
Strategy is 90% execution, and 90% of execution is people.
So, if you can engage your team’s minds and hearts, you will get a BIG payoff – discretionary effort. Employees willingly giving their precious resources – time and energy – to achieve goals. In short, they will act like owners of the business. That’s the seed of healthy growth for everyone – you, your team and your business.
Research has demonstrated that engaged hearts and minds drive results like these:
- Increase:
- 20% Sales
- 21% Profitability
- 17% Productivity
- Decrease:
- 70% Safety incidents
- 41% Absenteeism
- 59% Turnover
Engaged minds build your employees’ performance and engaged hearts build their passion – they go hand in hand. You ignite Passionate Performance only when three intellectual and three emotional needs are fulfilled, and you connect minds and hearts.
It’s a simple but powerful formula: When my needs are fulfilled, I am engaged, and I perform at my peak ability.
To meet these needs, leaders must first see them and acknowledge them. In order to see them, leaders must view their employees as people and not just workers.
This short video highlights the six employee needs.

This leadership model of employee engagement has been translated into nine languages and applied worldwide since 2004.
We all have these basic human needs, and they have remained the same amidst the tornado of external change. Times have changed, and our world has certainly changed, but people have not. In many organizations today, these basic needs still go unfulfilled. It’s up to you as the leader to fulfill them.
Take this free self-assessment to see which needs you can better fulfill so you can ignite passionate performance in your team.