What if the reason your business isn’t performing better has nothing to do with strategy — and everything to do with engagement?

In this episode, we explain why business execution and employee engagement are inseparable. Together we explore how engagement fuels profitability, the five questions every leader should ask their people, and why communication strategy and psychological safety define whether your team thrives or stalls.

Dr. Peters also shares how organizations can build trust through feedback, manage expectations transparently, and create consistent communication rhythms that keep employees informed and inspired — without overwhelming them.

Whether you’re a CEO, team leader, or HR professional, this conversation offers a roadmap for turning engagement into measurable business results.

Key Topics:

• Why engagement and execution are inseparable

• The five essential questions every leader should ask employees

• How to manage expectations after gathering feedback

• Building effective internal communication strategies

• Autonomy, trust, and preventing quiet quitting

Is there really an ROI to employee engagement and feedback? In this episode of The Science of Engagement Podcast, Dr. Brian Peters (PhD in Industrial & Organizational Psychology) and David Schneider unpack the hard evidence behind engagement’s bottom-line impact.

They explore how building a culture of curiosity and accountability leads to higher collaboration, innovation, and profitability. From Gallup’s meta-analyses to real-world consulting experiences, you’ll hear how engagement strategies reduce costs, boost revenue, and improve both employee and customer experiences.

Key takeaways:

• Why engagement is more than “warm and fuzzy” perks

• How employee happiness directly impacts customer loyalty

• The connection between accountability, culture, and retention

• Practical ways leaders can create champions inside their organizations

Whether you’re an HR leader, executive, or business owner, this conversation offers actionable insights on how to transform engagement into measurable ROI.

Subscribe and follow for more science-backed strategies to build stronger workplaces and more profitable organizations.

Is defensiveness stalling your org—and costing you money? In this episode of The Science of Engagement, Dr. Brian Peters and David Snyder show how to replace ego with curiosity and connect engagement to KPIs, profit, and cost reduction (no fluff). You’ll learn why the best leaders are insatiably curious, the exact question that raises the bar—“How do you know that?”—and two practical rituals that make healthy debate normal, safe, and productive.

What you’ll learn

• Why curiosity is the #1 leadership competency (and how it spreads across teams)

• How to introduce “How do you know that?” without triggering defensiveness

• The Top-10 Ideas weekly ritual to surface improvements fast

• The Devil’s-Advocate role to normalize dissent and better decisions

• Tying engagement to KPIs/ROI instead of posters and perks

Chapters 00:00 Intro: engagement without the fluff 02:06 “Welcome to Crazy Town” — defensive cultures in the wild 06:00 Leaders who can’t describe their teams’ work 13:28 Curiosity as the mother competency 24:56 The Top-10 Ideas weekly ritual 28:58 Assigning a devil’s advocate (safe dissent) 31:40 Normalizing “How do you know that?” 32:50 What’s next: The Path to Improvement

Key takeaways

• Curiosity → clarity → accountability → ROI

• Make questioning a role and a ritual, not a personality clash

• Start with shared improvement ideas, then layer in constructive challenge

employee engagement, leadership behaviors, organizational psychology, KPIs, ROI, psychological safety, people ops, culture change, cross-functional collaboration