So often we hear in leadership education that we are to “lead by example.” Too often this translates to leaders that if I want my employees to work as hard as I do, than that means I have to demonstrate it through my own initiative. Sadly this concept gets oversimplified. When leaders want employees to work longer hours, they think that they set that example by staying at work the longest. The reality is if you really want to impact your workforce and lead by example, start caring for the emotional and physical wellbeing of your people. Start appealing to the hierarchy of organizational behaviours that do exist in your workplace. Start respecting your people, start clearly and effectively communicating with your employees, and start demonstrating to them that their work is creating lasting meaning and has purpose.
If you want a robust and dynamic workplace that is achieving high marks in performance and excellence, then lead by example absolutely; start showing and demonstrating these behaviours to your people. People cannot proceed in the direction you want them to without clear guidance and communication.
Likewise, who wants to work in an environment where individual efforts are diminished by leadership? What person, you included, wants to invest more time and effort in work when both you, as a person, and your work are not valued or respected by leaders of the organization. To prove this point, think about how children express themselves when answering the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Most often children identify nurses, fireman, paramedics, astronauts, doctors. They identify professions that demonstrate a sense of meaning and purpose. They demonstrate a value to others and of working to a purpose that exceeds their own individual desires.
People, regardless of their profession, want to know that what they are doing is providing value and a purpose to their lives and the lives of others. We may not be what we once wrote down in grade school, but regardless, as leaders, we ought to be doing everything in our ability to translate to our people that what they are doing in our workplaces is providing lasting meaning and purpose. It’s our job as leaders to lead by example, to ensure we are meeting and encouraging the behavioural needs of our people. We choose to lead or follow. In either choice, behaviour as a whole and communication specifically, becomes the fundamental factor in how we connect effectively with others. Highly effective relationships are essential for you to achieve your own sense of meaning and purpose. No one wins alone.
Communication remains a critical and vital element of effective organizational performance. Communication is vital to creating effective collaborations that will drive performance in the production, safety, quality, and financial indicators of the organization. You will never achieve effective collaborations without effective communication framed in a positive and energized manner. You will never achieve effective communication without honing the skill of Positive Presence — the ability to adjust and create a positive and energized mindset within yourself through conscious thought processes.
In 1943 Abraham Maslow developed what many of us know as “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” His theory is that human psychology revolves around a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. As you may know, lower level needs in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. 
We have all been taught that the key to communication is listening. This is true, but you first must care before you can listen to understand effectively. Effective communication, as a highly influential trust behaviour, requires caring first, and seeking to understand before demanding to be understood. An old adage is applicable here: I do not care in how much you know, until you demonstrate to me how much you care. Displaying behaviour of compassion to another person opens their brain up to a willingness to listen. When people make a decision to shut you out of their lives because of your behaviour, effective communication with those people ceases. 
Technology mogul Elon Musk once tweeted out that “people are overrated.” While he would later explain that he was referring to the power of robotics and the emerging technology in both robotics and artificial intelligence, one wonders how destructive that nineteen-character tweet was to his organization? Musk worked diligently to surround himself with really bright and intelligent people that spend a considerable amount of time and energy on his research and engineering projects. Robotics maybe an emerging technology but people are not overrated … and words have meaning; your words as a leader have immense power. Words send a strong message to the people who work with and for you in your organization. 
Leadership effectiveness has three key components – not competencies – but system components – the necessary and sufficient conditions to produce results sustainable over time at a very high level. The three core components of leadership are:
There are basically four fundamental aspects of behaviour style: (1) executing (driver), (2) influencing (persuader), (3) strategic thinking (analyzer), and (4) relationship building, (stabilizer). With a fundamental understanding of these four aspects of behaviour patterns and how they affect connection, collaboration, and engagement, we can examine their link to the intrinsic nature of leadership. 
There are essentially four behaviour preferences or styles: (1) executing (driver), (2) influencing (persuader), (3) strategic thinking (analyzer), and (4) relationship building, (stabilizer). Having awareness of your dominant behaviour pattern or style as well as others’ behaviour styles is essential in leading your team members to higher levels of performance under times of stress, change, fatigue, increased complexity, and chaos. Our behaviour styles are strengths that connect us to who we are, what we believe, and how we choose to behave. 
John Maynard Keyes wrote, “The hardest thing is not to get people to accept new ideas; it is to get them to forget the old ones.” Change, increased complexity, and chaos are constants in our knowledge and technology driven world. Yet, with all of this change, increased complexity, and resulting chaos influential leaders and their organizations continue to thrive. What distinguishes organizations that thrive in the current operational environment from organizations that fail? What distinguishes influential leaders from those who are not leading effectively? A common denominator among successful influential leaders is they have discovered and use their behaviour strengths to propel themselves and their organizations to peak performance. 
As a leader one of your most important roles is Performance Coach. And by far, behaviour change is THE most challenging aspect of performance coaching for team members. To adequately acknowledge the need to change your behaviour, you must be compelled to search for, examine and question those unconscious assumptions you have buried deep in the recesses of your mind. You must challenge the prevailing patterns you have acquired and formed over time and life experiences, and replace them with more positive, effective and productive thought patterns. This is truly why so much coaching and counseling is ineffective in bringing about internal and lasting change to employees with behaviour problems. 
A fundamental principle, what one might call a natural law, is that people choose to act and behave based on what they believe to be true about how they see the world around them. Neuroscience research substantiates this claim. The human brain functions in a pattern recognition system. Patterning is phenomenally strong and we create a “confirmation bias” to accept outside inferences and influences that match the patterns we have created for how we choose to see the world in which we live.