“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” - Proverbs 29:18

Former President and General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower called leadership, “The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” But this should be understood as referring to inspiration, not manipulation. “Lead and inspire people,” said EDS founder Ross Perot. “Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.”
 

In March, 2001, a stunning report ( the Gallup Q12 ) was released by the Gallup organization documenting years of research and concluding that over 70% of American workers were so disenchanted with their jobs that they were either significantly underperforming or, in about 1 case out of 5, actively undermining their work and their organization. In the decade since the release of the Gallup report, the percentage of disenchanted workers has climbed to nearly 80%. There is no other way to interpret this than as a massive failure of American business leadership to lead.

Subsequent studies have shown that this is not simply an academic exercise. Gallup calls employee engagement “A leading indicator of financial performance.” A  2007 Towers Perrin study of over 90,000 workers worldwide found that companies with high levels of employee engagement “increased operating income by 19% and earnings per share by 28% year-to-year. By contrast, the companies with the lowest percentage of engaged employees showed year-to-year declines of 33% in operating income and 11% in earnings per share.” ISR Research established in 2005 that a highly engaged workforce out-produced a highly disengaged one by almost 60%.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?
  

In their 2010 book “Leadership Charisma”, authors Bud Haney and Jim Sirbasku assert that leadership is not “some magical attribute that some individuals possess”, but rather a set of attitudes and behaviors that can be understood, learned and improved with practice. The Profiles Workplace Engagement Survey™ and the Checkpoint 360™ provide you with essential tools for measuring the degree of engagement of your workforce and understanding, learning and developing the critical leadership attributes of your executive team.