Book Review Of 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, measureable, 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

Note: Thanks to the publisher for providing me a copy of the book.

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