Too many leaders are abdicating their responsibility for actually rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard, slogging work it takes to ensure that their people are more highly engaged.

Imagine if there were someone in a position to be able to say this—directly, unambiguously, fearlessly.  Here’s what such a bold pronunciamento might sound like.

There is currently a lot of enthusiasm for the concept of employee engagement. This is because of substantial amounts of credible research showing a strong positive correlation between higher engagement levels and better business results. Things like "research" and "business results" sound like solid, respectable things to deal with. But here's the dirty little secret about employee engagement: achieving higher levels of engagement calls for the application of selling and marketing techniques, and the thought of that can make some people a little squeamish.