Leader Spotlights

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...

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,...

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...

How can we help everyone - and I mean everyone - live to their potential? Let us begin by putting an end to averagarian thinking - meaning that any organization composed of individuals of average ability, working in accordance with policies, plans and procedures discovered by analysis of fundamental facts of their situations, will in the long run prove more successful and stable than an organization of geniuses each led by inspiration. We have lost dignity...

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....