The changing demands of the business environment are making it difficult for leaders to determine the right conditions and leadership styles needed to engage employees, this leads to reduced productivity, dedication, commitment, creativity, innovation, and worker retention. Leaders within small-to-medium defense contractor organizations are under pressure to cope with the declining budgets and changing demands with minimal resources to survive in their marketplace making leadership behaviors essential to the commitment and concentration level of employees in the workplace in hopes of producing positive outcomes. The focus of this quantitative correlational study is on the relationship between leadership style characterized as transformational, transactional, and passive-avoidant leadership and employee engagement characterized as vigor, dedication, and absorption. Eighty-two employees who work in small-to-medium defense contractor organizations located in Michigan and Texas were asked to rate their leaders’ behaviors and self-perceived levels of engagement. Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) 5X Short and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-9 (UWES-9) survey scores, the findings revealed employees perceived their leaders as exerting transformational behaviors the most or “fairly often” and felt engaged “very often at least a few times a week.” Employees perceived their leaders as exerting transactional leadership “sometimes” and passive-avoidant “once in a while.” The findings showed only one significant correlation between leadership style and employee engagement which was between transformational leadership and employee engagement. Transactional leadership and passive-avoidant showed no significant relationship with employee engagement.