Emotional Awareness – Where Are You?

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

Authenticity, humility, honesty, and courage are hallmark leadership traits that research has attributed to a leader’s emotional awareness. In today’s knowledge economy in which the majority of your workforce is made up of knowledge workers – those people whose jobs require formal and/or advanced education and are often professionals in their own right – there is now a critical need for leaders at all levels to possess a deep emotional awareness of both themselves and of those they lead.

Emotionally aware leaders re highly practiced with the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and it places them in a position to model emotionally balanced behaviour. More important, it enables them to be responsive to others’ needs, which is a primary contributor to employee engagement. Most people are not born with emotional awareness that comes with the skill of Positive Presence – it is, for the most part, a learned ‘skill’.

One of the paramount detriments to performance in today’s knowledge economy is the negativity that arises from people’s negative electro-magnetic neuro-chemical energy. The skill of Positive Presence equips you with the tools and brain science necessary to effectively replace the negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones and in so doing you are equipped to influence the positive in all those around you.

Its important to note that, for the most part, your brain is not wired for the positive – you are actually predisposed to the negative. But, your brain can be easily taught to recognize the negative, then release the negative, and replace it with positive thoughts and feelings. So it is, that a keen emotional awareness is needed for you to be able to respond appropriately to the concerns and needs of your followers.

Today’s work environment is wrought with negative emotionally charged events and situations. A common employees question, “How will (fill in the blank) affect my job?” is emotion driven. It implies worry or frustration about their work livelihood, not an intellectual interest in the job dynamics. Worry and frustration are negative emotions. Emotionally aware leaders are responsive to these feelings.

In a crisis situation or when encountering a fallout from any of their decisions, emotionally aware leaders are courageous and calm. They minimize panic and confusion by providing comprehensive and candid information. They offer alternatives and resources. They display knowledge, resolve, and control. They show empathy and willingness to help. They make themselves visible and available to answer any questions and they listen to comments. They encourage employees to contact them directly, not their assistants or lower-level managers.
They refuse to take personally any employee frustrations, and they show respect for these feelings. And they do not participate in or give credence to negative discussions and rumors.

Research from the neurosciences has established that positive emotional energy is necessary for achieving peak performance, building strong and sustainable relationships and experiencing good health in the workplace. We all know what Emotional Intelligence is. The challenge is to be continuously aware of your own emotions – ensuring at all times that you are creating within you the positive thoughts and feelings that lead to the behaviours of emotional intelligence. Not only that, you must be continuously aware of the emotions of those around you. To do that, you have to learn the skill of Positive Presence.

Tagged with: Authenticity, behaviour, brain, courage, crisis, emotional awareness, emotional intelligence, engagement, honesty, humility, knowledge economy, knowledge workers, negative emotions, performance, positive presence, relationships
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LEADING HEALTHCARE TRANSFORMATION THROUGH CHAOS

Posted on May 21, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

Portrait of a team of medical professionals

Let’s face it, if we are not changing, chances are we’re not alive. Resistance to change is normal and natural. You see, the minute your brain realizes you are moving out of your ‘comfort zone’…it automatically sets off the famous “fright/flight/freeze response”, to some extent. This “fright/flight/freeze response” is otherwise known as the “stress response”. If you perceive the change as desirable or something you want, then your brain instantly shuts down the stress-response and the release of the stress hormones. So it is that being involved in the planning process of a change event, and having a deep understanding of the need for the change provides you with huge leverage for overcoming your change-resistance.

Unfortunately, the more complex an organizational system is, the more difficult it is to involve all change-event participants and, modern healthcare organizations are some of the most complex organizational systems on the planet. Change planning processes can take as long as 12 months, or more … even years! And in Canadian healthcare, many change planning processes occur at a ministry level, … far removed from the front lines.

It is inevitable actually that you will at some point in your career find yourself faced with the necessity to make a change that you don’t agree with, for whatever the reason. … and the reasons are unlimited. One reason might be that it just doesn’t make sense to you. Another reason might be that you fear the change will put patient care at risk. Another reason might be that you fear the change will place even more responsibility on your shoulders. No matter what the reason is that you disagree with the change, it is legitimate, important, and normal.

