Enormous advances over the last decade in neuro-imaging technology have awakened us to the benefits of positive energy – for an increased capacity for achieving peak performance, for building and maintaining good relationships, and for experiencing good health. The bottom line is – for all of these things we need a positive mindset.
But why, you may be asking, is it so important now and not so much in the past? What is it about today’s work-world that makes it so much more important now than ever before in business history?
The reason is, we have left the days of the industrial and technological revolutions behind us – where productivity and efficiency was almost totally dependent on process efficiencies of getting the job done. In today’s knowledge-based society, organizations are more and more made up primarily of knowledge workers (those whose jobs require formal and/or advanced education and are considered people who “think for a living.”), bringing their individual specialisms together for a common purpose.
According to Peter Drucker, whose ground-breaking work turned modern management theory into a discipline, the best example of a predominant knowledge workforce was that of the modern day hospital in all developed countries of the world. In these organizations characterized by extreme levels of complexity, ambiguity and constant change, success is often made even more challenging by public sector bureaucracy, as well as fiscal and demographic pressures.
So what corporate organization today is not characterized by extreme levels of complexity, ambiguity and constant change? Furthermore, one in four of all jobs are in the public sector, fraught with bureaucratic pressures as well as fiscal and demographic issues.
There has never been a time in history where one’s ability to produce and maintain a positive mindset in the workplace was so critical – not only for performance metrics, but also for emotional, mental and physical wellness. Wellness programs are necessity, but the majority of them are forcing ‘good feels’ from the outside, when in fact one’s ability for the positive comes from within. It is your ability for the skill of Positive Presence that enables you to maintain a positive mindset in spite of the negative effects of complexity, ambiguity and constant change.
Many organizations possess great potential for creating high levels of organizational performance excellence, but are missing the one key ingredient for excellence – trust among the senior leadership team. This is reflected in the safety, quality, service, and financial performance indicators of the organization. The impact of low levels of trust ripples through the entire organization. 
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. 
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.