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.

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.

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.

Mr. Churchill connected truly to what was in the hearts of the British people, which is what a buoyant leader does. One of his most famous quotes is about making mistakes and learning from them. He wasn't shy to admit when things went wrong.

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.

All buoyant leaders are driven by a real ambition- that is, what is being created that didn't exist before- and one criteria for that real ambition, is that on initial inspection, it seems fundamentally impossible.

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."