One of my great mistakes coming up, since I was a kid from wrong side of the tracks, and fearful that I might be seen as wanting leadership-wise, was to be someone I was not.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

For so long, companies were run using a command-and-control, 'top down' hierarchical method that involved dictating down the command chain and maintaining order. What I've witnessed in our time is evolving democratization, a shift to a demand economy accelerated by technological advancements like social media.