Self-Authoring your Leadership Journey

Are you self-authoring your leadership journey?

Your personal development and leadership is a journey. It has inflection points of growth, adversity and change. Are you taking stock of where you are? Including your blindspots, and your ultimate potential?

And where is this knowing coming from? From your boss – ‘here is your job description’. From your friends and family ‘you should really ….’. From social media? Are you listening to your own voice or to the noise of others, about who you are, where you are headed, what job to take, and what impact to have?

Let’s get into a self-authorship, which comes from the very foundation of who you are and the potential of who you will become.

Here is a simple exercise:

1) Draw a timeline across a piece of paper. Make a mark that represents today:

Where are you on your journey?
How does that define your leadership today?

2) Now take stock of your past. Mark some significant moments of your past.

What are the gifts from your past?
How has your past prepared you up for this moment?

3) And now sense into your desired future. Mark some significant moments:

What are your moments of achievement?
How will you navigate the curvy road to get there?

As you state your journey, self-authoring is a powerful method. The key here is that your story is not sourced from external validation and noise. That the strategic reflective process comes from within as you listen to multiple sources of data that help you define the iterations of your leadership story.