It’s no big revelation that there’s a huge difference between fully engaged employees and those just along for the ride. What’s less obvious is that managers can help determine on which end of the spectrum people fall.

A lot rides on that ability. Highly engaged employees perform much better and are more apt to stay at their jobs and contribute significantly. The problem is that many managers think their people are engaged when they’re not — or they don’t even know the difference, says Barb Krantz Taylor, an employee development consultant for The Bailey Consulting Group, a business leadership and development firm in Minneapolis.

Knowing the difference

So what’s a manager to do? For starters, know what defines an engaged employee. “In our definition, an engaged employee has a personal connection with managers, team members, the organization and their own career field that motivates them to excel in their jobs,” Krantz Taylor says.

“It’s not just that they like their jobs. They’re excited and have energy for what they do. They want to learn more and be challenged. If you feel your contributions are recognized and see that what you do makes the organization successful, you’re engaged.”

By the same token, engaged managers truly care about their employees. While it may sound too “touchy feely” to some, people want their managers to care. “They don’t want managers to be their best friends and socialize with them and buy them birthday gifts,” Krantz Taylor says. “It’s all about inclusive management practices — giving them some degree of autonomy and self-directedness.

“A manager who isn’t a control freak and lets people make some important decisions is engaged. Managers who tell people what to do and don’t let them make decisions by themselves are not. If you treat people like sheep, they act like sheep.”

How to tell?

Krantz Taylor divides employees into five groups:

• Fully engaged high-potentials. Confident and talented, they have the emotional intelligence and leadership skills to fully apply their excellent technical skills. They need constant growth, learning and challenges.

• Fully engaged high-achievers. These steady performers usually don’t want leadership roles. They value their careers but may feel unappreciated because they don’t get promoted.

• Partly engaged. While generally positive about their jobs and willing to do what’s asked of them, these people aren’t “stars.” They are emotionally disconnected from their work and adrift in their careers.

• Along for the ride. These unmotivated underperformers do just the minimum to remain employed. Their talents don’t match their jobs.

• C.A.V.E. dwellers (Consistently Against Virtually Everything). With poor attitudes, these people are toxic to everyone except those like themselves, and they may in-timidate other team members and their managers.

Where people fall is not always obvious. It’s a good idea to start with a one-on-one meeting with each direct report and ask probing questions that prompt honest answers, instead of just responses they think you want to hear.

“You can ask them what the best day of work in the last six months was like, or what they enjoy most about their job,” Krantz Taylor says. “Or ask them when they’ve felt the most productive in the last few months, or which project was their favorite, and why. You get more clues if you ask questions that probe into why they are sometimes full of energy and enjoying themselves and why other times they’re not.”

You should also keenly observe when employees go beyond the norm, because they’re more likely to do that if they’re engaged. Or reflect on each person’s greatest skill. “Then you must match as best as you can each employee’s talents with goals of organization,” Krantz Taylor says. “There’s not always a perfect match between what we need and what we get. But by being engaged, the level of imperfection isn’t as great.”

You should also find out what team members need that management isn’t providing. To get that information, Krantz Taylor suggests working with the human resources department or a consultant to develop a feedback survey on which people can respond anonymously and with candor.

Managerial triage

In most cases, Krantz Taylor suggests focusing on how to make engaged team members even more so, instead of just greasing the squeaky wheels. She advises “performance managing” C.A.V.E. dwellers out of the organization.

In other words, start a progressive discipline process that includes warnings, coaching and written expectations — and have that difficult conversation about how to find a better job fit. Meanwhile, invest more energy in people who are engaged.

“In my experience, the odds of aC.A.V.E. dweller becoming engaged aren’t very good,” Krantz Taylor observes. “Often there are a lot of issues — a lot of wrongs you can’t fix as a manager.

“When the economy improves, high-performing employees are the people who are most likely to leave, but if they’re highly engaged, they’ll stay regardless. Don’t take them for granted or overwork them, or they might not remain engaged.”

Providing feedback is one of the hardest skills for managers to master. Too often, managers are so focused on their jobs that they don’t observe their team members as much as they should. And most would rather avoid giving negative feedback because they don’t know how to present it constructively.

But even engaged employees need feedback. “Secretly, those employees feel they get no thank you or recognition, or that the reward for doing good work is only getting more work,” Krantz Taylor says. The benefit of giving feedback to high performers is that most of it is positive — you don’t need to have those difficult conversations.

Build relationships

The bottom line is managers need to build relationships. Practice the axiom about listening so employees will talk, and talking so employees will listen. “Listening, hearing, communicating and caring are at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — and they’re what you as a manager need to do,” Krantz Taylor says.

“It’s amazing how many people feel they don’t get that from their manager. In most cases, managers have no idea they are perceived that way, or they simply don’t care. Employees talk to me about managers, and managers talk to me about employees, so I see all sides of the issue. It’s amazing to me that of all the things we complain about in the workplace, we don’t mention them to the one person who really needs to hear it.”

Managers must care about their people, and that includes developing them, spending time with them, and figuring out what makes them perform best. That builds a solid basis for trust. “Don’t just give them work and say, ‘See you later,’” Krantz Taylor says. “With everyone as busy as they are, it happens often enough, but if employees trust you, they’ll tell you everything you need to know.”