The Story Edge by Kindra Hall

Author:Kindra Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harpercollins Leadership
Published: 2024-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

STRATEGY #1: DEVELOP A DISCIPLINE OF REVISITING YOUR LIFE STORIES

We’re usually so busy living (or more accurately managing and surviving) the particulars and minutiae of our current life stories that we don’t often look back and consider the lifetime of stories that have shaped us up until this point.

Stories of the people and events that shaped your childhood.

Stories of trouble you got into and why.

Stories of big choices you made—and whether or not you knew at the time how big they were.

Stories of heartbreaks and failures.

Stories of subtle triumphs.

How did you spend your summer? Where did you sit in the lunchroom? When was the first time you felt out of place and what happened? How did you meet your first best friend and are you still friends? Why or why not?

It might seem like a waste of time, all this backtracking down memory lane—especially since none of the examples I just listed ask about your resume or business experience. However, researchers have expressed that exploring the full richness of the stories a leader has lived provides necessary “knowledge and clarity about their values and convictions.”15

In a 2005 article published in The Leadership Quarterly, “What’s your story? A life-stories approach to authentic leadership development,” researchers acknowledged that while leaders who are authentic and committed to their values and convictions are essential to true and lasting success in business, sometimes “authentic” is hard to achieve because we don’t have the necessary clarity when it comes to our own values and convictions. With so many competing interests and so much noise, it can be difficult to even find our “inner compass,” much less follow it. How can a leader be sure what they believe is truly what they believe and is not influenced by the unrelenting pressures of the environment? The solution, according to the researchers:

“Here, we suggest that leaders acquire these characteristics by constructing, developing, and revising their life-stories. Life-stories can provide leaders with a ‘meaning system’ from which they can act authentically . . . interpret reality and act in a way that gives their interpretations and actions a personal meaning. Therefore, leaders are authentic to the extent that they act and justify their actions on the basis of the meaning system provided by their life-stories.”16

In other words: if you want to truly be authentic instead of trying to be authentic, take a moment and explore your own life stories.

Here are a few more prompts to get you started:

What was the biggest decision you ever made—how did it turn out?

Was there a particularly challenging time where you had to make a difficult choice?

Was there a time when things didn’t turn out the way you expected, and how did you handle it?

What are the moments in your life of which you are the proudest?

Who are the people who have influenced you, and how?

Of all the places you have lived, where have you most felt at home?

When did you feel most celebrated? Most humbled?

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