Full Engagement By Brian Tracy

Best-selling author Brian Tracy's book, Full Engagement, provides practical advice for how to inspire your employees to perform at their absolute best. He explains that above nearly every measure, employees' most powerful single motivator is the "desire to be happy".

So, Tracy teaches you how to make your employees happy by:

• Organizing their work from the first step in the hiring process through the final step in their departure from your company so they are happy with you, their work, their coworkers, as well as in their interactions with your customers, suppliers and vendors.

Full Engagement includes these chapters and topics:

• The Psychology of Motivation
• Ignite the Flame of Personal Performance
• Make People Feel Important
• Drive Out Fear
• Create That Winning Feeling
• Select The Right People
• Internal Versus External Motivation

At a minimum, Tracy suggests that managers do the following when managing their employees:

• Smile
• Ask questions
• Listen
• Be polite
• Say "Thank You"
• Keep employees informed
• Encourage improvement
• Treat employees like volunteers
• Pay employees well
• Compliment employees
• Assure harmony
• Praise regularly
• Refuse to criticize
• Celebrate success
• Express interest in employees
• Be a mentor
• Give employees freedom to do their work
• Protect employees from negativity, rudeness or bad treatment from other people
• Be pleasant
• Speak positively about your staff with other people
• Be clear about employee's job responsibilities
• Give feedback
• Be a good role model
• Disagree without being disagreeable
• Set clear, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bounded goals

One of my favorite sections of the book is where Tracy outlines the Law of Three for hiring:

• Interview three candidates
• Interview the person you like best three times
• Interview the that person in three different meeting places
• Have three different people interview you top candidate

Tracy provides a number of compelling personal references and examples from his vast business experience and upbringing in Full Engagement.  In addition, each chapter in the book ends with a list of Action Exercises to help you implement Tracy's guidance.

I recommend the book for any manager who wants to learn how best to work with an employee to:

• build up his/her self-esteem
• build his/her self-image
• drive away his/her fears
• make him/her feel like a winner