I have been studying some of the world's greatest minds and leaders, and observing leadership around me; not because I was setting out to be a leader, moreso out of curiosity. I wanted to know what is true leadership?

If you increase your team's productivity, you sell more and, consequently, you make more money. The question is: who is leading in this and what do they understand about their employees and productivity as it relates to the human capital that is their workforce?

There are days, I am sure, that you sit in your office and you hide from your work. You go unnoticed in plain sight. And then there are the days that you are so consumed by your work that you forget to grab lunch. You are still hidden in plain sight. Only thing people see is you in distress. If you want to move in your career, and get unstuck, think about who sees you, what they see.

Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer feels that without physical interaction in the workplace, employees are missing out on important collaborative experiences and more importantly, the company is missing out on new ideas that spring from the collaborative process. What Mayer is missing with her edict is the fact that bringing people physically together does not solve the communication or ultimately collaboration problem. Collaboration leads to innovation. Without innovation, every company, small and large, from tech to manufacturing, will not survive the next century.

There are several online sources for email management tips from Personal Excellence.co. As I perused what's available, these key tips kept coming up.

We have created a political system bent on sound bites and quick hitting verbal assaults. We like the one-liner and a good zinger. But as leaders, this is not realistic. We need people to stand up for integrity. Without it, there is no trust, and without trust there is no real communication.

If you want performance out of your people it is time that you start coaching them. Coaching is a balance between art and science. You do not want to appear that you are micro-managing your people, but you do not want to leave them in the wilderness.

Recently, it struck me how much our identity is tied up with our work. I mean, if you are not running your business, who are you? It flagged for me the importance of having a life beyond my business, because when it is over, I want to know who I am and have other avenues and interests to pursue that make my life just as meaningful.

Over the course of the past six months, I have been investigating the "trickle-down" effect of mentoring in the workplace. The trickle-down effect of mentoring is that it enables employees to be more productive and innovative. This is because behaviour is a function of the relationship between people and the environment.

Trust at the board level is necessary at three intersection points: board and CEO, board member to board member, and CEO to C-suite. Why does trust matter? Think about the transactional costs of a low-trust relationship. In low trust relationships, suspicion abounds and parties feel compelled to paper every decision and every discussion. What can boards and executives do about this? Here is some advice.

Vulnerability is a business skill that every leader should consider in good times and bad. It's not weak. It takes greater strength to recognize and acknowledge criticism than to will it away. It's not submissive. It's about taking responsibility and being accountable. It's not being afraid to make tough decisions. It's about recognizing the impact of them.

We need to redefine leadership as being about lollipop moments, how many of them we create, how many of them we acknowledge, how many of them we pay forward, and how many of them we say thank you for. Because we've made leadership about changing the world, and there is no world, there are only six billion understandings of it