What is it that achieves results for organizations to succeed? Is it the methods, tools, technologies, protocols and systems, or is it the people? There is no doubt – it is your people that achieve results. The methods, tools, technologies, protocols and systems, are there only to enhance your peoples’ ability to perform.
It is with people, then, not with processes, that organizational leaders must form a long-lasting connection. This connection is what ultimately determines the success or failure of the leader specifically and the organization as a whole. People buy into their leaders before they buy into the organization’s mission, vision and values.
Employees who feel a connection with their leaders are engaged, cooperative, collaborative, participative, accountable, passionate about their work, and supportive of change. They are motivated to behave according to established skills, and abilities. An organization with such a workforce can dominate any market or industry with consistent, high quality, safety, service, financial, and operational outcomes.
People connection is a strategy that leaders use to demonstrate they care for and understand the needs of their employees. Connection is an expression of leader compassion, trust, security, and hope. You can care for people without leading them. You can never lead people without caring for them. A deep connection between the leader and employees raises everyone’s level of energy, engagement, motivation, and performance.
At the heart of a connection is the skill of Positive Presence. The skill of Positive Presence is innate in every human being, and with an awareness of this skill comes the mindset, the vocabulary and the skills needed to ensure a culture of success on all fronts.
Connection increases a leader’s influence among followers. This influence spurs followers to do more – improve their behaviour, develop their skills and talents, work better and harder, seek and participate in collaborations or teams, and achieve greater results. In today’s business climate, where every aspect of our professional life seems vulnerable and in a state of flux, a strong connection between leaders and followers is especially necessary. This bond enables the organization to not only rise above its challenges but to thrive toward new heights of performance excellence.
One of the most critical components, in fact, perhaps the most critical component of leadership success is the ability to connect with people. You cannot lead without connecting. Connection is an expression of leader compassion, trust, security, and hope.
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 followers to support the concept of collaboration at first and then, ultimately, to fully participate in or pursue collaborations. In the absence of credible leaders, people will still perform their tasks and abide by organizational rules. They only do so, however, because they want to keep their jobs, and they perform at the lowest acceptable level possible. Obviously, this response is a narrow perspective that produces superficial results.
Trust enables your team not only to perform its daily function but also to rise above conflicts and crises. In today’s fast-paced, complex, ambiguous environment of constant change, conflicts and crises abound within the organization. So in order to succeed, trust is a necessary characteristic of any organization’s culture. 
Trust-earning or trust-building behaviours include:
Trust is a complex and far-reaching concept that pervades our personal and professional pursuits. We cannot bottle trust and sell it. Trust is based on an individual’s mental model that people are generally honorable. Social and ethical theorist Russell Hardin stated that “generalized trust must be a matter of relatively positive expectations of the trustworthiness, cooperativeness, and helpfulness of others.” Generalized trust is just one type of trust. The other type of trust is ‘behavioural’ trust, both of which are intangible imperatives of organizational culture that drive engagement and collaboration. 
Role-modeling accountability is not difficult, but it does take practice. Here are three ‘lights’ of accountability to practice:
In a collaborative culture, accountability is a visible practice and framework. All team members are clear about their specific responsibilities. They are aware of the organization’s mission, vision, values, and how they personally fit into the 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.
While dysfunctional behaviour is often chalked up to human nature, particularly if it occurs only occasionally, it is nonetheless a signal that a larger problem likely exists. In other words, when blood results get mixed up in the lab or are lost in transit, the reasons likely have less to do with the technical aspects of the job and more to do with behavioural lapses and inadequacies among the staff. The challenge for leaders and managers is to observe, identify, and amend ineffective and dysfunctional behaviours so that they do not impede true collaboration and high performance outcomes.