Transcript

It’s your story. Write it well and often.

There’s a moment in every leader’s life when the question shifts. It stops being Am I good enough? and becomes Is this really my story? Because your story isn’t a title. It isn’t a rating. It isn’t a brand. And it certainly isn’t something that someone else hands you.

Your story is the script that drives your life, and you need to have the courage to rewrite it when it no longer fits.

For a long time, I didn’t understand that. I thought my story was driven by what other people recognized: my grades, my billable hours, my leadership roles. I thought my story was just external—earned by achievement and confirmed by applause. But that kind of story is brittle. It bends itself into shapes that please other people, but snaps when it tries to fit you.

It stays small in familiar but troubling ways. It’s a mirage. It’s not you.

Because real stories don’t operate that way. Real stories are authored. They’re claimed, named, practiced, lived.

And if I could tell you one foundational truth, it’s this: you become the talent the moment you stop letting someone else’s story run your life.

So, my third‑grade teacher once told me that I’d be president of IBM someday. At the time, I thought, What’s IBM? Why president? Why me? It wasn’t a prediction. It was a story—her story about what I, a certain kind of high‑achieving Black girl, would grow up to be.

And for years, I collected stories like that. Stories about intelligence. Stories about safety. Stories about how to belong. Stories about staying grateful, staying pleasant, staying quiet—all to remain chosen.

Now, some of those stories, they helped me. They helped me navigate the world. But most of them were too small.

It took me decades—and a wife who refused to let me shrink—to notice which stories were guiding my choices long after I’d outgrown them. It didn’t happen after a promotion or a praise‑filled performance review. It happened in quieter moments with Hilary, my wife.

She named my talent more clearly than I ever had: my divergent and convergent thinking, my ability to see the forest and the trees, my instinct for emotional stakes and structural coherence, my capacity to hold complexity without collapsing into performance.

Now, let's be honest. She didn’t inflate me. She didn’t flatter me. But she did tell me the truth. And once the truth is spoken, it’s very hard to go back to the small story that you were using to protect yourself.

That was the moment I understood: your story doesn’t unfold. It’s authored. And authorship is an act of leadership.

Now I wonder—whose stories have you been carrying? Whose stories have you been performing? Whose stories have you been protecting?

Whose stories get silenced in the rooms that you lead? The platforms that you control? And whose stories get amplified?

Think about those questions for a while. Now think about the answers. What has it cost you—yourself, your team, your family?

These aren’t soft questions. They’re strategic ones. Because the stories running your life, your teams, your organizations, these are the stories that will determine your outcomes.

I'm not someone who grew up asking for help. I grew up being the helper—the dependable one, the one who stayed calm when everyone else was panicked, the one who could write the crisis email and the love letter with equal steadiness. But leadership isn’t solitary, and talent isn’t self‑contained.

My first coach taught me that. He wasn’t an executive coach. He wasn’t a manager. He was my father—the man who asks endless questions, who believes in rigor, curiosity, and telling the truth even when it costs you something.

He coached me before I knew coaching existed. And he taught me something that I’ve been circling all these years: you become the talent when you stop trying to be someone else’s answer. You become the talent when you start answering the questions that only you can ask.

Now here’s a secret that leaders will rarely admit: most of us are scared. Most of us are improvising. And most of us are carrying stories that don't fit anymore.

But here's another truth. You don’t need a louder voice. You don’t need a different personality. You don’t need a shinier resume. You don’t need permission. You don’t need recognition.

You need clarity. You need ownership. You need authorship. You need to recognize the quiet authority already present in your life—the patterns, the partners, the systems, the sentences you keep returning to. You need to claim the story that has always been yours.

I’m not going to end this with a framework. I’m going to end with an invitation.

Rewrite the story. Not the one you inherited. Not the one you were rewarded for. Not the one you built for safety. Rewrite the story that is finally, fully yours.

Because when you don’t write your own story, someone else will tell it for you. Someone else will shape the opportunities around you. Someone else will misread your quiet. Someone else will decide your potential. Someone else will benefit from your uncertainty.

But when your story is truly yours, you stop shrinking. You stop apologizing. You stop performing. You stop waiting for belonging. You stop mistaking safety for alignment. You stop confusing silence with neutrality. And you stop outsourcing your narrative to people who have never lived your life.

When your story is truly yours, you are impossible to mistake and impossible to replace.

You’re the talent.

And I can’t wait to see where your story goes next.