Your Leadership Story

Written by Steven Ober | Edited by Rory Hart
Sections of this topic
    A-team-leader-addressing-her-colleagues

    A few months ago, I wrote a series of posts here entitled “Unleashing the Power of your Story.” I continue to do Leadership Story work with clients and continue to learn. I am also writing a book that will help leaders and others connect to their core through story work. Therefore, I will return to stories as a topic in this and my next several posts. Like Jesus said about the poor, “Our stories we always have with us.” As such, stories continue to be a worthy topic.

    Our lives are full of stories. Stories are, almost literally, everywhere. They are so much a part of who we are and what we do as human beings that, like breathing, we often don’t notice their constant presence. They are key to our movies, television, books, communication, religion, work, humor, conversation, and thinking. They are one of the primary ways we pass our experience, wisdom, and foibles from individual to individual, group to group, generation to generation. And most powerfully, our stories reflect who we are at our core—who we are as individuals, groups, communities, nations, and as a species on the planet.

    Stories cover the whole gamut of human experience, from our descriptions of the universe, e.g. the Big Bang “story”, to our expressions of our deep inner selves. My work focuses primarily on the latter, our deep personal stories, how we can learn to know them more clearly, how they help us, how they can constrain us, and how we can, when we wish, learn to “see them anew”, to create even more powerful personal stories that reflect not only our life experiences to date but also empower us to reach our highest aspirations for the future.

    Stories are critical for leaders. Every leader has a deep personal story, a “systemic story” that shapes her/his patterns of leadership. Recent work in leadership and leadership development suggests a new answer to the age-old question: “What makes a leader?” We have searched for, among other things, common traits, patterns of behavior, or competencies that characterize leaders. But we are discovering that what makes the most powerful leaders, the authentic leaders, are not these common traits, behaviors, or competencies. What makes the most powerful leaders is that they live in congruence with and become the masters of their own personal stories—that they live authentically from who they deeply are.

    This work is intended to help leaders, coaches and others become clear about their core and live from it creatively.

    If you would like to learn more about story work and/or consider story coaching, feel free to call or email me at:

    Steven P. Ober EdD
    President: Chrysalis Executive Coaching & Consulting
    Affiliate: Systems Perspectives, LLC
    Office: PO Box 278, Oakham, MA 01068
    Home: 278 Crocker Nye Rd., Oakham, MA 01068
    O: 508.882.1025 M: 978.590.4219
    Email: [email protected]
    www.ChrysalisCoaching.org

    Steve is a senior executive coach and consultant. He has developed and successfully uses a powerful approach to leadership coaching, Creating your Leadership Story, which enables leaders to make deep, lasting improvements in their leadership effectiveness in short periods of time. He and a group of partners have created a breakthrough educational program, Coaching from a Systems Perspective, in which you can significantly enhance your abilities as a systemic leadership coach. See http://SystemsPerspectivesLLC.com.

    Steven Ober