Research begins with a question.
As a leadership consultant, educator, and coach, I’ve worked with hundreds of leaders across different sectors and organisations. Again and again, I’ve seen people participate in leadership development programmes, coaching, and executive education, yet continue to return to deeply held beliefs about what leadership is, who can lead, and what good leadership looks like.
That observation led me to the following question:
01
The Stories We Carry
Much of leadership development focuses on helping people acquire new knowledge, skills, and behaviours. But what if people aren’t coming to leadership with a blank slate?
What if they arrive carrying decades of stories about leadership that have already shaped how they see themselves and others?
We learn about leadership long before we enter a classroom or leadership programme. We learn from our families, schools, communities, workplaces, the media we consume, the leaders we admire, and the experiences we have throughout our lives.
These experiences shape our assumptions about what leadership is, who can lead, what effective leadership looks like, and whether we see ourselves as leaders at all.
My research explores how these stories influence the way people understand and enact leadership in organisations.
What if people aren’t coming to leadership with a blank slate?
We learn about leadership long before we enter a classroom or leadership programme.
02
Interacting Narratives
We don’t carry a single story about leadership. We carry many.
Some are personal. Some are social. Some emerge through our professional experiences. Others are shaped by the organisations where we work.
At the same time, organisations communicate their own narratives about leadership through competency frameworks, leadership programmes, organisational values, policies, language, and everyday practice.
My research explores what happens when these narratives align, collide, reinforce one another, or compete for influence.
Because understanding leadership may require us to understand not only what people know about leadership, but the stories they use to make sense of it.
We don’t carry a single story about leadership. We carry many.
What happens when these narratives align, collide, or compete for influence?
03
Learning and Unlearning
Leadership development often focuses on what people need to learn. I am equally interested in what people may need to unlearn.
If someone holds a deeply rooted belief that leaders should be charismatic, authoritative, extroverted, or look a certain way, new learning alone may not be enough to shift that perspective.
Before we can understand what people need to learn about leadership, we may need to understand the stories they already carry about it.
- What assumptions are people bringing with them?
- What stories are shaping their understanding of leadership?
- Which narratives continue to influence how leadership is recognised, enacted, and developed?
- And what happens when those stories are challenged by new experiences, new ideas, or new possibilities?
I am equally interested in what people may need to unlearn.
New learning alone may not be enough to shift a deeply rooted perspective.
Why It Matters
Stories shape how we lead.
The stories we carry influence how we lead, who we recognise as leaders, and the possibilities we imagine for ourselves and others.
By understanding those stories more deeply, we may be able to create more thoughtful approaches to leadership development, more inclusive organisations, and richer conversations about leadership itself.
For me, this research sits at the intersection of leadership, learning, identity, and storytelling. It brings together many of the questions that have shaped my work throughout my career — and my enduring curiosity about how people make sense of themselves, each other, and the world around them.
- Research begins with a question. But it is sustained by curiosity — and a belief that the stories we carry matter more than we often realise.