12: The Elements of Great Managing.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf

12: The Elements of Great Managing. By Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter. Harvard Business School Press | 237 pages | $25.95.

The book's title announces its message nicely. It's devoted to outlining, and illuminating, a dozen "statements" that best forecast employee and workgroup performance--in other words, the best predictors of employee engagement.

Says who? The Gallup Organization, whom the authors work for, which has studied these concepts, the jacket says, through 10 million employee and manager interviews in 114 countries and in 41 languages. The book itself is a follow-on to the immensely popular First, Break All the Rules, published a decade ago.

Wagner, a principal with Gallup, and Harter, chief scientist for Gallup's international workplace management practice, have fashioned a terrific, straightforward book that builds on these...