There is a fundamental truth about organizational performance. The majority of people you know, yourself included, have a legitimate need for effective, functional relationships – personal, familial, and professional. It is actually these relationships that make you human and without which you cannot survive. But did you know, research coming from the fields of neuroscience and quantum physics suggests that much of who you are resides in your subconscious and therefore a huge amount of self-awareness is needed in order to create effective, functional, and professional relationships in the work place. But here’s the thing … few people are willing to do the hard work at the personal level to create and sustain those relationships.
When you ask the question of how to achieve a culture that is highly self-aware, you must begin by treating culture like any other performance indicator. This is accomplished by developing and sustaining effective and functional relationships among key leaders and their teams within the organization. And, as with any performance process, you do this through continuous feedback and improvement of relationships at the individual level.
Effective behaviour is unique to every organization and must be explicitly identified at the organizational level, the team level and most importantly, at the individual level. Survey upon survey continues to reveal that core members of an organization rate mutual respect as the singular most important organizational value. Organizational performance is predicated upon every individual in the organization learning, applying, and sustaining, effective behaviour skills – the kind of behaviour that exemplifies mutual respect.
The secret to effective behaviour skills that lead to effective functional relationships is the skill of Positive Presence – your ability to adjust for and create a positive and energized mindset through conscious thought processes and driving the ‘strength-giving’ behaviours that relationships are built on. Such behaviour includes all that is related to what we choose to think, what we choose to believe, how we create and focus our attitudes, and how we choose to form our habits. Even more important is an awareness for how our behaviours and actions affect all those around us. Understanding others’ behaviour is an important key to creating effective, functional, professional relationships.
