There is a reality that affects the majority of companies around the globe: only 30% of their collaborators are truly engaged in their work.

In its latest annual survey, conducted in 2013, Gallup reported that 50% of workers in the U.S. merely put their time in and 20% act out their disengagement in counter-productive ways, with a negative impact on their co-workers. Gallup estimates that this group costs the U.S. economy $500 billion a year.

The enigma to resolve is this: Why is there such a high level of disengagement?

While leaders recognize that their principal task is to close the gap between the potential talent of their subordinates and their engagement in the company, they also accept that the leadership they exercise will play a crucial role in maximizing the potential of their collaborators. However, managers are often hard-pressed to identify the changes they need to introduce to increase their team's engagement level.

Approximately 10 years ago, Drs. W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of the Insead Business School published the book Blue Ocean Strategy, which not only sold more than 3.5 million copies but became a benchmark for entrepreneurs keen to find new markets and beat the fierce competition.

Now, the Harvard Business Review has published a new strategy by the same authors aimed at resolving the dilemma of workers' lack of engagement through the type of leadership practiced by managers.

Entitled Blue Ocean Leadership, the proposal recommends conceiving of this activity as a service that workers either "buy" or"don't buy". Viewed from this perspective, every leader has clients within the company.

The leader has a manager to whom s/he must deliver specific results, but s/he also has followers to inspire who seek his/her guidance on how to achieve the desired goals.

When people value the leader's practices, they are effectively "buying" the "leadership service". When they "don't buy", they simply disengage.

The key recommendations of Blue Ocean Leadership are:

• To focus on specific activities that the leader and his/her subordinates can do together to improve their performance.
• To connect closely to market realities and how clients perceive the firm's work and then use that information to adopt corrective measures.
• To empower leaders at every level of the organization. Today's markets demand immediate answers, which means that problems can't always be referred upwards to find a solution.

Delegating authority to leaders in different management levels of the company and providing them with the requisite support will become crucial, as will knowing when to let them get on with the job and when to intervene to correct a potentially dangerous situation.

The leader serves the organization and should understand that s/he is merely passing through. His or her legacy will be to empower other and better leaders who were shaped under his/her guidance.