The Two People in the Same Team

I want to start with something I see happen in workplaces all the time.

Two people are on the same team. Same manager. Same job title. Similar responsibilities.

One of them gets invited to important meetings. She receives detailed feedback on her work. When something interesting comes up, her manager thinks of her first. She knows what is happening in the organization. She feels like her opinion matters. She has not looked at a job board in two years.

The other person does his work quietly and competently. He almost never hears from his manager unless something goes wrong. He found out about a team change from a colleague, not from leadership. He stopped raising ideas in meetings because nothing seemed to come from it. He updated his resume last month.

Same manager. Same team. Completely different experiences.

This is not an unusual situation. It is actually one of the most common dynamics in workplaces everywhere. And it has a name. It is what Leader Member Exchange theory describes.

Why This Hits Different When You Are the One Being Left Out

If you are new to a team or early in your career, this is a pattern you may have already noticed or felt.

There are the people your manager talks to easily. The ones who seem to be in the loop, who get the good projects, who have natural rapport with leadership. And then there are the others, the ones who do their jobs well but feel invisible, who get information last, who wonder sometimes whether they are actually valued at all.

That feeling of being on the outside of your own team is one of the most demoralizing things a workplace can create. You start to question yourself. You wonder what you did wrong. You start to put less in because it does not seem like it matters anyway. And eventually, you start looking for a team where you might actually be part of things.

At this point, most people either accept that this is just how it is, or they start wondering what is really going on. If you are in the second group, this article is for you.

What Is Leader Member Exchange Theory?

Let me explain this the way I would explain it to someone stepping into their first management role.

Leader-Member Exchange theory, usually shortened to LMX, describes how the relationship between a manager and each individual team member develops over time, and how the quality of that relationship shapes what happens for both of them.

The core insight is simple but important. Managers do not treat all their team members the same way. They develop different quality relationships with different people. And those differences have real and measurable consequences for engagement, performance, and whether people stay.

In high-quality LMX relationships, something genuine is happening on both sides. The manager trusts this person, shares information openly, gives rich and honest feedback, looks for opportunities to develop them, and advocates for them in the organization. The employee responds by bringing more energy, more commitment, and more genuine investment in the work.

In low-quality LMX relationships, things stay mostly transactional. The employee does what is required. The manager checks that tasks are completed. Feedback is minimal. Opportunities go elsewhere. The relationship functions, but it does not thrive.

Studies consistently show that employees in low-quality LMX relationships report higher turnover intention, lower engagement, and significantly less satisfaction than their colleagues with higher-quality relationships on the same team.

Why Managers Create This Without Meaning To

Here is something worth saying clearly for anyone new to managing people.

Most managers do not deliberately create favorites. It happens naturally and mostly unconsciously.

You connect more easily with some people than others. You trust certain team members faster because they delivered early, or because your communication styles click, or because they remind you a little of how you operated when you were in their role. Over time, you invest more in those relationships. More feedback. More opportunity. More honest conversation.

The people you connect with less get less, not out of intention, but out of limited time and the natural pull toward easier interactions.

The problem is that this pattern has serious consequences for your team. The people in the lower-quality relationship category disengage. They feel the difference even if they cannot name it. And they eventually leave, often citing reasons that feel surface-level in exit interviews, while the real reason was always that they never felt genuinely seen by the person who was supposed to be investing in them.

How LMX Quality Affects Retention

The pathway from relationship quality to whether someone stays runs directly through engagement.

When a manager genuinely invests in someone, listens to them, challenges them, advocates for them, and trusts them, that person naturally becomes more engaged in their work. They feel that what they do matters and is seen. They experience something worth protecting. Leaving would mean giving that up.

The reverse is equally reliable. When someone feels like a low-priority relationship for their manager, engagement erodes steadily. The motivation to stay follows it down.

This is why fixing retention through salary adjustments or perks often produces disappointing results when the relationship quality is the underlying problem. You are addressing the symptom while the cause continues.

