What Story About Yourself Needs Updating?
Hi Leaders,
What if one of the biggest barriers to your growth is a story that is no longer true?
Many leaders spend years working to improve their skills, expand their experience, and increase their impact. Yet the story they tell themselves about who they are professionally often lags behind reality.
Perhaps you still see yourself as inexperienced, even though others consistently seek your guidance.
Perhaps you still carry the memory of a setback, while the people around you see resilience and wisdom.
Or perhaps you have become so accustomed to your strengths that you no longer recognize them as strengths at all.
That gap is worth exploring.
Simplifying Perspectives
Many leaders assume self-awareness means knowing themselves well.
Yet something deeper is happening.
We all develop stories about ourselves based on past experiences, criticism, successes, failures, and moments that shaped our confidence.
Over time, those stories become familiar. We stop questioning them.
The challenge is that growth often happens faster than our self-perception.
Years ago, I participated in a professional reputation analysis that gathered anonymous feedback from people I had worked with throughout my consulting career. The themes that emerged described someone who was energetic, creative, insightful, and capable of inspiring significant change.
Those were not the words I used to describe myself.
At the time, my internal narrative was much harsher. I focused on perceived shortcomings, questioned my decisions, and underestimated the impact I was having.
That experience taught me something important.
Professional reputation is deeply human. It is built through experiences, conversations, trust, and the impact we create over time. While personal branding, profiles, and AI-generated summaries can help communicate our value, they cannot replace the perceptions formed through real human interaction.
The difference between how we see ourselves and how others experience us is what I call the reputation gap.
And sometimes, growth begins when we become willing to question which version of the story is more accurate.
So here is a question: What story about yourself might no longer be serving your growth?
Getting Started
If you are curious about your own reputation gap, start with curiosity rather than judgment.
1. Challenge one old assumption
Identify a belief you regularly hold about yourself as a leader. Ask whether it is based on current evidence or an outdated experience.
2. Look for recurring themes
Ask a few trusted colleagues, clients, or team members how they would describe your leadership impact. Pay attention to patterns rather than isolated comments.
3. Use the insight as a growth platform
Instead of dismissing positive feedback, explore how it might become a foundation for your next level of development.
Sometimes the most important unlearning is not about changing who you are.
It is about learning to trust the evidence of who you have become.
A Coaching Opportunity
One of the most valuable aspects of coaching is creating space to examine the assumptions, stories, and blind spots that quietly influence our decisions.
Many leaders spend significant time developing new skills while giving very little attention to the narratives shaping their confidence, visibility, and leadership presence.
If you are interested in exploring your professional reputation, leadership positioning, or the stories that may be limiting your growth, I would be happy to continue the conversation.
Awareness creates choice.
And choice creates momentum.
Closing
Your reputation is already being shaped every day through the experiences others have with you.
The question is not whether a story exists.
The question is whether the story you are telling yourself still reflects reality.
Until next time,
Katy Caroan
Empowering Leaders to Stay in Demand
