The presentation at an AmCham Special Luncheon on April 18 at Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel focused on the role of effective leadership in enhancing employee engagement. The speaker, Gerard Hei, is CEO of Dale Carnegie Taiwan.

The presentation, “Uncovering Leadership Blind Spots and Discovering the Pathway to Motivating Your Employees,” first established why engagement is so important. It significantly impacts absenteeism, turnover, productivity, profitability, sales, and quality. There are three kinds of employees: fully engaged, partially engaged, and disengaged. According to a global study, in Taiwan only 8% of employees are rated as fully engaged, compared to 29% globally, while 44% are disengaged, much more than the 24% globally.

The way to increase employee motivation and business results is to provide employees with more effective leaders, said Hei. When employees are very satisfied with their immediate supervisor and with senior leaders, many more are fully engaged and very few are disengaged.

Leaders need to do four key things to inspire and motivate their employees:

Express sincere praise and appreciation
Demonstrate honesty and integrity
Freely admit when they are wrong
Listen to and value employees’ opinions

From left to right: AmCham’s Public Health Committee Co-Chair Joyce Lee, General Manager, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd.; AmCham Taipei President William Foreman; Speaker Gerard Hei, CEO of Dale Carnegie Taiwan; AmCham’s HR Committee Co-Chair Monica Han, Country HR Leader, 3M Taiwan Ltd.

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