Leadership is the ability to inspire others to achieve a common goal. A successful leader harmonizes individual needs and interests to the group's purpose. Below I have highlighted how I conduct myself as a leader.

Accountability: Choices I make are my own, taking responsibility for my failures and giving credit for my successes.

Trustworthiness and Reliability: Trust is not given, it is earned. Working to earn and keep other’s trust is part of my day-to-day goal. Trusting in team members is central to a team's success. Being reliable, saying what I mean and meaning what I say leads to trust.

Passion: Out- passion, passion with strong work ethic and determination.

Kindness: Being kind means thoughtful and purposeful care for others while keeping the end goal in mind. It doesn’t mean being run-over by others but being understanding of people’s needs.

Focus on the mission: Creating SMART goals, the team and leadership can concur and understand leads to team success.

Teamwork: Making sure teams understand an organization's mission and team goals is vital to organizational success. This leads each team member to understand the value s/he brings the organization.

Continuous Improvement: Improvement is part of growth and that does not happen without learning from mistakes and consistently looking at how and why things are done. Sometimes, continuous improvement requires teams to break processes in controlled environments to think of new, better and efficient ways of doing things.

Continuous Change and Learning: Facilitating an environment for teams to fail and recover quickly while allowing team members to support each other. This yields an environment where change and learning happen organically. In my years of experience this is the secret to a team that pushes boundaries and takes risks to achieve success.

Mission, Vision and Strategy: Organizational mission and vision drive the work my team performs. The business strategy should be derived directly from the organization’s mission and vision. The strategy must be adjusted as needed to make sure it aligns with organizational goals.

Feedback: Feedback is a two-way street. I provide respectful, timely and candid feedback. I expect my team members and colleagues to do the same for me. I especially like corrective feedback given that if I am doing something wrong, I may not notice until it is too late to correct it.

Non-negotiable: There are three things that are non-negotiable to me.

• Honesty: I don’t tolerate people who do not tell the truth. Be honest all the time, especially when recognizing your mistakes.
• Respect: Treat everyone professionally. Leaders who do not treat others with respect have no place in my team.
• Belonging: Every person must understand that they are valued for their different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Unkind treatment of anyone for any reason is not acceptable.

I’m an individual with likes and dislikes. I operate in the following ways:

• Metrics: I use metrics to inform decisions and help me evaluate performance.
• Humor: I use humor to sometimes start meetings, defuse tense situations and meet new people. My humor can sometimes be ironic, observational or self-enhancing.
• Decisions: I make decisions after considering feedback from subject matter experts, reviewing metrics and weighing the benefits to the organization and/or team. Once a decision is made, I move forward.