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.

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.

As a sensitive and highly intuitive person in the command-and-control corporate world, I always felt miscast.

My grandfather used to say to me when I was a boy, "Getting knocked down is no big prize - it's getting up that's the real trick." I couldn't agree more.

Change management is kind of a weird concept to me. We can' t control events any more than we can control the weather. But we control how we deal with it and we can control the opportunities that these moments of change create.

As buoyancy is not contrary to other characteristics of leadership, including decisiveness, accountability and performance standards, I don't ever think it can be self-defeating.

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.