Why Good Employees Retreat: Leadership in an Age of Identity Strain
In modern organizations, leadership focuses on alignment, execution, and performance. These priorities assumed relatively stable roles, shared norms, and institutions that quietly supplied meaning, identity, and moral orientation in the background. Leaders could concentrate on strategy and results because the system itself carried much of the psychological and ethical weight.
That world no longer exists.
Today’s organizations operate in a postmodern context marked by fragmentation, rapid change, and weakened institutional trust. Employees no longer inherit stable professional identities, clear social contracts, or shared narratives about loyalty, career progression, or mutual obligation. Instead, they must actively construct meaning, identity, and purpose while navigating ongoing disruption.
This shift has fundamentally altered the role of leadership.
In postmodern organizations, leadership must focus on identity stabilization, meaning-making, and moral containment — not as soft or ancillary concerns, but as the conditions that make performance, accountability, and collaboration possible in the first place. When these elements are absent, organizations do not simply experience disengagement; they experience fragmentation, withdrawal, and erosion of trust. What is at stake is not engagement or morale, but the conditions under which people can exercise judgment, responsibility, and ethical agency at work.
The Postmodern Employee
The postmodern employee is best understood as someone emerging from prolonged instability: the COVID pandemic, political volatility, remote and hybrid work, and repeated disruptions to institutional promises around stability, career continuity, and mutual obligation. These experiences did not merely change how work is performed — they changed how people experience themselves in relation to work.
Where employees once relied on proximity, routine, predictable benefits, cultural traditions, and long-term organizational loyalty as stabilizing anchors, those supports are now inconsistent or absent. As a result, employees carry a greater burden of sensemaking. They are quietly asking questions that organizations rarely address explicitly:
Who am I in this system now?
What does this organization truly value?
What do I owe it — and what does it owe me?
For many, the result is not clarity but cognitive and emotional overload. What organizations often label as resistance, burnout, or disengagement is more accurately understood as identity strain.
What Identity Strain Sounds Like at Work
For many employees, identity strain is not dramatic or ideological. It shows up in small, cumulative moments that quietly reshape how people see themselves and their relationship to the organization.
I stayed late, helped a struggling colleague, and prevented a patient issue from escalating. My leader thanked me — and then everything went back to normal. I’m not sure whether that effort actually mattered, or whether I should just stay in my lane next time.
Or:
For years I was told patient care and teamwork mattered most. Lately, every conversation seems to be about throughput, documentation time, and cost. I’m trying to do the right thing, but I’m no longer sure what “the right thing” is here.
These moments quietly teach employees how much discretion, judgment, and moral ownership is actually safe to exercise here.
Employees do not arrive with fixed levels of courage, trust, or accountability. These capacities are continuously constructed — or eroded — by the leadership environment.
Why Leadership Matters Differently Now (Meaning-making)
When leadership does not actively stabilize identity and meaning, employees do not rebel — they retreat. They become more cautious, more compliant, and more transactional. Judgment narrows. Voice diminishes. Moral responsibility quietly shifts upward.
This is not a failure of motivation. It is a predictable response to environments where meaning and legitimacy are uncertain, where people are unsure how their judgment will be received or whether taking ownership will expose them to risk rather than recognition.
Postmodern leadership, therefore, is not primarily about influencing people, persuading them, or extracting greater effort. It is about preventing identity fragmentation in environments where meaning is no longer guaranteed.
Why Purpose Must Be Re-Articulated — Not Assumed (Purpose)
Despite all of this change, the essential work of society has not disappeared. People still need healthcare, education, infrastructure, and essential goods. Patients still arrive in crisis. Students still rely on educators. Communities still depend on competent, ethical institutions to function.
What has disappeared is the assumption that employees automatically understand how their work fits into a coherent moral and social story.
In modern organizations, purpose could be assumed. In postmodern organizations, it must be explicitly re-articulated.
This does not mean motivational slogans or mission posters. It means leaders must consistently answer, in human terms:
This is who we are
This is what we do
This is why this work matters now — especially when it is hard
This is the nature of our relationship: what you can expect from this organization, and what this organization expects from you
In environments of sustained change, employees do not lose commitment because the work becomes unimportant. They lose commitment when the moral logic of the work is no longer spoken aloud.
