Leader Spotlights

As I amass more and more years of leadership, and age to be sure, one thing becomes clearer—don’t short-change creativity. Whether one's left or right brain is naturally the more dominant, it’s accepted truth that the side that drives emotion, intuition, and imaginative thinking—the right brain—is often the empowering source for true inspiration and innovation.

Colleges know this. Business schools know...

Failure is one of the most underappreciated aspects of business. People seem to fear it, but it should be embraced. It provides us so much. By doing things that have the chance of failing, we end up trying novel things. Game changing things that make the world a better place and move forward our collective abilities and technologies. If you’re only ever trying things that have a small chance of failing, chances are you aren’t doing anything...

Is success reaching the destination, or is it the journey itself? In entrepreneurship and business, we too often fixate solely on outcomes. Certainly, setting a clear vision and achieving strategic goals and results are important, but I believe true success and personal fulfillment emerge from cherishing the journey, grounded in the cultivation of gratitude.

Fostering an attitude of gratitude enhances relationships and drives outsized...

Vince Lombardi, the great football coach of the Green Bay Packers, said: “It’s not whether you got knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.” I think this statement has helped me more than any other in life and business. Resiliency is arguably nature’s most impressive quality as without it, life would have ended as soon as it started. Resilience is life’s key ingredient as it keeps everything in balance, ensures survival,...

At the core of ethical and effective leadership is a culture that drives positive change and the overall betterment of our world around us. In my experience, the single most important attribute of leaders who embrace such a culture is an attitude of optimism. During my Ambassadorship to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, I had the great honor of speaking at the University of Zurich from the same podium where Sir Winston Churchill gave his “Let Europe...

It’s all about trust. The 30+ years of my professional and military career have given me the opportunity to witness extraordinary as well as very bad leadership examples. I was lucky enough to serve under fairly exceptional bosses, both male and female, and if I were to describe their most impressive leadership skill, I would not hesitate to pick one: trust.

Trusting your subordinates to do their job well means that you will be able to...

Intuition – or more colloquially: gut feeling - is beyond rationalization. By the definition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it's "a natural ability or power that makes it possible to know something without any proof or evidence."

Consequently, intuition has a rather difficult stance in today's business world that is dominated by facts and figures. This is also true for my line of business at Swiss Re – global...

In Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman plays Luke Jackson, a war hero sentenced to two years in a prison work-camp for a minor offense. Dragline, the prisoners’ leader, challenges Luke to a boxing match. Severely outmatched, Luke gets knocked down, again and again, yet refuses to acquiesce.  Eventually, Dragline, after unsuccessfully begging Luke to stay down, abandons the fight himself. Luke wins, albeit painfully,...

When I was very young, my grandmother called me “Kim-Can!” Through these simple words, she was indirectly telling me—and, deep down, I eventually knew—you can do anything, no matter what the obstacle, if you are focused and determined. If you fall, you can get back up to achieve the task at hand. It just takes resilience.

Over the years, I have taken resilience to a new level by forcing myself out of my comfort zone...

Change gets a bad rap. Policy change. Regime change. Climate change. These days, it seems that most people assume change is bad.  If the common assumption is that change is bad, then one must assume that the result of that change is also bad....