Abstract

This chapter focuses on individual differences as a source of employee engagement, specifically, personality characteristics underlying the propensity for being and feeling engaged as well as the propensity to engender engagement in others. Meta-analytic and primary study evidence strongly supports the notion that personality characteristics are important determinants of employee work engagement. Furthermore, logic, personal experience, and related research suggest that coworker and supervisor personality traits meaningfully affect directly and indirectly both individual employee and team-level engagement. This chapter speculates about those personality characteristics and suggests research that will advance knowledge about the importance and role of personality as a predictor of, and determinant of, employee engagement. We argue that selecting employees for their propensity to be engaged and engender engagement in others might be another arrow in the quiver of an organization’s efforts to increase its employees’ engagement and is deserving of more research.