Jack Canfield, co-author of the’ Soup for the Soul’ books, offers a simple “Success Principle”: E(event) + R(response) = O(outcome). I call this the ‘life equation’. When faced with unwanted change, the only thing that really matters is how you will respond to the change event (the E) – it’s the R in the equation that is so very, very important. How you choose to respond will affect how well you can perform your job. How you choose to respond will affect how easily you are able to create and maintain relationships at work. And how you choose to respond will affect your overall personal wellness – your physical health and your mind health.

Your aptitude for the skill of Positive Presence – your ability for a positive and energized mindset – determines the quality of your response. Your response, no matter what it is, must be such that you are able to maintain positive emotional energy. Your response must be such that you are able to maintain your strength, your health, your resilience and most importantly a positive healthy attitude. A positive “R”, a positive response, to the event, to the “E”, doesn’t mean you agree with the change, but it does mean that you will be a happier, healthier, more productive person.

As a leader today, particularly in healthcare, you must learn how to see beyond the chaos. First, by understanding that change today is continuous, fast, and disruptive. In other words, you must become accustomed to the disruptiveness of change in your workplace – to do that, you must create a mindset that will embrace continuous change and thrive in it. You must understand that ‘it is what it is’. Then, you must understanding the dissatisfaction or problem that’s driving the change. As a human one of our basic needs is to make sense of our environment. Finally, you embrace the change (“I can do this!”. “Let’s get’r done!”). Only then, will your change-resistance decrease enough to allow you to move on in a healthy manner. This process necessitates a deep self-awareness – know your values – who you are – what drives you. This process necessitates that you have an inner strength that will move you through the process with a positive and energized mindset (rather than a mindset of frustration and resentment)

Tagged with: attitude, change, change-resistance, chaos, complex, disruptive, emotional energy, front lines, health, health care, healthcare, mindset, organizational systems, positive presence, public service, relationships, resilience, stress, stress response, wellness
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Emotions at work – A Simple Strategy

Posted on May 14, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

Emotionally aware leaders understand their own (and, by extension, their employees) emotional triggers. Emotional triggers are people, events, conditions, or experiences that arouse intense negative reactions. Incompetence, micromanagement, constantly missing or incomplete information, arrogant and superior attitude, lack of communication, and excessive number of unproductive meetings are just some of the emotional triggers at play in the workplace. Once triggered, an emotional reaction may stir up other negative memories and negate any positive experiences on the job.

Because research in the neurosciences is proving that positive emotional energy is needed for achieving peak performance, building strong and sustainable relationships, and experiencing good health in the workplace emotional awareness is a must. Close observation is the best way to learn about emotional triggers. Pay strict attention to everything that is going on during an emotional interaction, including your own reaction. Then, immediately after the episode has passed, note your answers to the following questions:

• What triggered the event? Write down a summary of what happened. Include background information, such as past discussions, responses, and compromises. Be detailed so that you can find cause-and effect relationships among the specifics.

• What emotions were felt and displayed? It is easy to answer this question for yourself, but judge others’ emotions by how they acted. Often, body language is louder than actual words, especially for people who react passively.

• What words were exchanged? These words are informative. In the heat of the moment, people are generally honest about their feelings and thoughts. If you listen carefully, you will find out a lot about what is working and what is not working.

• How quickly did the situation escalate, and how long did it last? This time frame is important because it indicates the depth of the emotions felt or length of time they have been repressed.

• What are the emotional consequences of the event for you and for the others? Make a list of the emotions you and others displayed afterward — embarrassed, angry, sad, regretful, and so on. Compare them. Are they similar or different, and why?

Over time, observing these emotional reactions will give you insight into your own and your employees’ emotional patterns. Then, you can use this knowledge to better manage your own emotions by changing your mental models, or by taking the next step to learn the skill of Positive Presence.

Tagged with: emotional patterns, emotional reactions, Emotions, health, leaders, mental models, neurosciences, performance, relationships, Strategy, triggers
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Emotional Awareness as a Key Strategy

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

Without emotional awareness, you cannot relate well to others or engage with them, and in fact, you are more likely to cause dissatisfaction, conflict and performance dysfunction. It’s less than 30 years since the idea of emotions having an impact on personal and professional success, productivity and performance was named: emotional intelligence (EI). Emotional awareness operates under the same principles as EI. Its message is simple: When you are emotionally aware, you are conscious of others’ emotions and are more able to bring out the best in their behaviour and performance.

