Professional woman leader in dark navy blazer and teal blouse leaning forward engaged in intimate one-on-one conversation with young male employee in beige shirt in modern high-rise office overlooking city skyline with plants and warm lamp lighting, both smiling with genuine connection, reviewing documents and tablet with charts visible on table between them, representing Ashley Rudolph's "becoming conversation" where leader shares vision of employee's potential and career trajectory they see, demonstrating Dr. Joey's lesson that attendance and visibility transform culture and retention when leaders close the door and descriptively show someone "Here's what I see for you," illustrating how April 2020 taught that people want to hear from, see, and be led by visible accessible communicative leaders, with Work Positive Today logo visible.

The Lesson April 2020 Taught Every People Leader

Work Positive Culture
June 21, 2026•3 min read

Do you remember April 2020?

The global economy was in free fall. Offices emptied overnight. People leaders made it up as they went.

In the middle of the worst global crisis in a generation, Gallup released engagement data that surprised everyone.

Engagement went up to a record high.

Jennifer McClure watched the data closely. She understood immediately why. She told me on the Work Positive Podcast, “People want to hear from us. They want to see us. They want us to be visible, accessible, and communicative.”

Six months later, engagement fell off a cliff.

Same crisis. Same world. Different numbers.

Gallup traced the collapse to a single cause. People leaders stopped checking in. The urgency of April settled into an October routine. The visibility retreated. People who felt seen, heard, and led suddenly felt none of those things.

The A in D.R.E.A.M. is for Attend to Each Person.

See the Person, Transform the Culture

Glenn Akramoff walked into a facility as an interim leader where a 40-year veteran walked into his office on the first day and called everything he said “bull.”

The man saw too many management programs come and go. He refused to give his trust to another one.

Glenn listened for ten minutes. He told the man he expected to earn his trust rather than assume it. Then he spent six weeks doing exactly that. He noticed the man was responsible for an area with a cluttered space no one would let him clean. So Glenn told him to clean it. The man refused to believe it at first. Glenn told him again. He cleaned it. Glenn then shared it with the whole team.

The man’s chronic attendance challenge nearly disappeared. He became a peak performer and a true believer. All because someone finally attended to what he needed and gave him the autonomy to act on it.

Glenn told me on the Work Positive Podcast, “You don’t have to like your people every day, but you have to love them.”

The Becoming Conversation

Ashley Rudolph experienced the power of attention as her manager invited her to what looked like a routine meeting, closed the door, and opened a PowerPoint presentation created entirely for her.

The slides laid out her journey at the company: where she started, where she was currently, and how her manager saw her going to the director level. Her leader said, in the most tangible possible way, “I see you. I believe in you. Here is what I see for you.”

Ashley described it to me this way. “Instead of being prescriptive, it was descriptive. Here’s what I see for you.”

She decided to call these becoming conversations and argues they are the most underused retention tool in any people leader’s arsenal.

People need a vision. They need someone to see their potential before they fully see it themselves.

Prescriptive is a promise you may lack the ability to keep. Descriptive is a gift you can give anyone, at any level, at any time, regardless of budget or hiring freeze.

Your Attend Do One Thing (DOT) Challenge

This week, choose one person on your team and have a becoming conversation.

  • Share one thing you see in them that they have yet to see in themselves.

  • Ask them where they want to go.

  • Listen all the way through.

That single conversation costs nothing and transforms everything.

Work Positive Bottom Line

Attend to each person on your team. Do One Thing today.

This post is from Dr. Joey Faucette's best-seller, D.R.E.A.M. Teams @ Work: Cultivate the Work Positive Teams You Dream About.

employee engagement, leadership presence, becoming conversation, employee retention, work culture, people leadership, dream team, visible leadership

#WorkPositive #CultureEatsStrategyForBreakfast #DREAMteam #EmployeeRetention #LeadershipVisibility


employee engagementleadership presencebecoming conversationemployee retention
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