By Eric Lutzo
Welcome to my monthly BIZ column on Authentic Leadership. I'm pleased to be joining you for this conversation about the value of imaginative leadership, strategic visioning and emotional intelligence in the workplace. I'm also hoping to encourage you to focus on enhancing your company's best asset—you.
I bring a great deal of passion to these topics, having studied organizational behavior and leadership and having spent years working with talented leaders, managers and entrepreneurs.
Before I opened my own practice, I worked in marketing for several international corporations. That gave me a chance to travel the world, live and work in different countries and build a variety of dynamic teams. It was during those years that I first recognized my passion for human development. I enjoyed working with individuals on performance management issues and working with companies to build their most effective teams.
While stationed in Madras, India (now called Chennai), I decided to launch the next phase of my career. I would return to business school, and this time I would study organizational behavior. When I returned to the states, I did just that at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Armed with an MBA, I started my own practice, luckily having landed my first client before graduating. It was a perfect transition. I was leaving my previous employer, Pillsbury, and starting a new chapter of my life. Ever since then my consulting practice, Forward Thought, has been focused on developing leadership's true potential.
My education didn't end there, though. To enhance my graduate work, I enrolled in several courses at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland where I studied intervention and coaching styles. It was in these programs that I realized the importance of helping LGBT professionals, giving them the tools they need to get grounded and to get ahead.
My education and many experiences in the area of human behavior has taught me a great deal, and the one thing that has always stuck with me is that the more authentic a leader is—the more a leader owns his or her identity—the better he or she will lead.
As we go on this journey of exploration together, I look forward to hearing from you about the personal issues and concerns that hold you back, blocking you from reaching your potential. I also look forward to learning from you as you share your best ideas for being the most authentic you in your businesses and in your personal lives.
Eric Lutzo is the president of Plexus, Cleveland's LGBT chamber of commerce.
