Life is a series of ongoing interactions (or engagements).   How well you live towards, through, and within your every waking moment is the underlying measure of your personal engagement

Being engaged is your personal accountability and while others have an influence and impact on your level of engagement, whether at work or leisure, ultimately how satisfied you are with your circumstances is up to you.

Enjoying What you are Doing

The core measure of engagement is enjoying what you are doing.  If you are invested in doing something, (from golf to taxes) you do it better.

This is not to imply you like what you are doing (one interpretation of enjoying) but rather that you both feel you are responsible for and benefit from the tasks.

Being engaged in a thing is mainly a sign of acknowledgement of value.  The undertaking is meaningful to you and the return is greater than the effort expended (i.e., of value).

Two Way Street

In social and group context, leaders or managers can play a key role in encouraging personal engagement.  Each of us also is accountable to seek engagement even if the leader is not promoting it.

A sad situation I have observed on occasion is when the group or team members clearly seek to be engaged but are blocked by the leader.

For reasons I never fully understand but probably related to some strong desire by the leader to be at the centre of everything team members are treated only as tools of the leaders will.

This approach is very effective at shutting down personal engagement and often leads to people leaving the group.