Leaders continue to struggle to earn the followership of others – a challenge they have faced for millennia. According to extensive research, the key to effective leadership lies in demonstrating the ability to achieve a worthy purpose while simultaneously helping employees to improve themselves. Lacking the capacity to demonstrate those two abilities, leaders consistently fail to engage, empower, and enable employees to contribute to their companies’ success. This book addresses the importance of employee engagement – the degree to which employees feel connected to their organizations, dedicated to its purposes, and able to utilize their talents to help organizations succeed. The alarming findings of leadership research confirm that more employees currently feel negatively engaged than fully positively engaged in their relationships with leaders, managers, and supervisors. In addition to identifying the nature of engagement, we have explained why those who lead organizations are so often ineffective – and we offer suggestions throughout this book to help leaders, managers, supervisors, and those who work in Human Resource Management to create organizational relationships that build employee trust, commitment, and ownership. Readers of this book will find well-documented information incorporating the findings of management experts, practitioners, and consultants – but also new ideas that we have refined from our past research about human relationships and leadership effectiveness. Trust has often been called the most important ingredient in successful relationships. Ethics and leadership have been described as two sides of the same coin. Employee commitment is acknowledged to be the key to competitive advantage. Each of these factors is closely related to employee engagement and each enables leaders to develop relationships that build more effective organizations. Although there are no instant answers or magic wand solutions to restoring the lack of trust that enormous numbers of individuals have in organizations, leaders, and managers, we confidently proclaim to those who read this book that the information, recommendations, and observations contained herein are worthy of your close attention – and your application.
