We can only become the person whose story we can keep telling and acting out in the world.

In a recent HBR article author Gianpiero Petriglieri posits that to own your own career you must know your story and that story must resonate with the tribe around you. The above quote is from a sentence in that article and is at the heart of how I engage my clients in my career coaching practice.

Clients first come to me because of a few repeat themes—mythos—that I see: Stuck in their jobs without any promise of growth; feeling lost in their chosen career, often wondering if they made the right choice early in their jobs they chose; bad boss and how to deal with the toxicity they create; perfidious colleagues, who often hijack their good work and get ahead. Although these are not the only reasons why clients come to me, they represent about 80% of why I am in this business today.

Much of this grief in their careers stems their own perceived inability to deal with their situation on their own. They feel powerless in their ability to deal with the forces that seem too overwhelming for them to deal with, and, as a result, they continue to suffer in silence—even martyring themselves over their plight. Some feel that this suffering somehow ennobles them; it does not! When this suffering or the grief therefrom becomes unbearable and when their own self-esteem takes a hit and continues to erode, they often seek coaching help.

Although not all my clients who belong to the “suffering tribe” suffer in silence and feel powerless in their ability to deal with such treatment; those who do are able to understand how they can turnaround their situation on their own—with competent outside help—by embracing a combination of approaches: Recognizing that they have the power and the wherewithal to overcome their situation and to learn how to build immunity with their own “career antigens” from these “pathogens” described above, as their career evolves; using a combination of strategies to improve their situation on their own; and most importantly, practicing the Pygmalion Effect to empower themselves to overcome their adversity on their own will power.

The Pygmalion Effect is being aware of your own ability to believe in yourself that you can do what you set out to do and then taking deliberate steps to conquer your demons and then vanquishing them, one career demon at a time—the power of positive thinking, in short.

The others belong to a different tribe: They have their own plans to aggressively move ahead to manage their careers on their own terms and they need some tools and rules to know what works and what needs tweaking. They, too, benefit from knowing how coaching can help them improve their success odds.

For clients in both these camps what helps them more than any other resource is to show them how to develop their story and how to make them own it as their leadership narrative. At the beginning of our engagement when I present them the concept of developing their own story they are both puzzled and intrigued by this approach. But, when we tie this concept to how we develop their résumé using these leadership stories their face lights up and they get excited about venturing to develop their own leadership narrative.

Not initially knowing how this narrative is going to emerge, most of them engage in an earnest effort to follow my “algorithm” to see how this narrative will reveal their leadership successes. What I have observed throughout this process is that when they are done with their stories and proudly own them, they are transformed in how they see themselves. They are now mantled by a powerful field of self-confidence that surrounds them and, on their own, they derive their empowerment from the Pygmalion Effect. They are often surprised by how well it is working for them!

So, how do we develop this leadership narrative through our own stories? The “algorithm” is simple: Find and write all you Aha! stories that result from your exceptional work you did with full engagement of your own genius throughout your career and develop concise bullets that can be made a part of the chronology in your new résumé. Although almost everyone starts by resisting the concept of having their own Aha! stories, soon they start creating their own by giving new life to their past and surprising themselves with what these stories reveal about their past and how it can propel them in a direction that may be more exciting and revelatory than they imagined at the start of this process.

Here is an example in a Before/After format:

• As Development Manager managed a team of 17 software engineers.

This is typically what they wrote in their résumé, which is more a responsibility than an accomplishment. But when you put this same bullet in a story-telling format this is how it is transformed

• Upon onboarding found that the demoralized team of 17 had missed all three product release dates. Most releases had also missed promised functionalities and were buggy, consuming valuable time in escalations. Revamped the team working out three errant engineers and retraining five others with new tools and mentoring them to lead, not just to take orders. The new team now went on to win many company-wide awards.

In this process of self-discovery they validate some of the more known psychological paradoxes, too. One of them is the Pygmalion Effect we mentioned earlier in this blog. They also find that the Pratfall Effect, where a person’s failure and defeats make them more endearing to others as it shows their humanness and vulnerability. When they write these stories, looking back, they uncover their foibles, poor judgments, and their inherent naiveté, which makes them more endearing to others (especially during an interview process), including their friends.

The other paradox—the Spotlight Effect—also makes them realize that they overestimated the effect of their public failures and how others perceived them, as result. This is particularly true of those, who come from the Eastern-Asian cultures where any setbacks in one’s job or career are often seen as a matter of shame, not only for the person, but also for the whole family. If they learn to ignore that effect, made possible through these stories of heroism throughout their career, they free themselves of the guilt that often vitiates their own purpose and will to win as they move ahead in their careers.

Although this approach to developing your own leadership narrative may come across as a panacea for all your career ills, it is far from it. However, knowing what I’ve observed it can make a difference in how you see your own career and how you can get back in the driver’s seat to move forward in the right direction.

Good luck!