High Trust = High Engagement

What is the big question: Is it to ask how to secure engagement in business for profit where there is not much glory to be found or how strong can engagement be?

- Dr. Alfredo Behrens

Talking about engagement makes us feel good. Engagement expresses nobility because it is the result of the connection of abilities deployed to work for a purpose, usually espoused by a leader. But high levels of engagement require high levels of trust and that is scarcer in lower income societies, requiring a specific strategy to compete.

How strong can engagement be? Let us first focus on the engagement necessary to put one’s life at stake, as in war.

The allure of engagement is most readily appreciated in 1796 Napoleon’s call to his soldiers: “You have won battles without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches without shoes, camped without brandy and often without bread. Soldiers of liberty, only republican phalanxes could have endured what you have endured. Soldiers, you have our thanks! The grateful nation will owe its prosperity to you…”

Napoleon was only promising an elusive and fleeting glory to people that would risk their lives to follow him; now, that’s engagement. We saw similar levels of engagement in many armies, like in the Latin American militias I portrayed in Gaucho Dialogues or like those of Chandragupta Maurya and his grandson Ashoka Maurya.