Gabby Giffords, Pam Iorio, Mark Kelly, Karen Post, speaking
This week, I accompanied my dear friend, Pam Iorio, the former Mayor of Tampa, to the Lead & Succeed event in Tampa. If this event comes to your town, attend. For five bucks you will hear top notch business speakers and likely make some great contacts too.

Pam was one of several keynote speakers and she inspired everyone, including me, to find a higher level of leadership in themselves.

She shared stories about her journey in life and she talked about the three important behaviors that she sees in great leaders.

1)   They don’t waste energy fretting about the competition. They focus on their own performance and improving.

2)   They treat everyone with respect and make everyone feel important.

3)   They don’t give self-doubt a chair at any party.

While these points are pretty simple advice, if you think back to any moments of soft leadership you observed, or were a part of, they were not likely practiced.

Along with Pam, the speaker roster was impressive and included: Steve Forbes, Les Brown, Carly Fiorina, Terry Bradshaw, Former Congresswoman, Gabby Giffords and her husband, Former Astronaut and Space Shuttle Commander, Mark E. Kelly.

Pam and I got to meet Gabby and Mark just before their talk. While our time together was brief, it reminded me just how precious life really is and how things we all take for granted, like speaking and having a healthy, functioning body, can be taken from us in 45 seconds. Gabby’s resilient spirit and will to return to normalcy, while dealing with the tremendous scars and pain of that dark day in 2011, were beyond inspirational.