Understanding your Personal Leadership Story
Welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years, ensuring that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy.
We believe that the language of Strengths can help unlock the meaning contained within our life stories. In this episode, we reshare an episode that was released back in February of 2020. Brian and I were talking about this idea of story and leadership. How many of our stories have been radically altered from the events of the past two years, or have they been altered at all? Or how many of us were forced to confront or remember some of the stories in our lives that have shaped who we are today? What impact, if any, has that process had on us?
In this episode, we talk about leadership narrative and the importance of using your life’s collective experiences and story to shape and inform who you are as a leader today. Brian Schubring and I discuss how our stories have a shaping influence on how we lead and influence in our current context.
As you’ll hear, Brian springs some reflection questions on me that I wasn’t expecting. We were actually planning to record something about the generative nature of Strengths (we still will, stay tuned), but then started talking about leadership narrative, and the importance of story, and thankfully, I was recording the whole time.
We hope you enjoy this episode as you reflect on how your own leadership history has shaped you!
How Personal Story Shapes Leadership Narrative
How has your personal life story shaped your leadership story? How can we insert the lens of the language of Strengths to help us go even deeper in understanding how our Strengths were formed and developed?
We really want people to understand how their personal story has shaped their leadership narrative. We also want people to explore the shadow side for a moment and ask themselves what a person’s personal timeline can tell them about their bias; tell them about some of the cognitive and behavioral conditioning that they demonstrate. Sometimes we have a great familiarity with degenerative behaviors that we just seem to repeat without asking ourselves what kind of residual impact it’s having on someone else.
The Power of Reflection
This intentional process of reflection can truly benefit us in ways that we really aren’t expecting because many relational challenges come from a deep unconscious patterning that we aren’t necessarily aware of. It could have been a period of our life that actually shaped how we think. We’re trying to ask leaders to reach into this personal reservoir, their personal story, and draw out their leadership narratives; truly compelling stories that are truthful, honest, and timely that they can have in their toolkit to be able to lead others.
Your Leadership Story
After you finish listening to this episode, begin to construct your personal leadership narrative.
- Write down any and all memories you have of significant events, people, places, and/or experiences that have made an impact on your life.
- Once you have a big list, attempt to put them in some sort of chronological order.
- Next, what jumps out? Make a note of it and after you’ve looked at everything, attempt to identify themes and connect them back to your life today.
Connect with Us
Reflect on how your past has shaped or is shaping your present and future. What comes up? We’d love to hear about what you learn! Connect with us at connect@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.
About The Leadership Vision Podcast
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. We believe that knowing your Strengths is only the beginning. Our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents.
Please contact us if you have ANY questions about anything you heard in this episode or if you’d like to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
If you’d like to be featured on the Leadership Vision Podcast, let us know how you are using Strengths and what impact it has made. Contact us here!
