Getting to know YOU - your life story is your leadership story
Eva McLellan
Global Biotech Executive, Integrated Leader & Talent Cultivator | GM Roche Pharmaceuticals | Young Global Leader World Economic Forum 2024
The purpose of Monday’s Leadership Learnings Series is to share weekly doses of encouragement and learnings from my own experience and the experiences of the most inspiring and integral leaders I know.
Every second Monday for the next six months, I plan to share leadership learning and reflections with this community. I’d love to generate a bit of a conversation on what is needed most from us as leaders, as we enter what the world is predicting to be a rough few winters. I hope that we can create a little community so that we can all pull from each other’s strengths and have the courage to seize the opportunities that this next phase of transformation in the world, will bring.?
I hope that this short series evokes in you as a reader confidence in what you bring as a leader while opening you up to new learning and a path to acting on this learning - in your own context.
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Getting to know YOU - your life story is your leadership story?
It feels appropriate to start the first post and 12-part leadership series with this.
It’s a fascinating journey, this journey of leadership. We spend so much time building up our technical expertise and then learning to practice becoming leaders, training after training, we diligently soak up all the leadership approaches and models out there, that we tend to overlook the one thing we must really know inside out in order to be able to lead with impact – ourselves.
Most of the great and inspiring leaders I know, lead with a combination of strength, decisiveness, courage, empathy, compassion, and integrity. What I am learning is that to lead in such an emotionally integrated way, we must first become familiar with our own personal stories; we need to take the time to get comfortable with our past, and present, and then self-author an imagined future for ourselves.
It’s not a case of reminiscing and looking back fondly or, in some cases, wincingly on our childhood memories. We need to go much deeper than that. We need to listen carefully to the internal narrative "stories we tell ourselves" on repeat in our own heads, and we need to analyze whether the dominant story which served us until now, is this story helpful for our future - the leader I am becoming.
This is the essence of narrative identity, a concept I have been introduced to by Steve Athey *more on narrative identity here
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I have found these guiding questions are helping me to evaluate my past in a way that is allowing me to shape my future.
I’m learning a ton.
I’m learning that my parents gave me the most important tools to succeed by instilling in my sister and myself enduring and precious values – we were brought up on a diet of fairness, commitment, community building, hard work, courage, and humility in equal measure.
I’m learning that my encounter with a life-changing event as a young child has equipped me to embrace change in adulthood with wonder, curiosity, and awe – the very same way in which I approached change at the age of six, when my family and I emigrated from Poland to Canada.
And I’m learning that the lessons my father taught me all those years ago about always being of service to others and the importance of doing something you love is the foundation upon which my entire career is built.
As I look back on my life story now, I see that foresight, adaptability, fairness, accountability, and empathy are woven into my narrative and are the superpowers I draw on daily as a leader. And this gives me the courage to lead with care, attention, and passion and help others do the same.
I would love to hear about what your story is teaching you. Please share your reflections.
Happy Monday! Thank you to Peter Roche for the inspiring quote.
Monday Quote: The only service you can do for anyone is to remind them of their true nature. Stephen Levine (1937-2016) American Poet and Teacher?
Purpose & Value-Driven Marketing | Sustainability
1 年Hi Eva McLellan, I found your article while researching the Narrative Identity framework. You explain it in such a clear and relatable way. Would you be happy for us to quote an extract of this article, with attribution to you of course, on a web page about our APAC Leadership Circle Conference in Sydney in Sept which focuses on Narrative Identity? Steve is flying in to run a workshop and keynote on the latest developments. The web page has some background explaining the concept, and your words would really help to illustrate its impact. Suggested extract to include below: "We need to listen carefully to the internal narrative "stories we tell ourselves" on repeat in our own heads, and we need to analyze whether the dominant story which served us until now (…) is helpful for our future - the leader I am becoming.?This is the essence of narrative identity, a concept I have been introduced to by?Steve Athey." ?-?Eva McLellan, Global Healthcare Executive?and Co-Founder, Unlocking Eve
Marketing, Communications, Congress & Events
2 年Look forward to inwardly reflecting through your 12 part Monday Leadership Learnings Eva. A lovely initiative on your part ????
Founder & CEO of Women on Stage? / Sponsoring Women /Female Leadership Coach/ Workplace bullying, Personal branding & Networking expert
2 年How true this is. Our positive and negative experiences shape our personality, verbal and non-verbal communication. Our experiences make us to the person who we are and who we want to become. All my positive and especially all my negative experiences have helped me to become the servant leader I am today. I used all my negative experiences as an opportunity to grow and develop. Thank you dear Eva McLellan for having written and shared this inspirational Newsletter with all of us.
Innovation & Product Development Strategist | Visionary | Innovator | Product Management Expert | B2B Business Development | Transforming ideas into million-dollar businesses.|
2 年Eva McLellan, thank you for such an insightful post. Your comments and insight on listening to our personal stories has enlightened me and inspired me to look deeper into my own personal story. At the same time it has helped me to realize that my imagined future is still mine to create. This is where personal growth fuels our future. Thank you for introducing me to Steve Athey's Youtube presentation on Narrative Identity. I've watched it twice in the last two days, and all of this has helped me to connect the dots in my head about what he calls The Identity Project, and more importantly not allowing my past to hold me back from my future. I feel like now I can put to words what I've been feeling about my identity and how to write my story. You've helped me to unlock something here. Thank you!
Eva McLellan, I read your new article today with great interest. I’m also honored that you asked me to participate in your Leadership Learnings newsletter series. I’d love to contribute an original piece that would also appear as part of my own LinkedIn blog. Would that work for you? I’m intrigued by Steve Athey’s discussion of narrative identity and would like to explore it further. What do you think about posting my blog in January? What about January 16, which is Martin Luther King Day? I could share my concept with you before the holidays and a draft by January 9. Thanks again; you are creating a terrific forum to exchange ideas on an important topic.