USA Today (June 21, 2005 at 1B) described the Gallup Organization’s so-called Q12 questionnaire that measures employee engagement. Engagement has to do with understanding, liking, and committing to one’s job. Since 2002, 332 companies have paid Gallup to administer the Q12 instrument, gaining responses from among others 17,406 VP and above executives.
Disturbingly, among that large group of executives nearly one in ten is “actively disengaged … beyond the point of even going through the motions.” Quite plausibly the executive group included more than 300 general counsel (one per company) and some other officer-level lawyers. There seems no a priori reason to hope that those top management lawyers enjoy engagement levels higher than other executives.
I haven’t heard of or consulted to professionally depressed (disengaged) general counsel, but the law departments of this company must have their share, if the Gallup findings are generally valid and hold specifically for the subset of CLOs.