Data-Driven Self-Story Rewriting
Debunk or validate the limiting stories you tell yourself by researching how people actually experience you.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Leaders carry recurring self-stories ("I'm too nice," "no one listens to me") that shadow their identity and, when dwelled on, become self-fulfilling. Lichaw treats these stories as untested hypotheses and applies customer-discovery rigor to them: go talk to the people around you, collect real data on how you actually land, and then either debunk the false story or co-write a better ending. It reframes leadership self-work as user research where your colleagues are the customers.
Origin
Developed by Donna Lichaw in her executive coaching practice and book The Leader's Journey; explicitly borrows the customer-discovery / user-research mindset from product management, which was Lichaw's prior career.
Core principles
- 01The stories you tell yourself may or may not be true — usually they aren't — but your brain can't tell the difference, so they drive behavior anyway.
- 02Dwelling on a negative story ('horror stories' like 'we're never going to make it') lets it take over your identity and become true.
- 03Treat a self-story as a hypothesis to be tested with real data, not a fact.
- 04Your colleagues and reports are your 'customers' — discovery interviews reveal the true story.
- 05Once you know the true story, you co-create a better ending together rather than commanding change.
How to run it
- 1
Name the specific self-story
Write down the exact recurring story in your head, e.g. 'I'm too nice,' 'people don't take me seriously,' 'no one listens to me.' Distinguish these from 'horror stories' (catastrophic predictions) which are especially corrosive.
Pro tip Say it out loud verbatim — vague dread doesn't test; a specific sentence does.
- 2
Gather real data on how you actually land
Go talk to your team and find out how people genuinely experience you and your leadership. If you're too busy, have someone else run the interviews for you.
Pro tip Ask about lived experience of working with you, not whether the story is 'true' — you'll often hear something entirely different (e.g. 'so heartfelt and caring' instead of 'too nice').
Watch out Don't skip to fixing. Founders who assume 'people don't listen to me' often discover the real issue is that senior hires want vision and problems to solve, not to be told what to do.
- 3
Validate or debunk against the data
Compare the story to what people actually said. Sometimes it's debunked (nice, not too nice). Sometimes it's validated but the diagnosis is wrong (she was quiet, but the need was to feel heard, not to hear her talk more).
- 4
Co-write a better ending
With the true story in hand, work with the people involved to author what happens next — e.g. 'give us a vision and problems to solve, stay involved but out of our lane.' Just as in product, you co-create the improvement with your users rather than imposing it.
Pro tip If the real gap is perception (people can't see you listening), the fix can be communication about your style rather than behavior change.
In the wild
A successful CEO told himself he was too nice, nobody listened to him, and people didn't take him seriously. Lichaw interviewed his team and heard the opposite — 'so heartfelt and so caring,' the very reason his star executives joined. On 'no one listens,' the real story was that whip-smart senior hires didn't want to be told what to do; they wanted a grand vision and problems to solve, and were frustrated when he disappeared for two weeks. They rewrote the ending together.
→ The false stories were debunked and replaced with an actionable operating agreement between the CEO and his team.
An executive kept getting feedback she was too quiet; the data confirmed it and her team thought she was checked out and a bad boss. But the root cause was her processing style — she listened in meetings and formed thoughts hours later. The fix wasn't to talk over people; it was to tell her team 'this is my style, I'm here, I process slowly.'
→ By communicating her style she ended up talking with her team more anyway, and the team began sharing their own styles — the relationship and performance improved.
Common mistakes
Trying things without talking to your 'customers'
You can experiment on your own behavior and guess, but as with product you should actually talk to your colleagues and reports to learn the true story rather than iterating blind.
Fixing the surface symptom instead of the real need
The 'too quiet' leader could have started yelling and talking over people — exactly what nobody wanted. Acting on the literal story instead of the underlying need makes things worse.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders and founders stuck on a recurring negative self-belief that is coloring their behavior and relationships at work.
Not ideal for
Someone unwilling to solicit or hear candid feedback, or a purely private belief with no interpersonal data to gather.
From the transcript
“take a datadriven approach to the stories that you tell yourself”
“I went out there and talked to his team and this is something you can do for yourself as well if you're extremely busy you…”
“they very well will become true”
“they were able to write a better ending of that story together”
“anything you think is true or you want to do it's a hypothesis until you test it”
From the episode
How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth
Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey)