First, define your credo- the belief system of the organization. Secondly, define your real ambition, or where do you want to go as a collective community.

Maintaining patience, being generous, and helping your peers takes time, and no small amount of emotional fortitude. But it brings an exponential difference in your team's ability to problem-solve.

Leadership is not about sitting and presiding, it's about a going somewhere. To be buoyant, you must not only ignite passion around a common quest, you must also mobilize your team to take a journey with you toward a common destination, or what I call a "real ambition."

Mandela stands alone in possessing all of the qualities of other great men, but has one quality which is transcendent... his ability to forgive and to place others above himself.

The phrases and language used everyday in an organization can in fact affect the way your team makes decisions and conducts themselves.

What I've come to realize is that emotional intelligence, which I define as buoyancy, was the only way I knew how to lead, and is, in my option, the only way to inspire real change.

Inevitably in my career of 35 years, I was in one turnaround circumstance after another, and I was personally put in positions of significant responsibility but without complete authority over everyone that needed to be mobilized.