Building trust in the workplace takes time and it’s born of a mix of things: Trust is formed out of demonstrating you are a competent leader; that you act with integrity, sincerity and humility; that you’re a person of your word and can be believed; and that you genuinely care about and connect with others.
When you create your leadership story and can find the vulnerability to share it, it can unlock some powerful connections with those you lead. By authentically sharing who you are with coworkers, you build trust.
According to Doug Conant, a former Fortune 500 CEO whose books about leadership have put him on the New York Times list of bestselling authors, “your life story is your leadership story.”
In his latest book, The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights, Conant posits that to move forward as leaders, we as leaders have to get calibrated by understanding what has shaped us during our lifetimes.
That could sound terrifying for those who haven’t always shown up as the person they wanted to be (in other words, it could be terrifying for all of us) but these ideas have really resonated with me. When leaders make time to create their leadership stories, we really reflect on some major themes, such as:
- what has influenced us
- who has influenced and shaped us
- which circumstances have affected how we see the world
It’s an interesting process because, as Cosant argues, when most of us entered the workforce we were focused on fitting in and absorbing the corporate culture rather than sharing what we have to offer that is different or unique.
Creating your leadership story matters.
When you think broadly like this and work through your past, knowing your story helps you figure out what really matters to you. Why does that matter? Because when we as leaders know our purpose, we find courage and conviction. We also gain understanding about what informs our goals and decision making — and even how we interact with our team members. We can create a personal vision statement for our careers that is focused and authentic.
How we have lived and what we have experienced are the integral underpinnings of our leadership. What’s really interesting to me as a leadership coach is that when we go through this process, we also have a chance to use what we glean to write the story going forward.
The more we understand about ourselves, the better we can be in our leadership.
I was interested to see that the Harvard Business Review delved into this question of origin stories and leadership by interviewing 92 leaders. Their theory is that how we choose to tell our stories reveals characteristics of our leadership.
According to the HBR, leaders tend to view their origin stories around four dominant themes, or lenses. When they considered their leadership stories, leaders would look at their past through:
A “Being” Lens —looking for examples of how they have always been a leader, even from earliest childhood, at school, at home, or in the community and the workplace and personal qualities like confidence and an ability to organize teams
An “Engaging” Lens — finding examples of times when they had to take on leadership roles due to circumstances that required change or facilitation and they were able to step up and lead people through a crisis or challenge
A “Performing” Lens — recalling a sense of duty or responsibility gained through hard work and being put in a position of leadership, discovering they could support and guide people
An “Accepting” Lens — realizing that at some points people gravitated toward them for advice or guidance and that was when they understood they could lead people by supporting their needs
What we are able to see from our past experiences is generally applicable to how we currently lead others. But the story doesn’t stop there.
As we at Padraig work with leaders, we see how leaders can evolve and grow in their leadership. Understanding how we default to certain actions or reactions, what brings out the best in us and what triggers the worst of our personalities can help us to move forward differently.
So, for example, if you read through that list of lenses, which lens is your default? What happens if you try to look at your leadership story through a different lens? Does your lens affect how you put yourself forward for opportunities? Does it affect the way you view the qualities of your team members?
There are also other tools for understanding yourself and others and at Padraig, we use the Everything DiSC Assessments with our clients. So when we work with leaders and their teams, a lot of folks are struck by how personality styles influence everything from communication to team cohesiveness or toxic relationships.
Just as personality styles affect conflict on our teams, our leadership story helps us to understand why it’s valuable to learn how to use different leadership styles and tools.
The benefits of creating a leadership story include moving from reactive leadership (defaulting to what we’ve learned and always done) to thoughtful and intentional leadership. If you anchor your decision making in knowing your core beliefs and understanding your goals, you can be more disciplined even during times of crisis.
Successful leaders add to their toolkits, learn new skills and create new habits. When you create your leadership story, you get to understand the background and use that to inform how your leadership story will continue to unfold. In our next blog, we’ll walk you through how to write your leadership story.
Coach’s Questions:
What would hold you back from writing your own leadership story? What benefits can you see for writing it? What elements come to mind that you can quickly jot down right now?
