Change – whether personal or organizational – is not easy. It is a journey that takes many years and involves many people, but as the Chinese proverb states, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”
Despite the clear and compelling reasons demonstrated and validated in research, behaviour change is still a distinct challenge for many leaders. It is not a decision to which they make a commitment immediately. In fact, some leaders do not even see the need for behaviour change. They are convinced that other people are the problem, as if these leaders can manage (let alone lead) without other people.
The truth is that none of us, regardless of how high performing and high achieving we are currently, is immune to poor behaviour and poorer judgment. It is easy to give in to toxic behaviours because we are inundated by them every day, but it is hard to erase their effects on our reputation and on the neuronal connections we have with others that either creates an environment of commitment and engagement or detracts from it.
Once you make the choice to change your behaviour, do not get discouraged. Use as many tools as
possible to help you, and conduct a self-examination before, during, and after your transformation. Deliberately develop your skill of Positive Presence, an innovative thought model connecting workplace behaviour to human energy. The skill of Positive Presence is easily learned through a systematic, programmatic methodology for equipping leaders with the knowledge and understanding necessary for developing and sustaining the behaviour skills needed for performance excellence.
The corporate world is full of courses, seminars and workshops purporting to improve employee skills, increase productivity, boost morale, and enhance employee retention, and ultimately to increase organizational performance. It is the hope that the investment of time and money into these ‘perks’ will have enough influence to bring about employee change. Make them better thinkers, better decision makers. Make them happier, more resilient.
A fundamental principle, what one might call a natural law, is that people choose to act and behave based on what they believe to be true about how they see the world around them. Neuroscience research substantiates this claim. The human brain functions in a pattern recognition system. Patterning is phenomenally strong and your brain creates a “confirmation bias” to accept outside inferences and influences that match the patterns you have created for how you choose to see the world in which you live. As a result, your brain works very hard to defend your current habits, even toxic and destructive ones. 
Following are three foundational skills sets that need to be strongly embedded in every leader in order to achieve performance excellence:
There is nothing more destructive to an organization than a leader who is out of touch. You have to remain relevant. There is no doubt our world has changed; a lot of it for the better. Our workforces have also changed in the cultural adaptations of how we treat women and minorities with dramatic and positive change. If you haven’t yet adapted to these realities as a leader in the forms of jokes, condescending phrases, and other unacceptable cultural norms you are heading for troubled waters. 
Albert Einstein wrote, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” I would like to expand his words to also read that these significant problems cannot be solved with the same level of behaviour we were at when we created them. The good news is we can change. 
Regardless of an official title at work, or in your community – whether you realize it or not — you are a leader. You’ve heard the saying “Behaviour speaks a thousand words.” And whether you know it or not, every time you connect with someone, you have the opportunity to lead thru influence, and so, you can choose to be an Influential Leader. 
Leadership failure rarely is the result of the absence of technical skill and intellect, but incompetence in behavioural skill. You only need to look at the headlines of the most recent business publication to substantiate the credibility of this statement. You gain higher levels of management responsibility based on your individual technical skill performance. Your overall leadership success however, is clearly dependent on your behaviour skills since senior leadership achievement is a strategic orientation rather than an operational one. Research has proven that people must engage with their leader on a personal level before they engage with their work. The truth is that the so-called soft skills of behaviour are really the hard skills that create the measure of influence in your leadership accomplishment and your organizational performance. 
Changing behaviour is a challenge, even when not doing so means lost business, bankruptcy, the demise of a company, or harming other people. By the same token, changing a workplace culture that is dysfunctional or toxic will only occur by changing behaviour. As arduous as it seems, it is certainly achievable with the proper focus, training, and accountability. When leaders choose to focus on the aspect of individual and leader behaviour and commit to a systematic, programmatic methodology of development, employee engagement and commitment will improve and in turn will drive performance excellence.