How Our Early Experiences Shape the Leaders We Become

In a workshop last week, we explored how our early experiences shape who we become. Not just as people, but as leaders. It’s easy to label the more difficult parts of our past as “baggage,” something to move beyond or leave behind. But that’s rarely the full story.

So often, the things we’ve lived through are the very experiences that build our empathy, resilience and perspective. They help us tune into others more deeply. They influence the way we relate, how we respond under pressure and what we notice in the people around us.

These experiences don’t hold us back; they shape our outlook and, often, form the roots of our greatest strengths.

Once we’d surfaced this, the conversation naturally shifted to a more complex question: how much of that should we share with our teams? What feels appropriate? What feels helpful? And what feels too personal?

That’s a much bigger topic and one I suspect deserves its own session.