It has been said many times in a variety of ways and deserves repeating here: people never connect to the organization’s mission and vision until they first connect with their leader. Influential leaders are leaders (with or without a formal title or role) who possess the mind and behaviour habits that create positive and energized emotions within themselves and around them. Influential leaders demonstrate four vital strengths that ensure their success:
1) the drive to achieve results,
2) the ability to take initiative and accept personal responsibility,
3) the capacity to cultivate collaboration and team building, and finally,
4) the ability to connect with people continually.
Organizations do not do things, people do – and people do things better when they are connected emotionally to the mission and vision of the organization and to its leadership. It is these people who come to work every day with a high degree of energy to invest themselves in fulfilling the primary performance objectives of the organization – in a word, they are engaged.
Take note, these four vital strengths are not technical in nature. Each of them are behaviour-oriented performance strengths. That means any person can learn them, apply them, continually adjust them, and ultimately succeed with them.
Creating and maintaining an effective culture of commitment and engagement takes effort from the leaders and managers who work the closest with employees. Gallup’s 2025 Global State of the Workplace Report offers what may be our last snapshot of a workforce on the cusp of seismic change – a future shaped by AI. Last year, global employee engagement fell, costing the world economy US$438 billion in lost productivity. The primary cause was a drop in manger engagement. The data shows manager engagement fell from 30% to 27%. No other worker category experienced as significant a decline. Manager engagement directly affects team engagement, which affects productivity.
Providing your front-line leaders with the skillsets they need to inspire and motivate in today’s complex and chaotic work environment is crucial to success. The skill of Positive Presenceand the Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies use the power of a positive mindset and the behaviours of collaboration and connection to set up your team for excellence. By creating highly effective relationships with their staff, they promote a healthy and positive work atmosphere in which people feel trust, compassion, safety, and hope.
Catherine is the President and CEO of CORPORATE HARMONY, providing virtual solutions for leadership development and organizational culture change. Her leadership and coaching experience as a Project Manager in an ever-changing, fast moving technological organization with unrelenting demands drove her to the realization that a positive mindset and strength-building behaviors are essential for today’s complex and chaotic organizational systems. CORPORATE HARMONY’s virtual platform of programs, coaching and performance measurement, is an innovative online technology of tested proprietary content. The world-class content of CORPORATE HARMONY’s Positive Presence Program develops the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and the necessary ‘Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies’ for maintaining a positive and energized mindset and increased performance in today’s complex work environment, and leading to a culture of collaboration and connection. Catherine’s vision for Corporate Harmony is to bring the skill of “Positive Presence” to the corporate world as it becomes more complex, ambiguous and chaotic. Catherine is uniquely positioned to impact organizations’ productivity and long term success, with her powerful vision of eliminating bad stress from every workplace around the globe, bringing purpose into the people equation to promote healthy, productive and meaningful work cultures and turn the tide on the neglect of mental health on a global scale. Catherine is author of the book: “CORPORATE HARMONY – The Performance Link for Today’s Modern Organization” Catherine can be reached at: Catherine.Osborne@corporateharmony.ca or go to ‘contact us’ on our website www.corporateharmony.ca. Catherine is available for consultation, and can be reached by 519-695-3407.