Your thoughts are the primary trigger to emotions (and vice versa) in somewhat of a cause and effect relationship. How you choose to think about an event or another person directly relates to the emotions triggered by those thoughts. If you change your thoughts, you will change the emotion. Research is proving over and over that an environment of positive emotional energy is needed for achieving peak performance, building strong and sustainable relationships and experiencing good health in the workplace.

A leader’s emotional awareness is important because employees relate to their leaders on an emotional level in several ways. First, how employees feel (e.g., awed, intimidated, indifferent, impressed) about their leaders influences the way they do their job and the way they behave on the job. This feeling extends to whether they stay or leave the organization and whether they act as ambassadors (or proud advocates) of the organization.

Second, a leader’s words, attitudes, and behavior have the ability to incite various negative and or positive emotions in their employees. Even followers who manage their emotions well can be affected by this emotional energy. It is the inadvertent or unconscious control that leaders have over the emotional state of their followers that can distort the dynamic between management and employees, creating dysfunctions. For example, a leader who has fondness for telling jokes in the workplace may amuse some employees but may annoy, frustrate or even offend the rest. This reaction could lead to a loss of respect for the leader, especially if the employees cannot ask the boss to cut out or cut down the joking.

Third, a leader’s professional decisions, strategies and actions can be taken personally by some employees and thus create an unintended emotional response. In unstable financial economic climates, everyone is nervous about losing their jobs; any change to current practices may be misconstrued as economic instability and can stimulate and elicit strong emotional responses such as anger and fear.

At the end of the day, if your goal as a leader is to cultivate an organization that is operating at peak performance, then you should be focused on the emotional dimension. Providing your leaders with the necessary training for them to be able to model emotionally balanced behaviour is crucial.

Tagged with: attitudes, dysfunctions, economic instability, emotional awareness, emotional intelligence, thoughts, triggered
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LEADING CHANGE THROUGH CHAOS

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

Unfortunately, the more complex an organizational system is, the more difficult it is to involve all change-event participants. And today’s knowledge-based organizations, and particularly public services organizations, are some of the most complex organizational systems that exist on the planet … . In many complex organizations, change planning processes can take as long as 12 months, or more … even years! And in public service organizations, many change planning processes occur at a ministry level or some other top level of government, … far removed from the front lines.

It is inevitable actually that you will at some point in your career find yourself faced with the necessity to make a change that you don’t agree with, for whatever the reason. … and the reasons are unlimited. One reason might be that it just doesn’t make sense to you. Another reason might be that you fear the change will put delivery of a quality product at risk. Another reason might be that you fear the change will place even more responsibility on your shoulders. No matter what the reason is that you disagree with the change, it is legitimate, important, and normal.

As a leader today you must learn how to see beyond the chaos. First, by understanding that change today is continuous, fast, and disruptive. In other words, you must become accustomed to the disruptiveness of change in your workplace – to do that, you must create a mindset that will embrace continuous change and thrive in it. You must understand that ‘it is what it is’. Then, you must understanding the dissatisfaction or problem that’s driving the change. As a human one of our basic needs is to make sense of our environment. Finally, you embrace the change (“I can do this!”. “Let’s get’r done!”). Only then, will your change-resistance decrease enough to allow you to move on in a healthy manner. This process necessitates a deep self-awareness – know your values – who you are – what drives you. This process necessitates that you have an inner strength that will move you through the process with a positive and energized mindset (rather than a mindset of frustration and resentment).

Tagged with: attitude, change, change-resistance, chaos, complex, disruptive, emotional energy, front lines, mindset, organizational systems, positive presence, public service, relationships, resilience, Resistance, stress, stress response, wellness
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The Emotional Dimension of Performance

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

Human emotions are as complex as they are varied. In a span of one day, we all experience a significant number of emotional highs and lows. An average person in a high-stress environment may experience even more. Emotions do not take a break, and they are always present influencing our behaviour, performance, and relationships.

We often speak about the significance of individual leaders understanding the impact of their behaviour on organizational performance. A critical part to understanding your behaviour and how it directly relates to you, as an influential leader, is being aware of your emotions, and in turn once aware having the ability to manage them and the response they generate from others.

While you can stimulate, inspire, and detect emotions in others, you cannot control their emotions. Only they can manage theirs, and you, yours. Influential leaders are leaders (with or without a formal title or role) who possess the mind and behaviour habits that create positive and energized emotions within and around them. They are adept at handling their emotions and this competency is useful for everyone they interact with. It sets them free from the negative energies stirred up by emotional interactions.

