Leading the Unmotivated to Success

How to lead through inconsistency, disengagement, and tough calls

You know the cycle.

You coach them. You clarify expectations. You remind them (again) what “doing the job” actually means. And for a couple of weeks, they get it together. They show up. They follow through. Maybe they even impress you a little.

And then...they backslide.

You’re not dealing with someone who’s brand new. Or unskilled. Or even intentionally defiant. These are often good people. Folks who are technically solid but just don’t seem to care enough to stay consistent. You’ve tried job enrichment. Expansion. One-on-ones. Clear feedback. And still, here you are, stuck in the same loop again.

Meanwhile, the team notices.

They’re covering shifts, chasing down tasks that weren’t done, and quietly growing resentful. You start getting side-channel complaints. Not about personality, but about performance. And that’s when it really starts to wear on you as a leader.

It’s not just annoying—it’s exhausting.

According to Gallup, only 21% of employees globally are considered fully engaged at work. That means the other 79% are somewhere between coasting and checked out. And in the U.S. alone, disengaged employees are estimated to cost companies between $450 and $550 billion each year. Not because they’re disruptive, but because they’re disconnected. Unmotivated.

And when you’re the one leading that team? You start to feel it.
The time drain. The energy drain. The emotional toll of putting in effort, again and again, with people who just can’t seem to hold the line. You begin to wonder: Is it me? Am I missing something? Am I enabling this?

This article isn’t a vent session even though it probably feels good just to hear someone say all this out loud. It’s a look at what’s really going on behind the scenes of chronic underperformance. We’re going to talk about:

• The difference between motivation and discipline

• How to keep people engaged without lowering the bar

• What to do when personal issues might be affecting performance

• How to support peers who are stuck picking up the slack

• And when it’s time to stop coaching... and make a hard call

You’re not a bad leader for being tired. You’re a human one.

And the truth is, leadership gets real when motivation wears off. That’s when your next steps matter most.

MOTIVATION VS DISCIPLINE

Let’s be honest, motivation is a great place to start, but a terrible place to park. It shows up strong on a Monday, fades by Wednesday, and disappears completely by the time someone’s asked to do the boring but necessary parts of their job.

And yet, so many leaders spend their energy trying to motivate people into consistency.

But here’s the truth: if someone only performs when they feel motivated, that’s not a work ethic. That’s a mood.

What we need to be talking about instead is discipline. Motivation is a feeling. Discipline is a decision.

Motivation might get you started. But discipline is what carries you when that initial energy disappears. It's what separates someone who shows up when it’s convenient from someone who shows up because it’s their responsibility.

“Motivation … is the driving force that enables you to make choices about how you want to direct finite resources such as your time, energy and attention.” - Sarah Liza Provenzano

And no, discipline isn’t about being rigid or robotic. It’s about consistency. It’s about being someone others can count on, regardless of how the day feels. As a leader, you can’t build your team around how inspired everyone is. You have to build it around what they consistently do.

Researchers call this kind of sustained effort “self-determination.” A fancy way of saying people are more likely to stay engaged when they feel ownership, confidence, and connection in their work. But even when those boxes are checked, some people still won’t follow through unless they’re being closely managed.

That’s when coaching starts to hit its limits.

You can provide support. You can create clarity. You can lead with empathy. But if someone refuses to carry their own weight, no amount of motivation will fix it. And that’s a hard thing to admit as a leader. Especially when you’ve invested time and energy into someone’s growth.

Even with all the right conditions in place, some people won’t develop the discipline to follow through. And that’s where leadership gets hard. Because building a strong culture means you can’t carry someone forever.

CREATING AN ENGAGED TEAM WITH ACCOUNTABILITY

So how do you create a culture that supports your team without lowering the bar for the one or two people who won’t carry their weight?

It starts with a mindset shift: engagement and accountability are not opposites. They’re partners. And when you lean too far into one without the other, things start to unravel.

If you focus only on engagement like team bonding, recognition, and positivity, you might create a workplace where everyone feels good, but the work suffers. If you focus only on accountability, you risk burning people out or creating a fear-based culture.

But together? Engagement and accountability can reinforce each other.

Let’s break it down.

Engagement isn’t about fucking pizza parties.

Going back to that Gallup survey, only 21% of employees are actively engaged at work. And they found that 70% of the variation in team engagement comes down to the manager. That means your influence matters. A lot.

