‘I–Thou versus I–It’: A Strategic Choice for Leaders of Change

‘I Thou versus I It’

A Strategic Choice

Cultural change as a strategy of enabling staff engagement

Cutting edge research by Gallup presented in their State of the Global Workplace 2026 report alarmingly global that employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025. Gallup research claimed that this low employee engagement has cost the world economy an ‘estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity’. This is a paradoxical finding. In one way it is absolutely shocking and at another it is not surprising.

The global trend of adopting economic reductionism as the primary strategy of reducing costs to maintain some kind of profitable position has arguably decimated staff engagement.

The idea that developing organisations necessitates cutting costs is a primitive mindset that undermines staff engagement with the ambition, and vision of an organisation and critically undermines the quality of leadership/followership relationships. Clearly from a common-sense perspective it surely dilutes and sustainably damages the potential of developing a psychologically safe culture.

This begs the question what managers should be doing in the face of ever-increasing costs, new entrants to their market, and a imbedded culture of transactional management leaning heavily towards excessive corrective action?

They could and arguably should adopt an action learning strategy that unites their stakeholders behind a common strategy to improve the competitive position and funding position of the organisation.

This is a strategy that involves working with the spirit of the organisational culture. It involves adopting a very positive psychology towards change. It is a cultural change project in the sense that the managers offer their leadership to their teams to guide them through a journey of collective strategizing.

Such a strategy can increase engagement at multiple levels, team, task, leadership, mission and vision.  It encourages a culture of an ‘I Thou’ rather than an ‘I It’ culture. The former encourages a relationship between leaders and followers based on respect, rapport and dialogue. The latter drives a culture of mutual antagonism, lack of trust, poor collaboration and breeds a highly crude transactional culture.

We offer an action learning platform through which a management team may engage in a critical dialogue to explore a range of methodologies and ideas that can be applied to develop an ‘I Thou’ culture

At The Cultural Change Company, we have established a partnership with the Chartered Management Institute to deliver the Level 7 Award in Strategic Management and Leadership Practice . This programme is offered through our innovative Cultural Change Practitioners Toolkit, which can lead to the Level 7 Award https://lnkd.in/eXDmkwwW.

Your team would enjoy the flexibility to pursue the Level 7 Award or to complete the practitioner course alone. Both options offer valuable personal development opportunities, enhancing participants' credentials while strengthening their leadership and change management capabilities.

Please contact [email protected] or message me at LinkedIn to chat through our approach and your needs.