Influential leaders are highly practiced with the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and it places them in a position to model emotionally balanced behaviour. More important, it enables them to be responsive to others’ needs, which is a primary contributor to employee engagement. Most people are not born with emotional awareness that comes with the skill of Positive Presence – it is, for the most part, a learned ‘skill’.

It is important to understand that the majority of your emotions arise from your subconscious – a life time of experiences and even past life times of experiences that were transferred to your DNA at the time of conception. When you hear people talk about ‘handling’ your emotions there is a process that we must consciously learn to do. Some people’s brains are naturally wired for this process, but for most of us, it is something that must be learned through awareness and practice. It is therefore critical that you learn to first acknowledge your emotion, second, identify your thoughts that the emotion triggers, and finally ‘see’ your behaviour and how it affects you and those around you.

Learning the skill of Positive Presence is, for most people, a slow and gentle process of learning — on the job, in real time. It is not something we learn in isolation, but it must be tried and tested in your workplace with your work colleagues – because, what works for one person, will not work for all. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ quick fix. Learning the skill of Positive Presence requires an open mind, a common vocabulary, and a will to change, flex and adapt. Learning the skill of Positive Presence will, by its very nature, create a culture of accountability and collaboration – a huge bonus and necessity in today’s global work environment.

Tagged with: behaviour, complex, culture, Emotional, emotional awareness, emotional intelligence, Human emotions, Influential leaders, leadership development, negative energies, organizational development, performance, performance excellence, positive presence, relationships
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The New Leadership Paradigm

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

The knowledge economy and the subsequent ‘human’ economy as some refer to it, has presented the business world with the need for a huge paradigm shift on a global scale. As organizational success increasingly depends on the ability of the collective working brain-power of workforces to create and produce, the goal must be to make productive the specific strengths and knowledge of each individual. As this dramatic paradigm shift from mechanistic-to-systemic continues to unfold, leadership too must evolve to think systemically, to attend to values, to take a holistic perspective, and to focus on strengths rather than on weaknesses.

Arising from the research being done in the neurosciences and quantum physics, this leadership evolution will require that we develop a new skill – the skill of Positive Presence. The skill of Positive Presence is the ability to create and adjust for a positive and energized mindset through conscious thought processes to result in effective behaviours necessary for obtaining optimum performance, creating strong and lasting relationships and experiencing good health. The idea of individual behaviour, group and team behaviour, and overall organizational behaviour has consequently taken on a new importance. Behaviour is the most tangible evidence of organizational culture that there is. It is also a key performance indicator for cognitive strength and mind health. And it is the tangible result of human emotional energy.

So, the once thought of soft skill of the workplace – behaviour – has now moved to a level of huge importance for today’s organizational success. So too, in many instances, highly successful people are protective of the behaviour (positive and negative) they believe is the source of their success. This protectiveness is supported by confirmation biases. Confirmation bias is a type of selective thinking or a tendency to gravitate towards facts and data that suggest what an individual already believes to be true.

Where you find safety, quality and service problems in the workplace, you will find a leader (or leaders) with inappropriate and negative behaviours. Many leaders do not see their negative behaviours as the root cause of the safety, quality and service problems they encounter in the workplace. Their confirmation bias is strong, and they are often ready to show evidence from the data that something else is the source of their performance challenges. One conclusion is absolutely true: Behaviour lapses are obvious to everyone but the person who commits them.

The understanding that a leader’s behaviour is the key predictor to organizational performance is a radical shift in leadership thinking. To develop a performance driven culture a key element is to begin to focus not on the technical elements and processes, but to begin to consider the impact that poor behaviour has on safety, quality and service. This shift must start with leaders at all levels.

Real change will never come from an annual conference or the latest management fad. It will come from within an organization whose leaders are committed to understanding the impact that being self-aware, collaborative and connected to their followers has on performance and the willingness to enhance their behaviour competencies to unleash performance. Real change will only come from influential leaders who are focused on the performance gap created by an imbalance between technical skills and behaviour skills.

