'Undercover Boss' Keeps Telling Real-Life Engagement Stories

It's hard to believe that CBS still gets away with fooling employees when company chiefs volunteer to disguise themselves and delve into the bowels of their enterprises in Undercover Boss.

But the Emmy Award-winning reality series is going to be kicking off its fourth season on Friday. 

Among the companies featured will be a Tempe, Arizona-based enterprise, Tilted Kilt. One of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the country, it's a Celtic-themed sports pub that features servers wearing sexy tartan outfits. 

"I really wanted to see: Are we really portraying our guiding principles all the way down into the pubs?" President Ron Lynch told the Phoenix Business Journal in looking forward to the episode featuring him and Tilted Kilt scheduled for November 9. "That was very important to me to see. By and large, I was very pleased."

Undercover Boss is a great series not only for the companies and CEOs involved, and because typically there are some feel-good stories told throughout a season. It's also an important show for the lessons it teaches about employee engagement -- about how the best enterprises are truly driven by employees who care at the grass-roots level and by managers and executives who understand that nurturing an engagement culture is the only way to truly succeed in the long term.

We look forward to a season of this lesson being learned again and again on Undercover Boss. Sometimes by the CEOs who go incognito, sometimes by the people they lead -- and sometimes by both.