Excerpted from Capitol Weekly, December 15, 2011
Peter Alduino is a leadership expert and the author of The Citizen Leader, a guide for becoming the person you would choose to follow and engaging your community.
by Alisen Boada
Tell me a bit about yourself and the seminars you host?
I started my career in investment banking, and after six years doing that I looked at the people around me and said: Their values are different than mine. Not good or bad, just I don’t aspire to be who they are. At the time my title was assistant to the president of the organization I was working for, and my boss gave me a raise, a promotion, and a bonus and I just felt the golden handcuffs go ‘click click’ and decided it was time to bow out and follow a pursuit that was more heart-felt than pocket-felt.
So I started over again in training and development because that’s more where my interests and heart were. And I’ve tried to marry both head and heart, because if I were just doing things based strictly from my head I never would have left investment banking. And that’s the approach I’ve taken in the material as well, it really tries to speak to the heart first, use the head as a way of reflecting and articulating what’s in the heart, and then finally getting hands-on so you’re taking action on something that’s meaningful to you. And if that’s the one thing people take away from this, that’ll keep them motivated even as critics come crawling out of the woodwork.