People tend to change their behaviour when they understand how it affects (negatively and positively) the outcome of their work, the lives of those around them and the overall performance of their organization. For example, when a supervisor who is verbally aggressive to team members understands that this behaviour intimidates co-workers and compromises the team’s performance, they are more likely to change or tone down their approach. Another example is when the department director changes the “mental map” or “mental script” of weary managers by asking them to think of their job as necessitating that they be able to inspire, involve and reward individuals in unique and productive ways to build on the power of relationship, they too are more likely to pay closer attention to their work. Closing the performance gap in today’s knowledge-based organizations is a nonnegotiable imperative.

Years of emphasis on technical skills and technical solutions have provided some modicum of marginal improvement. The real key to performance excellence today and in the future is to focus on behavioural skill development for enhanced cognitive capacity — the skill of Positive Presence.

Tagged with: brain-power, change, co-workers, cognitive strength, Confirmation bias, emotional energy, human’ economy, knowledge economy, knowledge-based, leadership, mechanistic, mind-health, neurosciences, organizational, organizational behavior, organizations, Paradigm, positive presence, quantum physics, relationship, systemic
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Leadership Development in Today’s World

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

A critical problem in management generally is scarcity of leaders who possess the necessary ‘Influential Leadership’ behaviours that propel organizations to greatness and guide them through significant challenges. There are plenty of managers and leaders who possess superb technical, operational and financial skills and an acute understanding of system processes. But what is lacking are managers and leaders who have a deep understanding of the critical link between behaviour skills and performance excellence, and who have been trained in the skill of Positive Presence— to create within themselves the necessary positive human energy and thought patterns for effective and productive workplace behaviours.

Effective leadership development is hands on, and cannot be lecture oriented or discussion based alone. Coaching is a logical adjunct to the academic element of the learning environment. Learned concepts can be practiced, applied to actual situations, and repeated until mastered. Feedback on performance is imperative for continued growth and performance outcomes. Performance indicators always provide the answer to the return on investment for training and development at the end of the day.

When behaviour is identified as a critical piece of the performance equation – and studies of corporate success stories have proven its relevance time and time again – it means that behaviour skills must become part of the organizational total quality management plan.
Just as we manage any process and skill for continuous improvement – so too, we need to build individual behaviour processes for improvement through continuous feedback unique to your organization, unique to your team, and unique to each and every individual.

A number of factors contribute to the failure of leadership development programs. Among these is the limited participation by senior leadership in the training and in holding people accountable for changing behaviour following the training. Limited participation signals a lack of commitment. As one common saying explains, “The difference between participation and commitment is like an eggs and ham breakfast: The chicken participated, but the pig was committed.”

Another reason that leadership development efforts fail is the cynicism of senior leaders. These leaders resist investing time and money into development programs, convinced that such efforts will yield minimal benefits but require maximum resources. This mind-set is disastrous, and it communicates to talented employees that the organization is not concerned about their growth and development. An important paradox to remember is that people do not quit their jobs; they quit their leaders. When an organization fails to develop its leaders, or worse, when an organization develops leaders and loses them to another organization, the impact on organizational performance is staggering.

Tagged with: behaviours, continuous improvement, development, influential leadership, leadership, management, performance, positive human energy, quality, success, thought patterns, workplace
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The Behaviour Element of Performance Excellence

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

Performance can be illustrated by this simple formula: Performance= technical skill x behavioural skill.

In high-risk industries, such as health care delivery, an imbalance between these two elements of performance (technical skill and behavioural skill) can result in poor work quality that causes harm, suffering, and even a threat to human life. ‘Influential leaders’ are aware of these dire consequences.

As an influential leader you hold yourself and others accountable for closing the performance gap created by a lack of balance between technical and behavioural skill. As an influential leader you model and teach the appropriate behaviours that strengthen both technical skills and behavioural skills.

A critical problem in management generally (not just high-risk industry) is scarcity of influential leaders who possess the necessary behaviours (influential leadership behaviours) that propel organizations to greatness and guide them through significant challenges. There are plenty of managers and leaders who possess superb technical, operational and financial skills and an acute understanding of system processes. But what is lacking are managers and leaders who have the motivation to go beyond these skills to enable the organization to exceed (not just meet) expectations, and continue to improve processes, quality, and satisfaction. There is a lack of leaders who have a deep understanding of the critical link between behaviour skills and performance excellence.

