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If you believe that an engaged workforce is the foundation of organizational success, you’ll find these “intelligence manuals” valuable as you work to create more a meaningful, productive, and engaging workplace experience. They are listed in publication date order. The links below are affiliate links.1
“These assets should be considered as vital tools for every Agent In Engagement.”
The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) – Drew Daywalt & Oliver Jeffers
While this book targets children ages 3 – 7, you might be surprised by how familiar the story sounds in relation to disengagement on your team. How many of these colors sound like the people you manage or that you know within your organization?
Related blog Post: What Crayons Can Teach Us About Employee Engagement
Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an Uncertain World (2013) – Bob Rosen
While the book focuses on the individual leader, I found the book to be more broadly applicable to employee engagement. Individuals and leaders can benefit if they explore each of the 6 roots of the Healthy Leader Model: Physical Health, Emotional Health, Intellectual Health, Social Health, Vocational Health, and Spiritual Health.
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (2014) – Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, & Chris Yeh
Three prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs propose “a new employment framework that facilitates mutual trust, mutual investment, and mutual benefit. An ideal framework encourages employees to develop their personal networks and act entrepreneurially without becoming mercenary job-hoppers. It allows companies to be dynamic and demanding but discourages them from treating employees like disposable assets.”
The Alliance is based on ‘tours of duty’ that have specific timeframes and cover how the employer and employee will benefit from working together. It offers a way for companies to engage and retain employees while simultaneously achieving their business objectives.
Related blog post: Key Learnings from The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age
Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family (2015) – Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia
Bob Chapman and Barry-Wehmiller focus on people, purpose, and performance. Rather than viewing employees as cogs or people to be “managed,” the authors relate why everybody matters. They argue for all companies, leaders, and managers to “truly care, to feel a deep sense of responsibility for the lives we touch through our leadership.” “Once you stop treating people like functions or costs, disengaged workers begin to share their gifts and talents toward a shared future.”
The Employee Experience: How to Attract Talent, Retain Top Performers, and Drive Results (2017) – Tracy Maylett, EdD. and Matthew Wride, JD
The CEO and COO of DecisionWise offer research-based insight into building an engaged workforce. This is achieved through establishing and upholding “the Contract,” a clear set of expectations and promises between the company and its employees. This contract is actually composed of three separate contracts: Brand, Transactional, and Psychological. In the end, it’s all about trust and these contracts help foster that trust.
The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces they Want, the Tools they Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate (2017) – Jacob Morgan
Experience drives engagement and engagement drive results. This book argues that companies have been focusing on employee engagement, an effect, when they should be focusing on the root cause of engagement which is the employee experience in a company’s physical, technological, and cultural environments. Mr. Morgan makes a research-backed case for investing in employee experience regardless of your company’s size, industry, or location.
No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results (2017) – Cy Wakeman
No Ego is about challenging people to answer the call to greatness. Author Cy Wakeman found that the average employee spends 2 hrs and 26 minutes a day in drama and emotional waste. Companies waste time and money because they aren’t developing leaders who have the mindsets, methods, and tools to help them bypass ego and eliminate emotional waste. This book provides leaders with that roadmap.
Talent Magnet: How to Attract and Keep the Best People (2018) – Mark Miller
In this fable about the parallels the lives of a business leader and his son and their desire to make an impact. Together, they discover a formula to attract top talent with the understanding that people want: A Better Boss. A Bigger Vision. A Brighter Future.
In their introduction, the authors sum up their purpose for writing, “….these Nine Lies have taken hold because each satisfies the organization’s need for control…..You’ll see, as well, that the strongest force pushing back against the lies, and the force that we all seek to harness in our lives, is the power of our own individuality….” This book challenges the status quo at most companies as it relates to people at work and reveals the “essential truths” that companies can excel by celebrating the uniqueness of their people.
More than just a book, this is a reference guide to address the burning issues you and/or your company may be facing. Each of the 52 chapters focuses on discoveries from Gallup’s research on the practice of management. They found that “the new purpose of work — and the future of work – has to include maximizing human potential.” What lever should companies use to so that? It’s the manager.
What are your thoughts on these selections? Which employee engagement – employee experience books, i.e., “instruction manuals” would you recommend to fellow Agents?
