I want to tell you about a leader I coached a few years ago. Sharp, accomplished, deeply respected by their team. And in every session, no matter what we were working on, they would circle back to the same phrase: "I don't want to seem arrogant."
They said it when we talked about naming their strengths. They said it when we talked about speaking up in executive meetings. They said it when I asked to simply list what they were good at, out loud, to me, in a private conversation.
So I finally stopped and asked : "Who told you that you were arrogant?"
Silence. Then the answer came, and it was more than a decade old. A former boss, one bad performance review, one careless sentence. They had been carrying that sentence around like a verdict ever since, and it was quietly editing every decision they made as a leader.
You see, they tried to disguise their insecurity as humility because someone once said, "You are arrogant." So fear of seeming arrogant, when they were in fact just confident, created an insecure leader that was unable to be all they were created to be. One wrong characterization, one lie, that was belived to be truth.
The Gap Between Who We Are and Who We Think We Are
In my article on leadership identity, I shared Dr. Tasha Eurich's startling finding: 95% of people believe they are self-aware, and only 10 to 15% actually are. I want to go one layer deeper now, because Eurich's research tells us something else that most leaders miss.
Self-awareness comes in two forms. Internal self-awareness is how clearly you see your own values, passions, reactions, and patterns. External self-awareness is understanding how other people actually experience you. And here is the finding that most people miss: the two are not connected. Being strong in one tells you nothing about the other. You can journal every morning for a decade and still have no idea of how you are percieved in a meeting.
Eurich also found that introspection alone often makes things worse, not better. When we sit alone with the question "Why am I like this?", we don't usually find truth. We find a story. And we accept our own answer without asking anyone to cross-examine it.
"The stories you're telling yourself feel like facts. That is what makes them dangerous."
Where the False Stories Come From
Here's the thing. Almost every false story I have ever helped a leader uncover came from one of three places.
A voice from the past. A parent, a coach, a boss, a teacher. Someone with authority said something once, and you filed it under "permanent truth." My friend Taylor was told by a soccer coach that he just wasn't fast enough. Years later he ran the New York Marathon. The coach was wrong. The story wasn't.
A moment you generalized. One failed presentation became "I'm not a public speaker." One team that didn't gel became "I'm not good with people." One story, told and retold, until it hardened into identity.
A "should" you absorbed. Somewhere along the way you learned what a leader is supposed to look like, sound like, decide like. And every place where you differ from that template, you quietly marked as a flaw. You got should-ed on. Most of us did.
None of these stories arrived with evidence. They arrived with emotion, and emotion is a powerful bookbinder in our story.
The L.O.V.E. Framework
When I work with leaders on this, I use a framework I call L.O.V.E., because I believe with everything in me that the best-kept secret of success in life is love, and that includes the way you treat yourself. It has four movements.
Learn. What stories are you telling yourself? Write them down. Actual sentences. "I'm not strategic." "I talk too much." "I have to have all the answers or they'll lose confidence in me." You cannot examine a story you haven't written. So write it down or as they say, "You won't know what you don't know."
Observe. What have others told you that hinders you? Find the origin of each story. Who said it first? When? Were they right? Were they even qualified to judge? You will be amazed how many verdicts in your head were written by unqualified judges.
Value. Replace the false story with your actual strengths and preferences. Not with a pep talk. With evidence. What do people consistently thank you for? What work makes you come alive? What results follow you from role to role? That is data, and data beats a decade-old sentence from a careless boss or a mean teacher.
Encourage. Give liberation to others. Once you have seen how a false story shaped you, you will start spotting them in your people everywhere. The quiet analyst who was once told she wasn't leadership material. The young manager who apologizes before every idea. Name what you see in them. Hand the truth back. This is some of the most sacred work a leader ever gets to do.
Find Your Loving Critics
Now, you cannot do this work entirely alone, and this is where Eurich's research gets practical. The leaders in her studies who genuinely improved their external self-awareness did it by seeking out what she calls loving critics: people who want the best for you AND are willing to tell you the truth.
Both parts are equally important. A critic without love will wound you. A lover without candor will flatter you. You need the rare people who hold both, and most leaders can count theirs on one hand.
So ask yourself, honestly: Who in your life have you given permission to contradict your story? If the answer is no one, that is not a character flaw. It is a design flaw, the same one I wrote about in Lonely Leaders. And design flaws can be redesigned.
This week, take one story you tell yourself about your leadership and ask one loving critic a single question: "I've always believed this about myself. Is that how you experience me?" Then be quiet and listen. Don't defend. Don't explain. Just listen.
Rewrite It
My client, the one who didn't want to seem arrogant, did this work. They traced the story to its source, put the old review side by side with fifteen years of evidence and realized that one person's wrong judgement did not define them.
Then they did something I will never forget. In our next session they handed me a card. On it they had written a new sentence: "I am allowed to be excellent out loud. Confidence is not arrogance"
Set free. That is the only way I know how to describe it.
Know yourself to lead yourself. But make sure the self you know, knows the truth about who you are, because self-knowledge built on a false story is just a well-organized lie. You deserve better. Your people deserve better.
So here is my challenge to you. Name one story this week. Find its author. Measure it against the whole body of work. And if the story is false, take back the pen.
You are the author now. Write something true.