Introduction
When Engaged Leadership was first published in 2007, the challenge of overcoming employee disengagement was significant. With research showing that three-quarters of employees in any organization were at some level of disengagement, the need to overcome the epidemic of employee disengagement was very real. As a professional speaker, I had shared my thoughts with tens of thousands of people on this topic for years. As an author, I considered it a privilege to reach even more people with Engaged Leadership.
These past four years have been exciting as I've traveled the world sharing the model of Engaged Leadership. It has been thrilling to see the success of the book. But even more than that, it has been extremely rewarding to see the application of ideas shared in the book. Whether working with a client as a consultant or having a conversation with someone halfway around the world who read the book, it has been humbling to hear that Engaged Leadership is helping leaders discover how to build a culture to overcome employee disengagement.
While witnessing the success of the book over the past four years may have been exciting, watching the impact of the downturn in the economy was far from exciting. As organizations scrambled to survive the recession, the lives of employees were changed. Unemployment was on the rise, and the impact was widespread.
Some felt the direct ...
