What We Get Wrong About Motivation

Why disengagement is often misdiagnosed as a motivation problem

If I could pass one insight back to my younger self (and therefore to you, dear reader), it would be this: there is no such thing as a motivation problem.

“Lack of motivation” gets used to explain disengagement in classrooms, workplaces, volunteer organizations, leadership teams, and community projects. The context changes, but the assumption stays the same. When people stop participating, stop producing, or stop following through, motivation is blamed.

That assumption is usually wrong.

For a long time, I accepted it. I read the books on motivation. I attended professional development sessions. I listened to colleagues compare strategies for getting people to care more, work harder, or show up differently. Incentives, consequences, accountability systems, productivity frameworks. I tried them sincerely.

They didn’t work—not because they were useless, but because they were aimed at the wrong problem.

Disengagement as a systems issue, not a personal flaw

What I eventually understood is that disengagement is not a failure of motivation. It’s a failure of integration.

What often gets labeled as laziness or apathy is information we as the leader are meant to pick up on. It’s a signal that someone is not meaningfully connected to the work, the purpose behind it, or the people doing it alongside them. Disengagement shows up when roles are unclear, expectations are vague, learning feels unsafe, or participation feels cosmetic rather than real.

Once I saw disengagement this way, I stopped trying to correct individuals and started examining the systems around them.

We weren’t dealing with unmotivated people. We were dealing with people who had never been fully integrated into the work.

A real-world example of disengagement caused by poor integration

That distinction became clear to me when I was first teaching in Los Angeles. My classroom was technically one large computer lab, but in practice it was divided into two separate rooms. The second room was darker, farther from the center of activity, and easy to overlook.

In the most remote corner of that space, a small group of students spent every class period shopping online for prom dresses. Their attention was consistent. Their focus was sharp. It simply wasn’t directed at the work. It was focused on satin and sequins and—when did prom dresses get so revealing?!

At first, I responded the way many educators and leaders are trained to respond. I redirected behavior. I reminded them of my expectations. I tried incentives and doled out consequences. Nothing changed.

Eventually, I stopped treating disengagement as a behavioral issue and started treating it as a design problem.

How integration increases engagement more effectively than motivation

Instead of pulling people back into the work, I began designing systems that made integration unavoidable. I obviously didn’t know to call it that… I called it retraining. I needed retraining and the leaders I was teaching needed it too. Ownership slowly shifted from me as the enforcer to the group as a whole. Responsibility for onboarding disengaged or disconnected members became part of the culture rather than an extra task.

The focus moved away from compliance and toward leadership.

The very first thing we started with was asking, “Do you know what your assignment is? Do you know how to do that?” My student leaders were shocked to find (as I vividly remember being shocked to learn when I was a first year teacher in the ‘90s) that explaining something just once didn’t necessarily mean the learner connected with the info.

So, we started to focus on how to bring peers into the work, how to sit beside someone and show them how things functioned, and how to coach instead of complain. When someone wasn’t contributing, the response became structural (and instructional) rather than emotional.

The change was noticeable, and it wasn’t driven by enthusiasm, pressure, or charisma. It was driven by clarity and connection.

What disengagement usually signals in teams and organizations

This pattern applies far beyond a classroom. When someone isn’t contributing, the issue is rarely effort or drive. No one wants to fail. The issue is almost always integration.

Disengagement tends to appear when:

• the mission is unclear

• roles are poorly defined

• questions are punished rather than supported

• responsibility is concentrated instead of shared

Proximity to work is not the same thing as ownership of it.

Engagement doesn’t come from motivation. It comes from integration.

Why motivation strategies fail without integration

Many leadership challenges are framed as motivation problems. Teams stall, volunteers fade out, and progress slows, so pressure increases. But most people do not join organizations, projects, or causes intending to underperform.

People want to matter. They want to contribute competently. They want to feel useful.

When that doesn’t happen, it is rarely because they lack motivation. It is because the system failed to make them feel included.

That requires training. Before you look at ways to motivate your team, look at ways to train them.

Nearly every person I once labeled as “doing nothing” was missing something essential: clarity, skill, or context. Motivation was almost never the missing ingredient.

Designing systems that support engagement and ownership

Shifting the focus from motivation to integration changed how I evaluated systems. Expectations had to be explicit. Work had to be modeled rather than simply assigned. Learning had to be normalized rather than treated as a liability. Responsibility had to be shared instead of hoarded.

Motivation is unpredictable. Integration is something that can be intentionally built.

This also changed how I thought about control. Hovering, rescuing, and redoing work may create short-term output, but they undermine long-term ownership. When people are not trusted to struggle, recover, and improve, they do not develop the confidence or authority to lead.

Letting go of micromanagement was not about lowering standards. It was about building systems strong enough to support people as they learned.

Disengagement as a design problem leaders can solve

Back in that divided classroom, nothing changed because of a better speech or a sharper consequence. The shift happened because the structure changed. The work became shared. The path into participation became visible. The expectation of contribution was paired with real support.

Engagement followed.

Disengagement was not a motivation problem. It was a design problem. And design is something leaders can actually change.

If you’re ready to stop chasing motivation and start building systems that help people belong, contribute, and lead, I share more of this work here. This is what Lead With Heart is built on.