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

True buoyant leaders can never communicate in percentage points, or charts and figures. First and foremost, they must be storytellers, communicating with their hearts, not heads.

Survival in the demand economy depends on and requires experimentation, risk taking, and trial and error.

It is so easy to "calibrate" -that is, given the pressures on a smaller company to redefine in less ambitious terms- that which you are in business to accomplish. The moment this happens the downward spiral begins.

The secret is to be prepared, to draw on the strengths of the people around you, and most importantly, to instill confidence that your team will step up and find a solution.

At the end of the day it's really easy to be a great leader when things are going well. The real test, whether or not you believe in being an emotionally intelligent leader, is when things go wrong.

I believe that the establishment of a real ambition, a powerfully galvanizing and exciting vision of what a group is setting out to create, is vitally important.