No other aspect of effective leadership is more apparent than the loss of trust through bad behaviour. Building and sustaining trust is critical to accomplishing tasks, achieving goals and creating a performance driven culture. This is true for any enterprise, whether for-profit or not-for-profit. In this way, trust is an operational and collaborative imperative. A lack of trust in any organization leads to below-average safety, quality, and overall low performance.
Influential leaders (leaders who lead through influence and do not necessarily identify with a particular title) are acutely aware that trust and collaboration are inseparable. Trust and collaboration share the same purpose, and without trust any collaboration becomes a farce. After all, people – not processes, policies, strategies, tools or methods – make up the collaboration, and trust is critical in motivating people to do the actual work.
Influential leaders also know that trust begins and ends with their own behaviour. Research shows our behaviour is in fact the physically manifestation of our emotional human energy. Trust can only be developed within a flow of positive human energy and so it follows that only positive behaviours have the power to create trust. Your propensity for positive behaviours is directly linked to your skill level of Positive Presence.
Technical mastery, intelligence, personal and professional drive, past accomplishments, and vision are admirable and necessary leadership qualities, but they alone do not inspire long-term trust and collaboration. These qualities must be complemented by interpersonal and behavioural competencies.
A leader’s high degree of credibility is the sum of both behavioural and technical skills, and this credibility is what sustains trust. Trust, in turn, leads people to support the concept of collaboration at first and then, ultimately, to fully participate in or pursue collaborations. Trust is the ultimate starting point that makes everything else work. When trust is operating at its best, then the collective intelligence and talent of people can come together in a network of performance capacity that drives goal achievement to the highest levels.
Staying in a positive mindset is greatly challenged in today’s complex and ever-changing work environment and for many of us it is a constant daily practice. One of the techniques used for maintaining a positive mindset is what my friend and colleague, Sharon Campbell-Rayment (www.sharoncampbellrayment .com), calls the ‘APB’ (no, not the police jargon) … it is the acronym for “Awareness, Pause, Breathe”. The APB is one of many strategies that Sharon developed during her journey back from a severe concussive brain injury.
The findings coming forward from the neuro-sciences have huge implications for business organizations on a global scale. And in fact, these findings call for a gigantic shift in how the modern organization develops its employees, its leaders, and the overall organization, in order to succeed in today’s global knowledge-based economy.
A key focus of research on human performance seeks to understand the complexity and function of the human brain and its impact on performance in relationship to how people respond to leadership and colleague behaviour. Research highlights why you must consistently monitor and manage the impact your behaviour has on the performance outcomes of your team’s production and the experiential emotional memory, or EEM, your behaviour creates. 
You have probably heard the saying, “A truly great leader is hard to find, difficult to part with, and impossible to forget.” The same adage holds for bad leaders too, at least the “impossible to forget” part — this also holds for colleagues as well. Did you ever wonder why? 
Focus is a fundamental requirement in today’s workplace. In the knowledge workforce focus is necessary for productivity and efficiency; It’s necessary for quality and for safety; It’s necessary for self-awareness; And it’s also necessary for the practices of mindfulness and meditation. A colleague of mine who suffered from alcohol addiction, found it impossible to focus for any length of time. This lack of focus blocked her ability to do the meditation and prayer taught in the 12-step Program she was participating in for a sober life. She was however, able to re-wire her brain and train herself for focus and meditation, and she shares her story in her book “Madly Chasing Peace – How I went from Hell to Happy in Nine Minutes a day”, by Dina Proctor. 
“Leaders lead”, as the old saying goes. This is a simplistic view of what leaders actually do; it does not take into account the fact that not everything a leader does is worth following. So let’s revise this saying to be more specific: “Leaders lead by modeling effective behaviour.” In today’s complex organizations everyone must be an influential leader. Influential leaders are role models of accountability. Their appropriate behaviour comes from a conscious choice to live by their conviction, to change harmful mental models, and to manage their emotions. Their appropriate behaviour is a result of their well-developed 
Accountability must be a visible practice In creating an organization that is built for collaborative success. All team members are clear about their specific responsibilities. They are aware of the organization’s purpose, mission, vision, values, and how they fit into this framework. They are given measures and tools to use in this framework. They are given measures and tools to use in determining if they are moving forward or falling behind on their objectives. They are empowered to do their job, and they are rewarded for their efforts. The result is a high level of employee engagement with a vested interest in the success of the organization. 
In today’s fast paced and ever changing business climate, the most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feel familiar, even normal. You don’t notice how much it’s affecting you, even as it takes a heavy toll.