging, too

Author: Kathy Callahan

I’ll never forget the last TLC retreat at EnCompass. It was the Fall of 2024, and we were gathering our Team Lead Collaborative (TLC) to share successes across projects, breathe life into our new strategic plan, and have some fun together. The TLC brought together every project lead in the practice, and they were among the most brilliant, dedicated, inspirational, and empathetic human beings I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

Looking back at that retreat, I’m struck by the celebration of good work, the artful sharing of challenges and strategies to address them, the alignment with our values and vision. But most of all, I remember the laughter. The joy. The camaraderie. I remember looking around that room and feeling so, so grateful.

These were the leaders of projects addressing world hunger, democracy, global health, education. These were the leaders serving as trusted advisors to our clients, as supervisors to our beloved staff. These leaders were managers, supervisors, and technical experts.

And these leaders were also supervisees.

They also needed supervisors who appreciated their contributions, helped them envision what was next, and challenged them to grow. They needed leaders who would listen thoughtfully, offer guidance, and help them navigate uncertainty. They needed a thriving team, like the TLC, to serve as a trusted community of practice, to stretch them, to innovate with, to rely on.

We depended on them so much, for everything from our business success to growing our staff. And we owed them so much.

These were the memories that came rushing in this week when I read Gallup’s newest State of the Global Workplace report. Global employee engagement has dropped to a 5-year low, while manager engagement has fallen sharply in recent years. And yet Gallup continues to find that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.

That statistic feels deeply human to me. Because behind it are real people carrying enormous emotional and operational weight every day. People expected to guide teams through uncertainty, cultivate belonging, navigate conflict, deliver results, and somehow remain energized and inspiring through it all.

What Gallup’s findings reinforce is something many of us have experienced firsthand: supervisors shape the emotional climate of organizations. They influence whether people feel connected or isolated, recognized or overlooked, hopeful or depleted.

And supervisors themselves cannot pour endlessly from an empty cup.

One of the most powerful lessons from Appreciative Supervision is that engagement and belonging are cultivated through relationships and conversations. Through the questions supervisors ask. Through whether strengths are noticed. Through whether growth is nurtured. Through whether people feel genuinely seen.

Questions like:
 • “Where did you feel most effective in this work?”
 • “What strengths did you draw on?”
 • “What possibility do you see emerging from this experience?”
 • “What support would help you grow from here?”

Over time, those conversations shape culture far more than most strategic plans ever will.

‍Looking back now, I think part of what made the TLC so special was that it created space for leaders to experience the very things they were trying to create for others: trust, appreciation, growth, challenge, laughter, and community.

And maybe that’s the deeper lesson. If we want engaged workplaces, we have to care for the people carrying the culture every day. ‍ ‍