What causes this paradox?
As shown in this clear, concise, and compelling book, it is simply this: managing engagement turns out to be just another drain on the most precious resource in business today -- energy. In today's exhaustion era, employees are simply struggling to make it to the weekend. Lacking energy, they resort to quick fixes, workarounds, and reactive firefighting, thereby hardwiring depletion into the system.
As a result, employees come to perceive engagement efforts as a management con game. A high percentage of the employee population believe no meaningful outcomes will occur as a result of the engagement survey. And this crisis of belief causes acute pain inside well-intentioned leaders who are doing their best to unlock employee engagement. They feel caught.
Now Beyond Engagement shows how to get beyond this kind of self-defeating engagement: by managing energy rather than engagement. The book offers a chapter each to ten leadership principles based on the findings of brain science:
1 Manage Energy, Not Engagement
2 Deliver Experiences, Not Promises
3 Target Emotion, Not Logic
4 Trust Conversations, Not Surveys
5 Seek Tension, Not Harmony
6 Practice Partnering, Not Parenting
7 Pull Out the Backstory, Not the Action Plan
8 Think Sticks, Not Carrots
9 Meet Needs, Not Scores
10 Challenge Beliefs, Not Emotions
Buy Beyond Engagement: A Brain-Based Approach That Blends the Engagement Managers Want with the Energy Employees Need by Brady G Wilson from Australia's Online Independent Bookstore, BooksDirect.