Donna Lichaw: The Leader’s Journey – Episode 154

Content Strategy Insights

Donna Lichaw Crafting your identity as a leader is a lot like creating your superhero persona. You need to be able to discover your authentic identity and pursue a clear mission, and to do that you need to understand your unique superpowers. In her new book The Leader's Journey, Donna Lichaw draws on her experience as an executive coach and shows how she helps leaders transform themselves into true workplace superheroes. We talked about: the origin story for her new book, The Leader's Journey how leaders can identify and activate their superpowers the three things that all superheroes have: identity, superpowers, and a mission how you can begin your development as a hero from any number of starting points how to measure your impact as a leader the importance of building on your unique awesomeness over simply acquiring new competencies how her background in documentary filmmaking has influenced her work how the best stories that leaders share demonstrate who they are, not a simple narrative about something they did how understanding the stories you tell yourself can improve your leadership abilities how it's possible, but takes a lot more work, to lead without a position of authority Donna's bio Donna Lichaw is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of The Leader’s Journey, the much-awaited followup to the The User’s Journey. She helps high-growth CEOs, executives, and senior leadership teams transform their leadership so that they can more effectively propel their business forward. Subscribe to Donna's newsletter to get first dibs on tools, exercises, and courses to help you transform your leadership so that you, too, can accomplish the extraordinary. Connect with Donna online DonnaLichaw.com LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/YelGPzqH6VA Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 154. We talk a lot in the content world about the power of storytelling. But stories are complex and multifaceted, and storytelling insights can sometimes come from unexpected directions. Donna Lichaw developed a nuanced understanding of storytelling as a documentary filmmaker and applies that wisdom in her coaching practice to help leaders become superheros - to show their authentic identity, discover their true mission, and reveal their unique superpowers. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 154 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show, Donna Lichaw. Donna is the author of the the new book, The Leader's Journey, which is what we're going to mostly talk about today, which is it's a follow on to her bestselling earlier book from, I don't know, like five or six years ago called The User's Journey. She's an executive coach who works mostly with high-growth founders and tech executives and leadership team. So welcome, Donna, you want to tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days? Donna: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Larry. And what am I up to? It's summertime. We almost have a break next week, I'm excited. Trying to chill as much as possible this summer. The book came out about six weeks ago and it's been busy and totally nuts and busy with work as well. So I'm excited to have some time to chill over the summer. Larry: Well, good. Donna: That's what's on my mind, basically. Larry: Okay. That's why I keep the episodes to a half hour, so you can get off and enjoy your vacation. Donna: There we go. Larry: Yeah. Well, hey, I love your new book, The Leader's Journey. Well, I won't steal your thunder, but one of the things that I was most taken with it is the opening anecdote. The opening story in the book that you talk about, which is we also were talking just before we came on the air. That's pretty much the origin story for the book as well.