Behind every high-performing organization is an influential leader who is keenly aware of how thought habits drive individual behaviour, and how behaviour habits affect those with whom you work. And, whether formally trained or not, this influential leader knows the power of positive human energy to drive strength-giving workplace behaviours. This finding emphasizes one simple truth: influential leaders with a deep sense of behavioural-awareness not only can close the performance gap but also can inspire others to make a difference in the work they do every day.

State-of-the-art equipment, technical and operational expertise, and use of proven quality improvement methodologies (e.g., benchmarking, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing) are merely tools that help leaders, but on their own they cannot bring about a performance driven culture. The key to performance excellence, as research continues to reveal, remains to be a unique leader awareness of one’s self and of the impact they have on those they lead.

In many organizations at mid-level leadership levels, particularly in not-for-profit and public organizations, when asked “Where did you learn how to be a leader? “, the answer will reveal very little, if any, formal leadership training and development. This is really not surprising. Many leaders of today came into their titled positions by being exemplary employees and moving successfully through progressive levels of management. These former “front-liners” were exceptional at their day-to-day responsibilities and were rewarded a promotion to management level positions with little or no training (formal or informal) or experience in leadership and management. And very few organizations will or can justify the investment of the time and/or money necessary to develop and prepare these, their most capable employees, for leadership positions.

Unfortunately, it is not unusual to see people in management positions that are clueless about how to deal with the dysfunctional situations and behaviours, the “people issues,” that occur daily and could consume upwards of 80 percent of a workday. And, again unfortunately, it is not uncommon to see ineffective and dysfunctional behaviours in managers themselves, particularly during times of chaos and crisis which are often just a typical occurrence in today’s complex and ambiguous work environments.

This lack of formal leadership development was fine prior to the dawn of the knowledge economy. But in today’s organizations where our front line workers are now highly educated, and more times than not, professionals in their own right, a lack at management level of the necessary emotional and behavioural intelligence can spell performance disaster and loss of high performing employees. Even more unfortunate is that many existing leadership development programs ignore the value of studying human behaviours and the impact these behaviours have on performance outcomes.

For performance excellence in today’s work environments it is crucial that mid-level and front-line leaders understand the impact of the behaviour element of performance and how to develop the skill of Positive Presence within themselves and within the people with whom they work, the necessary positive human energy for performance driven behaviours.

Tagged with: accountable, ambiguous, awareness, behaviour, behaviour habits, challenges, complex, development, dysfunctional behaviours, Excellence, human behaviours, human energy, influential leader, leadership positions, motivation, outcomes, performance, positive presence, thought habits, training
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The Artful Apology

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Catherine Osborne

At the heart of sustaining highly effective relationships is the skill of expressing an artful apology. There are various excuses people give for refusing to apologize for inappropriate, disrespectful, rude, and a host of other more toxic behaviours. Whatever the fundamental driver in your own life for withholding an apology for your inappropriate behaviour, you will never be able to sustain highly effective relationships among peers and subordinates, engendering their support and engagement in their work, unless you develop the behavioural and moral skill of an effective apology. And we all need, or will need at some point in our career, the knack of getting a professional apology right.

An artful apology contains three necessary and sufficient elements. Learn them in this order and do not vary from this pattern to express your regret and remorse for ineffective behaviour.

1. I was wrong – expresses your acknowledgement of your behaviour that was inappropriate and harmful to the legitimate needs of others.
2. I am sorry – expresses regret for the harm you caused and a willingness to commit to not doing so in the future
3. Will you forgive me – expresses your desire to enter back into a functional relationship with the other person and you are inviting them to do so by offering them the opportunity to provide their forgiveness for your behavioural lapse.

It is monumentally difficult for most people to express regret for their inappropriate at best and toxic, dysfunctional behaviour at worst. It requires a unique self-awareness, a tremendous amount of reflection, and a lot of practice – but it is a skill that as a leader, we must be proficient at. Whatever the fundamental driver, whether you are the CEO, or the new hire in the mail room, such a refusal perpetuates dysfunctional relationships and wreaks havoc in workplace engagement, productivity, and performance.

By examining the nature of relationships in your organization you gain understanding as to the value and the power effective and functional relationships among key leaders and their teams have on creating a performance driven culture. Teach and deploy the behaviour competencies throughout your organization, link them to your strategic objectives, and you will not only achieve a performance driven culture, you will become a peak performing organization.

Tagged with: apology, behaviours, inappropriate behaviour, relationships
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