Down deep: immersed in leadership.(IN HER OWN WORDS)

There is a thrill and a danger in relinquishing control. We all approach the challenge differently. Some trust blindly, some trust willingly, and some withhold trust, retaining a healthy dose of skepticism, reluctance and fear.

When faced with issues of trust and losing control--whether it's in life, in leadership, or in other ventures--my first inclination has been toward the last category, fear.

This unfortunate self-realization surfaced when I began SCUBA diving. Luckily, I found that my passion for the underwater world compelled me to move beyond fear to a deeper sense of commitment, a realization that also helped me to define my leadership style.

Reaching down deep

My doubt and fear about SCUBA first surfaced upon discovering what the last three letters of the acronym stood for: Underwater Breathing Apparatus. In Hawaii I swam through shimmering underwater caves in crystal clear warm water. The dive master promised that if I could descend to 40 feet, I'd swim with giant sea turtles. Even with such temptation, I was unable to stay beneath the surface for longer than I could hold my breath and trust this so-called underwater breathing apparatus. Instead, I emerged gasping for air, unwilling to relinquish control of my breath to a machine I knew little about. Talk about control issues.

After great patience by the dive master, I was able to descend. My first dive was filled with terror and excitement. I wrestled with my buoyancy, fought with the breathing device and staved off multiple panic attacks when I thought I had lost the aforementioned battle. I vacillated between moments when I had convinced myself that I had stopped breathing or my equipment had failed. In truth, I experienced raw terror. Sometimes my death grip on the dive master's hand was all that kept me from shooting up to the surface.

We came upon a green sea turtle so large and graceful that I simply could not have missed him. Disturbed from the sandy cave bottom, he stretched his long neck upward, spread his large flippers like a pair of graceful wings and leisurely propelled his 400-pound, four-foot-long body along a current on his flight toward the surface. Weightlessly, he curved with his effortless, upward glide. The breathtaking ascent was right before my mask-clouded eyes.