The Engaging Leader Diary – ‘Employee Engagement Book Club’ – 2

I recently interviewed my friend David Long CEO and Founder of My Employees on the Business Elevation show for the second time. My Employees for 30 years have provided engagement and reputation services from their base in North Carolina.

David has been someone I have spoken about in my keynotes on ‘How to Be An Engaging Leader of Manager’ for several years now (see photograph). This is because he does things differently to engage his employees. He is an engaging leader and the results speak for themselves. His book club for employees involves studying great books together. Sharing lessons from the books has resulted in conversations that have resolved many personal issues including relationships, money problems as well as generating millions of dollars of ideas that have grown the business to circa 55 staff. The conversations go deeper and few people ever want to leave My Employees. I love the book club solution having run these monthly within the entrepreneur groups I ran for 7 years. Why not learn from the best wisdom out there.

What surprises me is over the years that I have shared this idea I am not sure that anyone has actually followed it through in their company. When engagement is such an issue and such a big opportunity for many companies today why are leaders not prepared to go the extra mile when something makes so much sense? Time to lead from the front perhaps?

Chris Cooper is an engagement specialist, coach and speaker. He is host of the Business Elevation Show on Voice America and Co-Author of The Power To Get Things Done (Whether You Feel Like It Or Not).  www.chriscooper.co.uk