The Central Claim
This paper argues that leadership in a postmodern context must be re-oriented around three core functions: identity stabilization, meaning-making, and purpose. These are not abstract ideals or soft leadership competencies; they are the conditions that allow people to exercise judgment, take responsibility, and remain engaged in systems where certainty, continuity, and shared narratives can no longer be assumed.
When leaders fail to perform these functions, employees do not become resistant or disengaged by choice — they become fragmented by circumstance. Without identity stabilization, meaning-making, and purpose, even the most well-designed strategies, performance systems, and operating models will fail to produce sustainable results.
Practical Application
Let’s think about how this conversation changes the way we talk (Using four categories):
· Identity stabilization
· Meaning-making
· Purpose
· Relationship clarity
Identity Stabilization (addresses the question of Who am I allowed to be here? Do I belong? Am I trusted?)
Modern leadership often assumes that identity is stable. Postmodern leadership recognizes it must be actively stabilized.
Modern language sounds like:
Thanks for getting that done
You’re doing fine
This is your rating
Postmodern leadership sounds like:
That showed real judgment and ownership — that’s how we operate her
You belong here, and the way you approach this work aligns with who we are
This rating doesn’t fully capture how you showed up — let me be clear about what I see and what I expect going forward
The contrast is audible and one can hear the difference between the modern era approach, which is a static picture more or less compared to the postmodern approach, which is a more fluid and managed dynamic.
Meaning-Making (What actually matters? How do I decide when values collide?)
Modern leadership assumes shared meaning. But as we addressed, shared meaning is an illusion, too simplistic. Postmodern leadership must construct it in real time.
Modern language sounds like:
We need to improve throughput
We value teamwork
Good job
Postmodern leadership sounds like:
We need to improve throughput without compromising patient dignity — if you see tension there, raise it
Here, teamwork means stepping in when a colleague is stretched — even when it’s inconvenient
What mattered most in that moment was patient safety, and you prioritized it
In the modern approach, this kind of communication is basically platitudes. The postmodern approach provides depth and context to the feedback. You can hear the decision-guiding clarity.
Moral Containment (Is it safe to exercise judgment? Who carries the risk when things go wrong?)
Modern leadership often unintentionally pushes moral risk downward. Postmodern leadership contains it.
Modern language sounds like:
Just follow the process
That’s just how the system works
This didn’t work
Postmodern leadership sounds like:
The process matters, but your judgment matters too — if they conflict, let’s talk
The system has limits, and it’s my responsibility to help you navigate them fairly
Walk me through how you thought about this — the quality of thinking matters here
In the modern approach, the leader puts the onus and ownership onto the subordinate leader (it’s your decision [but you’ll own it if it’s a wrong one]). The postmodern leader positions him/herself as a vested partner in the risk or process. The employees see themselves as partners, not on their own.
Relationship Clarity (What do we owe each other? What actually counts over time?)
Modern leadership often leaves the relationship implicit. Postmodern leadership names it.
Modern language sounds like:
Effort acknowledged informally, but not reinforced later
That’s the expectation
Postmodern leadership sounds like:
I want to name what you did there — it doesn’t always show up on a dashboard, but it matters
That’s the kind of judgment I’ll be looking for when we talk about growth and future opportunities
Again, you can hear the shift in communication about the nature of the relationship. If the modern era communication leaves the employee somewhat ambiguous about the relationship between the leader and the employee, the postmodern approach leans into contextualizing the relationship.
Across all four categories, the pattern is the same: leadership language either stabilizes identity and responsibility — or quietly undermines it. These shifts are not about being more positive or empathetic. They are about leaders recognizing that identity, meaning, and purpose are no longer supplied by systems or institutions. In a postmodern workplace, they are constructed — moment by moment — through what leader says, what they reinforce, and what they protect.
Every leadership interaction teaches employees who they are allowed to be here. The question is whether leaders are teaching that intentionally — or by accident.