Effective communication + Empowerment = Engagement?

What's the connection? Is effective communication and/or empowerment a precursor for engagement? This BNET article from their latest newsletter, suggests that empowerment could foster engagement.

Empowerment, stress BNET, 'is not a substitute for engagement from the managerial level; rather it acts as a conduit for purposeful and fruitful conversations' (through effective communication?) and actions. Empowerment requires management to:

• Create the vision
• Motivate
• Root out the blockages
• Ensure the resources are in place
• Provide encouragement and support
• Eliminate fear
• Monitor and celebrate success

John Smythe of Engage for Change and author of Chief Engagement Officer defines engagement as a 'social process by which people become personally implicated in the success of a strategy, change, transformation or every day operational improvement,' where employees better understand:

• the organisation, its ambitions and their connections with it
• the change or potential for improvement
• how it affects their work
• their own attitudes, values and skills

'through a process over which individuals feel some influence, where those responsible for the expected improvement are not just spectators of someone else's programme, and when they choose to volunteer themselves.'

Empower your employees and you will be better placed to have those conversations. Engage your employees and you employees will go beyond the conversations and willingly act.

I remain agnostic because internal communication grapples with how to hold on to and pass on an acceptable appreciation of engagement (beyond Hewitt Associates' Say, Stay, Strive), and what relationship is between engagement, effective communication and empowerment.