Have you ever looked at your boss's job and thought, "I could do that!" ?

Dr. Tom Bell, president of the Kansas Hospital Association, says that even though many of us think we can do our boss's job, it usually involves challenges we never expected!

Watch the video version of my chat with Dr. Bell below:

Marjorie Scardino became the first female Chief Executive of a FTSE 100 company when she was appointed CEO of Pearson PLC in 1997. But attaining such a formidable position didn't come from making decisions that people always loved. In fact, for Marjorie, it was quite the opposite! While running a newspaper earlier in her career, important members of the community hated the coverage of them so much, they ostracized Marjorie and her family.

"When we would write articles about certain people in the community, they didn’t like it. So, we learned how to live with people who didn’t like us. We would walk in places and people would literally get up and leave!" she recounts now with a laugh.

Marjorie says she grew to learn that she could fail and not die: "That's a powerful lesson.

If you've never experienced any major failures, you're just afraid of everything."

Watch the video version of my interview with Marjorie Scardino below:

When it comes to being an effective leader, communication is key. Sallie Krawcheck, one of Forbes World's 100 Most Powerful Women, and current head of Bank of America's Global Wealth and Investment Management team, says there's no such thing as explaining something too many times:

"Leadership is about constant communication. I’m often surprised when I feel like there’s subjects we’ve talked about till we’re blue in the face and then there’s still someone who goes, ‘wait—how do we feel about that?' So you take it again from the top."

Keeping your message direct and focused is important too. "Pick a course of action, bring it down to its bare elements, and charge!" Krawcheck advises.

Watch Sallie Krawcheck discuss leadership and communication below:

“People often look at me and say, ‘Oh she’s been this very successful general officer, she was the CEO of a Fortune 50, life is good.' Well life wasn’t always good,” retired Major General Gale Pollock told me.

Pollock grew up with an extremely violent father who would beat and intimidate Pollock and her mother with fists, belts, knives and guns.

"I was about 11 when I started saying, 'No, this is not acceptable.' Finally one night I got out of bed, when he was in the middle of one of his terrors, and I stood there in front of him and said, ‘Stop! Men don’t hit women—you leave her alone.’ And much to my surprise, he stopped. Think about how empowering that is for a little kid!"

At 13, she met the person who would not only inspire her desire to become an army nurse, but also provide her with the encouragement to continue moving ahead.

“We lived about 15 minutes from Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, and as odd a person as my father was, he would invite soldiers that were living away from home over for Sunday dinners,” Pollock explained. “One of them, Robin, was in his mid-twenties. I told him, ‘I’m really scared, I don’t think I’m going to live to get out of here.' He listened to me and said, ‘Yes you will, you’re going to go on to do great things and you’re going to get out of here.’ So on all the nights when I was terrified, I held on to his words: ‘you’re going to do great, you’re going to get out of here’.”

We can’t always choose what happens to us in life, but as Pollock told me, we can choose to look back or to look forward.

“I know those things happened, they certainly affected me,” she admitted. “But I don’t have to let them make me immobile. I can say, ‘well I don’t like what happened, and so I ‘d like to help other people escape if they’re in that kind of environment: I want them to know they can escape. But I don’t spend a lot of time looking backwards.”

Watch my moving interview with Gen. Gale Pollock below:

“I am a dancer who studied divinity and early childhood education and spent a career working in preschools and head-starts, doing non profit start ups, auditioning for choirs and dance companies, teaching human sexuality to social workers and teachers," Eddie Gonzalez-Novoa, the Executive Director of Public Allies New York told me with pride.

A lot of us feel forced to choose between our passions, believing we should just pick one and master it. While there's no harm in expertise, finding a way to incorporate all of our varied interests and skills will allow us to bring much more to the table.

"I would love for more emerging leaders to be able to both nurture multiple passions and to integrate them into their leadership," Eddie encouraged. "It would be better not only for them but for all the communities we serve. Everyone would benefit because we'd have so many new types of leadership."

Harmonizing more of our passions into what we do will make us stronger and more interesting leaders.

Watch the video version of my interview with Eddie Gonzalez-Novoa below: