Imagine you are part of the Blue Angels flight squadron. Their fast paced, high performance flight demonstrations are carefully choreographed to showcase precision flying. Each of the six jet pilots must focus on the task at hand or disaster will strike.

As leader of a team you want everyone to be 100% committed to the success of your mission but a report from Towers Perrin indicates that less than 30% of employees are actively engaged in their job at any given time. That's like having two of the Blue Angels pilots thinking about something else during their flight.

One of the critical links to employee engagement is clear communication from their leaders. Clarity in communicating their vision of the team's success and clarity in defining goals and expectations. This isn't always easy to do. When there are organization changes on the horizon or project issues, you may not be able to share all of the details with your team. In those cases some managers abdicate their communication responsibility and allow the rumor mill to provide incomplete information. That approach destroys your team's trust and confidence in you. They are looking to you for guidance and as a model on how to act.

As manager you must build up a reservoir of trust by making it a practice to communicate openly with them. If you can't give complete information, share with them whatever you can and let them know that you will provide more information as it becomes available. They will reward you by giving you the benefit of the doubt in uncertain times.