Full tank in August. Running on empty by September.

How to keep the energy your people came back with, before one disengaged colleague undoes it.

September is the new January. And here in the Gulf, given everything the region has been through, it feels that way more than ever.

POV: You had a wonderful summer. You switched off, you recharged, you topped up the tank properly. The kids had the time of their lives. Somewhere along the way the world started looking a good deal brighter, and you came back thinking: right, I've got this. New season, new energy, let's go.

And then, somewhere in the first hours back at the office, the cold shower arrives.

The meeting that goes nowhere, exactly like it did before the summer. The colleague radiating the same negativity you'd almost forgotten about. The manager who does not notice. And all that carefully built-up energy leaves your body in a matter of minutes.

So if you lead a team, September is not the month to ease back in gently. It is the month to protect the energy your people came back with. And the fastest way to lose it is to leave your actively disengaged untouched.

The ones who drain the room

Not everyone who is disengaged is the same. Some are quietly checked out. The actively disengaged are a different matter. They are not just unproductive. Their negativity spreads faster than a rumour at the coffee machine, and it lands hardest on the people who came back motivated.

Gallup has put the actively disengaged at close to one in five employees worldwide. Enough to undo the goodwill of a whole team if left alone.

In my book I use a simple way of naming what disengagement actually looks like: the spinners, busy and always in motion but with no real direction; the settlers, comfortable and coasting, doing just enough; and the splitters, physically present but mentally already out the door. Most leaders, if they are honest, can put a name to a face within seconds.

The test most leaders avoid

Here is an uncomfortable litmus test. Would you, or your team, feel a quiet sense of relief if a particular person decided to leave?

If the answer is a clear yes, that is your signal to look closer. And what you find underneath changes everything.

Even your best people hit rough patches. A hard merger, an overbearing boss, years without recognition. When there is a real, situational reason behind someone's disengagement, name it and act on it. If they are valuable, pull out every stop to turn it around. That is not a lost cause. That is a good person having a hard season.

Attitude is the other story. When disengagement comes from a sour attitude rather than a circumstance, hoping will not fix it. That calls for a candid conversation, and most of us avoid those. How you hold one well, and how you know when the time for talking is over, is where the real work begins. It is also where I will point you to the book, because it deserves more room than a blog allows.

The part we get wrong

As humans, we hire fast and fire slow. We avoid the hard conversation and quietly hope the situation fixes itself over the quarter, over the year. It rarely does.

Jim Collins called this facing the brutal facts. A toxic team member is one of them. The longer you tolerate it, the more it costs you, usually in the currency of your best people, who notice long before you act. Netflix put it more bluntly: no brilliant jerks. However talented someone is, if their presence drains the room, the talent is not worth the tax.

There is a French saying I keep coming back to: quand les dégoûtés s'en vont, il n'y a que les dégoûtants qui restent. When the disgusted leave, only the disgusting remain. The best people go first. Make sure it never gets that far.

Why this is a September job

The energy your team walked back in with is a gift, and a brief one. You can spend September protecting it, or you can spend it watching your best people quietly deflate next to the one person everyone hoped would not still be there.

New Year's resolutions fade by February. This one does not have to. Because it is not about a fresh burst of motivation. It is about clearing the room so the motivation your people already brought has somewhere to grow.

That is the work. And now is the moment.

The full approach to the shift from disengaged to engaged, including the five steps for the candid conversation and the cases behind it, is in Employee Engagement, What Else?