And while we often think engagement means flashy rewards or morale boosters, the truth is much simpler. People are more likely to engage when:

• They know what’s expected of them.

• They have the tools to do their job well.

• They feel like their work matters.

• They feel seen.

That starts with the basics: role clarity, meaningful feedback, and consistent leadership.

Accountability is leadership.

Somewhere along the way, we turned “accountability” into a bad word. But real accountability isn’t about punishment. It’s about alignment. It’s about helping people follow through on what they’ve committed to and making it clear that performance matters.

That might look like:

• Expectations that are written down, not just implied.

• Check-ins that focus on outcomes, not just effort.

• Follow-through when things go off track. Not reactions that come weeks later, but in the moment.

• Consistent recognition for the people who quietly do their job every day and not just the ones who bounce back after dropping the ball.

When you do that, you stop creating a culture where inconsistency is tolerated. And that matters because people are always watching. When your team sees that underperformance is quietly ignored, it chips away at trust. It sends the message that doing your job well is optional. And over time, that message costs you your best people.

You don’t have to lead with fear to build accountability.

But you do have to be honest. You have to be willing to say, “This isn’t working,” and to invite people into a conversation about how to fix it or whether they even want to.

Because if someone can’t or won’t take ownership, the rest of your team ends up carrying the weight. And eventually, they’ll carry it right out the door.

LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT BEING HUMAN

Not every performance issue is about laziness.

Sometimes, it’s personal. Stress at home. Mental health struggles. Burnout. A season of grief. Financial pressure. Feeling stuck in the wrong role. Or just plain exhaustion from trying to keep up with life.

You won’t always know what’s going on behind the scenes. And even if your employee never tells you the full story, you can often feel it. The energy drops. The communication slips. The spark fades. And suddenly the person who used to be solid is now… just kind of surviving.

This is where leadership gets messy.

Because we’re human too. And if you’ve ever had to lead while walking through your own personal crisis, you know what it’s like to carry a job while your heart and mind are somewhere else. You know what it’s like to feel like you’re barely holding it together and still trying to show up.

So we extend grace. And we should.

But grace doesn’t mean we stop expecting people to do their jobs.

This is the tightrope: compassion without compromise.

You can be empathetic. You can be supportive. You can offer flexibility where it makes sense. But you still need to hold the line. Because if you lower the standard for one person, it eventually affects everyone around them.

So how do you lead through this?

You start by asking the right kind of questions.

Not “Why are you falling behind?” but “What support do you need to be successful right now?”

Not “Do you still want this job?” but “Is there anything making it hard for you to stay engaged with the work?”

Sometimes those questions open the door to an honest conversation. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, your job is to hold space without carrying the whole weight.

That might mean:

• Reminding your team about EAP resources or mental health support through your organization.

• Exploring flexible scheduling or workload redistribution temporarily—with a plan to revisit it.

• Letting someone step back into a simpler role for a season, if that’s an option.

• Or just making it clear: “I care about you as a person. And I also need to see consistent follow-through in your role.”

You don’t have to solve their personal problems. That’s not your job.
But you do have a responsibility to lead your team and that means recognizing when personal issues are starting to affect collective performance.

Support doesn’t always mean saying yes.

Sometimes it means creating enough psychological safety that someone can admit they’re struggling. And sometimes it means gently, but firmly, reminding them that their behavior still has consequences, even if the reasons behind it are understandable.

That’s leadership. It’s staying soft enough to see the human in front of you, but strong enough to protect the team behind you.

HOW TO LEAD WHEN YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS

Let’s talk to the people who aren’t in charge but are still doing double duty.

You’re not the supervisor. You’re not the decision-maker. But somehow, you’ve found yourself carrying the load for a teammate who just won’t pull theirs. And if you’re honest, you’re tired. You’re frustrated. And maybe, on the bad days, you’re starting to wonder why you even bother trying so hard.

If that’s you, let’s start here: It’s okay to be frustrated.

You’re not overreacting. You’re not being petty. You’re noticing something real, and you’re feeling the weight of someone else’s inconsistency. That’s not drama. That’s reality.

But here’s what you need to know: You can lead from where you are without becoming a doormat or a martyr.

