I'm a natural leader because of my emotional intelligence.

As a Christian, compassion, empathy, self-awareness, and social skills come naturally to me, which allows me to connect with those around me in a sincere and authentic way. And it's this authenticity that allows me to "lead an army" in every aspect of my life from investments, startups, project management, and personal life.

At the end of the day, I know that team work makes the dream work because even as a project manager, the person with sole responsibility for success and failure, I don't produce direct results for the project. My team does.

Everything requires input from the team, from schedule estimation to implementation, and it's their speed and performance that makes or breaks a project. So as a leader I have to empower my team mates and get their buy-in through organic influence and strategic motivation.

I've heard it said this way before: As a leader, we need to cast a vision and then get out of the way. And this is something I'm great at—not because I love to delegate but because I know how to delegate. I know how to get out of the way and allow everyone in my team to get credit for their work and enjoy the satisfaction from their contributions.

Deep in my heart, I always want us to win because I learned a long time ago that the winning equation is We > Me. But this took a lot of humility and compassion from me to become an authentic leader that cares about the success of everyone—not just the customer or the business, but also the team.

Emotional intelligence to me is more than just conflict management, it's empowering people through simply caring for them and hearing and meeting their needs where possible. It's also about seeing a person's potential, and more than that, believing in it and cultivating it. And not because there's anything in it for me, but just because that's my life purpose.

I give all my teams a safe environment to work and grow in bound together by the soils of emotional intelligence because that's what makes a natural leader. And that's what makes me one too.