Driving Employee Engagement
Driving Employee Engagement
Sukjae Lee
Creator of the Effectiveness Coaching Methodology
February 26, 2026
Employee engagement is defined in various ways. In general, it refers to the positive or negative state of attachment an individual has toward the organization to which they belong, their work, and their colleagues. Employee engagement is important in the workplace because higher engagement levels are associated with higher productivity and stronger performance outcomes (Lee. S., 2014; 2020)
Within organizations, engagement ultimately resides within the individual. However, leaders must take responsibility for creating conditions that enable employees to maintain high levels of engagement. Senior management demands the highest possible level of engagement. Organizational effectiveness largely depends on the degree to which employee engagement is elicited and sustained. Therefore, leaders must understand the psychological characteristics and operating mechanisms of employee engagement.
Core Components of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement consists of three primary components: cognition, emotion, and behavior.
Employees with high engagement, compared to those with low engagement, perceive themselves as owners of the organization. They clearly understand what must be done to achieve the organization’s vision and goals. They view evaluation and compensation as naturally aligned with their contribution. Influencing others is seen as meaningful and worthwhile. They are aware of self-development and career development opportunities and actively pursue them.
Employee engagement also reflects emotional attachment toward the organization, the work itself, and other members. Highly engaged individuals exhibit stronger conviction and passion regarding goal attainment. When they begin a task, they become deeply immersed, often losing track of time. They invest their full energy into their work. As a result, during periods of intense engagement, they may experience complete energy depletion. However, after an appropriate recovery period, their energy is restored.
The final core component of engagement is behavior. Highly engaged employees actively seek ways to perform their roles successfully and persist until tasks are completed. They are not confined by rigid role boundaries; when necessary, they go beyond them. They work autonomously without requiring constant instruction and perceive themselves as having freedom in their work. Because they proactively seek out tasks, they detect environmental changes quickly and respond in advance.
Distinction from Related Concepts
Employee engagement encompasses both emotional states and behavioral tendencies. Similar constructs include morale, employee satisfaction, and commitment (Lee. S., 2014; 2020).
Morale differs in that it refers to the emotional state of a group rather than an individual’s attachment.
Employee satisfaction resembles engagement in its positive emotional dimension but does not include the behavioral tendency inherent in engagement. Behavioral tendency refers to the internal energy that translates engagement into action. While satisfaction lacks the deep behavioral energy required to invest fully in specific tasks, engagement contains goal-directed behavioral energy.
Commitment shares similarities with engagement in that it involves both emotional states and behavioral tendencies. The key difference lies in the active versus passive nature of attachment. Commitment represents passive attachment, whereas engagement represents active attachment. William Macey (2009) defined this distinction clearly:
“Engagement includes active attachment characteristics such as passion, urgency, and intensity, whereas commitment does not necessarily include these characteristics.”
Psychological Mechanism of Employee Engagement
In practice, distinguishing between high commitment and high engagement can be difficult. Employees who demonstrate high levels of either generally understand what must be done and align their work closely with organizational goals. Leaders may therefore struggle to differentiate between them.
The primary difference is that highly engaged employees internalize goals as their own to a greater degree than those who are merely highly committed. This psychological state has significant implications for managing organizational effectiveness.
Transforming goals into one’s own is equivalent to internalization through identification. Just as leaders hope employees will develop a sense of ownership and internalize organizational goals, they also seek internalization of organizational identity.
Effectiveness Coaching emphasizes balanced management of productivity and positivity. To maximize productivity, employees must internalize vision and goals through engagement. To maximize positivity, they must internalize organizational identity through identification. In this respect, engagement and identification function as mediating variables linking vision, goals, and identity to desired outcomes.
Executing Strategy Through Employee Engagement
Leaders strive to operate organizations effectively and exercise appropriate leadership to achieve organizational objectives. A central question emerges:
How can strategy be executed successfully?
How can desired results be obtained?
The connection between strategy and results depends largely on the leader’s experience and leadership capability. Effectiveness Coaching supports the linkage between strategy and results by strengthening employee engagement.
Research by the Center for Creative Leadership indicates that failed leaders tend to exhibit high levels of self-centeredness and significant interpersonal challenges. Self-centered leaders interpret the world exclusively through their own perspective. They remain confined within the logic that enabled their past success. Although they must expand their leadership role and adapt their approach, they remain trapped within “inside-the-box” thinking. They fail to mobilize external resources, particularly the potential and collaborative capacity of those who work alongside them.
Rather than attempting to execute strategy alone, leaders should provide team members with the methods and tools necessary for strategy execution. The most effective method leaders can choose for executing strategy is employee engagement (Lee, S., 2026).
Effective Methods to Increase Employee Engagement
Google allows engineers to spend 20% of their working time pursuing projects they are most passionate about. Through its “20 Percent Time” policy, employees are encouraged to explore personal interests, leading to the development of innovative ideas.
For such a system to succeed and remain sustainable, mutual trust must exist between the organization and its engineers. From the organization’s perspective, trust means allowing employees autonomy while aligning their work with strategic objectives. Google demonstrates deep trust in its engineers.
Trust is the foundation of employee engagement. It is an intangible value that exists between leaders and team members. When leaders trust employees, that trust encourages them to internalize organizational goals and immerse themselves in work aligned with those goals.
Effective methods to enhance employee engagement include (Lee. S., 2014; 2020):
- Leaders treat employees with greater attentiveness and sensitivity.
- Employees are encouraged to voice opinions on issues affecting their work.
- Leaders focus on work processes rather than excessive control, implementing necessary improvements.
- Employees are supported in feeling psychological safety and autonomy when leading their work.
- Employees feel respected as valued members of the organization.
- Feedback is provided whenever competence improves, along with opportunities for greater challenges.
- A culture aligned with the organization’s vision and goals is intentionally cultivated.
Reference