Donna Lichaw
Executive Coach & Author at Independent / Google, Disney, Twitter, Microsoft clients
Executive coach, speaker, and bestselling author of The Leader's Journey; helps founders, CEOs, and executive teams level up leadership skills at companies like Google, Disney, Twitter, Microsoft, and Adobe.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Donna Lichaw, executive coach and author of The Leader's Journey, applies the hero's journey framework to leadership development. She explains that discovering your superpowers is inherently uncomfortable (even Superman tried to reject his), that the stories we tell ourselves shape our leadership identity regardless of whether they're literally true, and provides practical methods for extracting superpowers from past experiences and transposing them to future challenges.
Leadership Principles
- → When superheroes discover their superpowers, they wreak havoc and make a mess — it's uncomfortable, and even Superman tries to get rid of his superpowers
- → Pull your superpowers out of stories from your past and present, then figure out how to transpose them to your future
- → The most effective stories are the ones we tell ourselves — our brain doesn't know if they're true, so leverage that to be the hero
Notable Quotes
"When superheroes discover what their superpowers actually are, they wreak havoc and they make a mess, and it's uncomfortable. And even Superman tries to get rid of his superpowers. It's hard to know what you're really great at."
— On the difficulty of identifying and accepting your strengths
"The most effective stories are the ones that we tell ourselves. They may or may not be true; our brain doesn't know the difference. Once you can really understand that, you may as well leverage it to be that hero."
— On the power of self-narrative in leadership
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