My own manager, and leader of our marketing department here at WBR (publishers of this blog and producers of the eTail event series) has a few words about leadership, inspired by some posts on TrainingMag.com. He always encourages us to read such materials and stay inspired and motivated about work, life and success. For managers and employees out there, take note of this post and follow these 11 tips to make your marketing department a model for engagement.

1. Non-managers are leaders too. Leadership is not restricted to management roles by any means. I love the non-managing leader. There’s always a help wanted ad on my team for a non-managing leader! Skills required include: an ability and willingness to inspire others and to advance one of our many causes.

2. Employee engagement is working to make people happy.

3. Employees can sniff out a lack of leadership; keep your performance level high.

4. Employees pick up on the energy of both manager and non manager leaders, so be careful how you walk into and around the office!

5. Hire engaged people in the first place! For me, I like international exposure. It takes tremendous courage to do a stint abroad. I test for only that because I’m not great at training it. I’d rather have that raw material and train the marketing skills.

6. Engagement grows when employees are recognized for taking steps toward individual and common goals.

7. There is no replacement for time spent one-to-one with everyone on the team.

8. Manage employee engagement as a critical business process.

9. Involve everyone. Give ownership away. People want a domain or an activity to call their own.

10. To lead is to serve.

11. Be patient. Coaching is a process, not one event.

You don’t have to do all, just start with two today. If you have a highly engaged team, please any thoughts or additions? I would love to hear them all!

Thanks for reading…