Engagement Is Not Enough (Hardcover)

~ Keith Ayers (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Lack of employee engagement is like a cancer, eating away at your organization's vital organs. It saps your organization's strength, directly affecting your organization's ability to achieve the levels of customer satisfaction, productivity and profitability you know you could achieve. Keith Ayers presents a compelling argument that the focus on engagement has failed because leaders think engagement can be bought through bonuses, benefits, and share options. That is like trying to cure cancer with an aspirin or band-aid. The cure for the cancer of disengagement is for leaders to look in the mirror at the leadership they provide. In this in-depth exploration of the leadership skills needed to get every employee to want to perform at their best, Ayers challenges leaders to stop focusing on engagement, and set their sights on igniting the fire of passion in their employees.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Advantage Media Group (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1599320118
• ISBN-13: 978-1599320113
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,184,694 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Engagingly Good Read, May 7, 2007

By	Nick McCormick - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is about building passionate teams. The author states that we all want the same type of people on our teams - motivated, engaged self-starters. Too often, though, managers create environments that drive these types of people away. The coercive, control-based leadership style simply does not work.

Keith describes the ingredients, tools, and skills required to create an environment that is conducive to self-directed behavior - like developing people skills that build trust, understanding behavior styles, and becoming more self-aware. He then explains what is necessary to ratchet it up to the next level - to become a purpose centered organization versus an activity based one. Finally he provides an 8 step process for building a high performance team.

Keith is honest and straightforward, providing many valuable examples and models to explain his approach. This book will teach you how to be a better leader. You will also learn a little more about yourself in the process.

Nick McCormick - Author, Lead Well and Prosper

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What are the percentages in your organization?, August 15, 2008

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Engagement Is Not Enough: You Need Passionate Employees to Achieve Your Dream (Hardcover)

Employee engagement has recently received a great deal of attention, in part because of research studies (notably those of The Gallup Organization) suggesting that, on average, about 30% of employees have a positive attitude and are productive, about 55% are only going through the motions, and the remaining 15% take everything they can get while undermining the best interests of their organization. Consider the economic consequences: As Keith Ayers suggests in the Introduction to this book, "In organizations with only average levels of engagement, between 30 and 50 percent of their payroll is going down the drain." Worse yet, these toxic employees - with cunning and stealth - are disengaged with their organization's objectives but actively engaged in reducing their associates' productivity, weakening morale, causing delays of various kinds, and whenever possible, alienating customers.

In this context, I presume to suggest that these separate but related questions should be addressed:

1. Were these employees mis-hires from the beginning?

2. If so, why did we hire them? What are we doing to prevent hiring others who would also have attitude and/or behavioral problems in our company?

3. Or, were their attitude and behavior initially satisfactory and they became disengaged later?

4. If so, why? What could our company have done - and not done - to prevent that disengagement?

Ayers wrote this book to share what he has learned about getting as many employees as possible to be actively and positively, indeed passionately engaged. He offers no head-snapping revelations, nor does he claim to. Rather, and I do not damn with faint praise here, the program he presents is quite basic as well as comprehensive and cohesive. He guides his reader through a step-by-step process, with his initial focus on leadership. "The Passion Pyramid" is one of his core concepts. It illustrates an ascending order of employee needs, beginning with "Need for Respect" at the baseline and concluding with "Need to Be on a Winning Team" at the summit. (Apparently, Ayers is familiar with the works of Abraham Maslow and his "Hierarchy of Needs" although there are no references to them, nor an Index.) Ayers identifies "Four Steps to Success" and introduces what are identified as the "Whole Person Concept," the "Personal Responsibility Model," the "Responsibility-Based Culture Model," the "Give-Get Cycle," the "DiSC® Behavioral Model," "Values That Build Trust(tm)," the "Giving Feedback Model," the "Receiving Feedback Model," the "Team Dimensions Profile," and other such devices by which to consolidate and highlight key points. Personally, I think Ayers over-does it. What he frequently identifies as a "model" I view as a phase or stage of a sequence or process. One man's opinion.

The title of the book suggests that "engagement" alone is insufficient. The objective, obviously, is to what everything possible to hire and then support people who will immediately become and then continue to be actively, productively involved in helping (and helping everyone with whom they are associated) to achieve their company's objectives. The institutional development of this engagement, Ayers suggests, is a four-step process that consists of knowledge of what must be done, an awareness of how best to do it, and acceptance of the prevailing terms and conditions of engagement (e.g. policies, procedures, channels of authority and communication,), and meanwhile maintaining a positive attitude with appropriate behavior.

One final point: Presumably Ayers agrees with me that leadership is needed at all levels and in all areas of an organization. Therefore, the leadership development initiatives he proposes should include everyone, not only C-level executives and others with supervisory responsibilities. When interviewing candidates for a position, therefore, the extent to which each of them not only can but will be or become a leader should be a major consideration.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid reading about the value of being motivated for one's job, November 9, 2008

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Cruise control is not the way to go through the world of business. "Engagement Is Not Enough: You Need Passionate Employees to Achieve Your Dream" is a guide focusing on motivating one's employees to work for one's desire with enthusiasm, instead of just coasting toward an easy paycheck. Advising employers to give their employees what they need to feel respected, feel like part of a team, love their job, and do what they can to improve the company because they care as much as the owner. "Engagement is Not Enough" is solid reading about the value of being motivated for one's job.