I recently attended an educational industry event, and I was a little surprised by the number of people who sat with their heads in their hands or their noses in their phones instead of engaging or participating in the presentation. And, the majority of these attendees were managers.

Frank Besednjak, president of The Training Sourcein Louisville, Kentucky, recently made an interesting post on LinkedIn called, “Motivating Employees,” where he stated poor leadership and coaching leads to unmotivated employees.

“Motivating people is not a very complicated task. Typically, I find demotivated employees in places where I have demotivated managers. The workplace has become a place people go in order to get a paycheck. Ambition is lacking, and generally everyone has reached a state of burnout. This doesn’t have to be you,” he wrote.

It reminded me of an article I wrote earlier this year about how to keep employees engaged in the work place. Keeping employees engaged is important because it provides greater company productivity, increased revenue growth, and reduced employee turnover. However, disengaged employees outnumber engaged employees two-to-one in the U.S., according to The Henry Miller Group. Pay is one of the top drivers of employee engagement, followed by career opportunities, recognition, communication, and job security.

Don’t forget to check out Besednjak’s post about motivating employees. He provides a great list of leadership rules. What are you doing to keep your employees motivated?