What Better LMX Relationships Actually Look Like

Here is the practical part, written for managers and team leads who want to do this differently.

Invest time in knowing each person individually. Schedule regular one-on-ones that are genuinely about the person, not just status updates. Ask about their career goals, what they find challenging, what kind of work energizes them and what drains them. Listen and remember. Follow up on things they told you in previous conversations. This signals investment in a way that almost nothing else does.

Distribute opportunities more deliberately. Before you assign a new project or development opportunity to your default person, stop and ask honestly whether someone else on the team might benefit from or be capable of taking this on. Deliberately spreading opportunities is one of the fastest ways to raise the quality of your lowest LMX relationships.

Give honest and specific feedback to everyone.Feedback is one of the clearest signals of relationship quality. When a manager gives rich, honest, specific feedback to someone, that person feels invested in. When feedback is absent or generic, the message received is that the manager is not really paying attention. Commit to meaningful feedback for every team member, not just the ones you naturally connect with most.

Advocate visibly for your team members. Let them know you speak up for them when they are not in the room. Share credit explicitly. Help them get visibility across the organization. When people know their manager has their back, trust deepens. And deep trust is the foundation of every high-quality LMX relationship.

Common Mistakes Managers Make Without Realizing

Spending all one-on-one time on task updates. If every check-in is about project progress, you are managing work, not people. The relationship stays surface-level, and that limits everything.

Assuming your most consistent performers need less attention. Your steady reliable employees often quietly disengage because they feel taken for granted. Check in with your most dependable people with just as much intentionality as you check in with the ones who are visibly struggling.

Delegating interesting work only to people you already trust most. This deepens the gap between your highest and lowest quality relationships and makes it increasingly visible to the whole team.

Avoiding difficult feedback to keep things comfortable. Honest feedback is an act of investment. Avoiding it keeps things smooth in the short term but signals to the person that you are not really committed to their development.

FAQ

What does LMX stand for?

LMX stands for Leader-Member Exchange. It describes how the quality of the relationship between a manager and each individual team member develops over time and influences engagement, performance, and whether people stay.

How does LMX theory affect employee retention?

High-quality LMX relationships significantly reduce turnover intention. When employees feel genuinely trusted, developed, and supported by their manager, they are far less likely to seek other opportunities. Low-quality relationships predict gradual disengagement followed by departure.

Is it possible to have the same quality LMX with every team member?

Not perfectly, because all relationships develop differently. But the gap between your highest and lowest quality relationships can and should be actively managed. Raising the floor so that no one feels invisible or deprioritized matters more than making all relationships identical.

How do you measure LMX quality on your team?

Stay interviews and genuine one-on-one conversations are the most direct way. Ask employees how supported they feel, whether their manager is invested in their development, and whether their contributions feel seen. The answers tell you more than any formal survey.

Can HR help improve LMX quality across the organization?

Absolutely. HR can build manager training focused on relationship quality, create one-on-one frameworks that go beyond task updates, and build feedback cultures where honest conversations are expected. Measuring team-level engagement scores alongside manager feedback scores helps identify where relationship quality needs the most attention.

Conclusion

The relationship between a manager and each team member is not a soft side note in the retention conversation. It is one of the hardest-working drivers of whether people stay and bring their best or quietly withdraw and eventually leave.

LMX theory gives us a clear way to understand what is actually happening when some employees thrive under the same manager that others disengage from. The quality of that daily exchange, the trust, the investment, the genuine care, makes all the difference.

If you manage people, the most important question you can ask yourself today is this: do all of my team members feel like I actually care about their growth and success? Not just the ones I connect with most easily. All of them.

Track your team’s engagement and eNPS using the free HR Analytics Dashboard

References

– https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236198/create-culture-psychological-safety.aspx

– https://hbr.org/2019/11/what-makes-some-bosses-better-than-others

– https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/future-of-talent-retention-report-why-employees-leave

– https://www.aihr.com/blog/leader-member-exchange-theory/

– https://positivepsychology.com/leader-member-exchange-theory/