People do not quit their jobs. They quit their leader – the boss. Ineffective leaders breed ineffective followers, and performance and productivity suffer as a result. With a positive, emotional connection with your people you send a clear message that you are interested and invested in what your people experience on a daily basis. People in general do not follow just anyone, nor do they follow out of the goodness of their heart. They need good reasons—a motivation – to follow.
You, as a leader, are responsible for giving your followers those reasons by understanding what they want and need to fulfill their work requirements and contribute to a mutual beneficial and meaningful purpose in their work. During the downturn in the so-called bubble, many leaders acquired what the professional literature called ‘learned helplessness’ and became caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy of scarcity and mediocrity. Unfortunately, much of that is still present today causing productivity and other performance factors to wane. Team members get caught in this brain-funk, and simply do whatever the leader says to keep their jobs and stay out of trouble with the boss.
The reality is that inwardly, people still want to make a difference at work. For this to happen, you must build a culture of performance, where you give them control and emancipate them to do their jobs and solve problems at their level. For you this means changing from within. Changing from the outdated and ineffective practices of the past that limit your leadership capacity, and learning to connect as an influential leader. Ask yourself daily if your behaviour is drawing people toward you or away from you? Understanding the elements of what endears your team members to you is essential to understanding the great impact that connection has in driving performance in the workplace.
The art of building a culture for performance through personal connection begins with the skill of Positive Presence, an innovative thought model connecting workplace behaviour to human energy through a systematic, programmatic methodology equipping leaders with the knowledge and understanding necessary for developing and sustaining the mindset and behaviour skills needed for strong and lasting connections.
In today’s professional world, people are craving effective leadership. What maybe misattributed as generational gaps is that everywhere, middle level managers and their team members are overburdened and uninspired by individuals holding titled positions of leadership providing neither effective leadership nor effective management. The issue is not change resistance. Peter Senge said it well, “People do not resist change. They resist being changed.” Knowledge based workers desire true leadership that capitalizes on collaboration, communication and connection to accomplish their work related goals and objectives. 
The ancient Greek aphorism, “Know Thyself,” can be attributed most notably to the philosopher Socrates, however, for the more modern generation of folks you are probably familiar with its Latin version that hung above the Oracle’s door in the Matrix film series. Suffice it to say, virtually every kind of organizational performance problem links back to relationship dysfunction that stems from a lack of self-awareness – how our quirky traits and habits that we do not see in ourselves affect the most important people around us. 
An analysis of 20 studies with nearly 20,000 people revealed slight and inconsistent differences in job attitudes when comparing generational groups. While many love to point out that younger and older people are more different than alike, research refutes this notion–especially in the workplace. What matters at work is not differences between differently aged employees, but the attachment to the belief that differences exist. This fallacy gets in the way of team collaboration and how employees of different ages are managed and trained. What’s needed is a strategy that not only fosters mutual respect, but utilizes unique opportunities to cater to specific needs, such as audio technology making provision for those harder of hearing and introducing (and allowing) easy access to mother’s rooms. 
Influential leaders know how to create and sustain highly functional teams that are resilient and engaged. Team building is not about technical skill. Team building is the product of understanding human behaviour and putting the focus on behaviour skill competencies that will allow technical skills to blend into a high level of workplace performance. This workplace performance translates into safety, quality, and service outcomes. 
It has been said many times in a variety of ways and deserves repeating here: people never connect to the organization’s mission and vision until they first connect with their leader. 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 themselves and around them. Influential leaders demonstrate four vital strengths that ensure their success:
Here is the simple truth: Employees can tell the difference between authentic leaders and those who are simply trying to fake it to make it. This distinction is apparent in the way people behave and interact with others, and no amount of regular surveys can convince employees that their leaders care enough about them to pay attention to their problems. 
Sigmund Freud, so the story goes, went to his grave perplexed by the question “What do women want?” I wonder if it ever occurred to Freud to simply ask a woman. In business, puzzled leaders do ask their employees what they want in forms of employee satisfaction and engagement surveys, unfortunately most organizational leaders do little with the answers they get from these employee surveys. 
All great relationships require constructive conflict and confrontation to grow and thrive. Influential leaders orchestrate the culture in which people can be energized, engaged, and fully aware of their meaningful contributions to the enterprise. Much of the personal and organizational benefits of such a culture can be negated if we avoid constructive conflict and confrontation. 
If you are listening to research coming from the Neurosciences (Brain Science) and how it relates to the complexity of today’s work environment, you will understand that it is your electro-magnetic neuro-chemical energy that creates your mindset. For a positive mindset you must create a positive energy flow within you and around you; and it is this positive mindset that is necessary to create a productive and healthy team that meets high levels of performance.