Here’s how:

1. Set clear agreements.
If you’re sharing tasks with a teammate who tends to fall short, try to create clear peer-to-peer agreements. Not assumptions. Not “I thought you had it.” Real, documented ownership. “I’ll take the intake calls; you handle follow-ups by end of day. Cool?”

The clearer you are up front, the easier it is to spot when something’s not working.

2. Use “I” language if you give feedback.
If you feel comfortable addressing it directly, avoid blame language. Try something like: “I’ve noticed a few tasks have been falling through, and I’ve had to step in more than usual. It’s starting to affect my workload and deadlines.”
You’re not accusing. You’re being honest about impact.

3. Loop in your leader before resentment builds.
You’re not tattling. You’re advocating for yourself and for the team. If a pattern of underperformance is affecting your work, your manager needs to know. Bring it up early, while it’s still manageable.
Try framing it like: “I want to make sure we’re all aligned, but I’ve noticed a pattern I think we should talk about.”

4. Don’t take over.
This one’s tough, especially if you’re someone who values reliability. But rescuing a teammate by silently doing their job doesn’t help anyone—not them, not you, and not the leader trying to assess the real situation.

You're not helping by making it look like everything’s fine. You’re enabling.

5. Protect your boundaries.
Being a good teammate doesn’t mean being the backup plan for someone else’s poor performance. Show up fully for your role. Support where it makes sense. But don’t shrink your standards to accommodate someone else’s shortcuts.

The truth is, teams rise or fall on collective ownership. And while you may not be the one in charge, your voice matters. You have every right to expect consistency, respect, and shared accountability. And you’re allowed to speak up. To speak up not just for your own well-being, but for the health of the team.

So no, you’re not crazy for being frustrated. And no, you don’t have to just “deal with it.”

You can lead, right where you are by staying clear, honest, and grounded.

THE MAKING THE HARD DECISION

There comes a point, after the coaching, the clarity, the compassion, the tough conversations, and the second chances, where you have to ask the hard question:

Is this still the right fit?

It’s the question most leaders don’t want to face, especially when you like the person. When you’ve seen their potential. When you’ve invested time, energy, and hope into their growth. When you’ve bent over backward trying to meet them halfway, only to realize…they never planned to walk the rest.

And still you hesitate.

Because at times, firing someone doesn’t just feel like a business decision. It feels personal. It feels like giving up. It feels like failure. But here’s the truth:

Letting someone go doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’re leading.

There is nothing noble about letting one person drain the energy, trust, and morale of an entire team. At some point, it’s not about them and it becomes about everyone else. The ones who are showing up. The ones who care. The ones who’ve been quietly holding it together while you try to coach someone who clearly doesn’t want to be there.

“They’re a good person” isn’t enough.

Good people can still be a bad fit. Good people can still erode culture by consistently underperforming. Good people can still refuse to take ownership. And keeping them around “just in case they improve” is how you lose the great people who already have.

If you’ve:

• Been clear,

• Been consistent,

• Offered support,

• Given them space to step up...

And nothing’s changed?

That’s your answer.

You don’t need another conversation. You need a decision.

Because your job isn’t to drag people across the finish line. Your job is to build a team that can run the race together.

And sometimes, the most respectful thing you can do, for them and for the rest of your team, is to end it. To let them go find a place where the expectations match their output. To release them from a role they clearly aren’t willing to own. To stop making it work when it isn’t.

It won’t feel good. But it will feel right.

And afterward, you’ll notice something: The team will breathe again. The energy will shift. The trust will come back. Because you showed them that standards matter. That accountability matters. That they matter.

And that’s leadership. Not the easy kind. The real kind.

ITS NOT AN EASY LIFE

There’s nothing easy about leading through underperformance. It wears on your patience, tests your boundaries, and pushes you to question what kind of leader you want to be.

But if there’s one truth that cuts through all of it, it’s this: You can care deeply about people and still hold them accountable.

You can lead with empathy and still make hard decisions.
You can do everything “right” and still have someone choose not to show up.

So whether you’re coaching, redirecting, setting boundaries, or making the call to let go, don’t forget that your standards for your team are worth protecting.

And your team deserves a culture where effort matters.

That starts with you to ensure you don’t have a team sleeping behind you.

Ever had to carry a teammate who just wouldn’t step up? What did you do—and what do you wish you had done differently?”

“Where do you draw the line between giving grace and holding someone accountable? I’d love to hear how you’ve navigated that tension.