There’s a question I’ve been asking leaders for years:

Who were you before the world told you who you should be?

It sounds simple until you try to answer it.

By the time you’ve built a successful career, your identity is often intertwined with the roles you’ve held, the expectations you’ve met, and the things you’ve learned to do exceptionally well. You know how to deliver. You know how to navigate the room. You know what earns recognition and what gets results.

Those lessons are part of becoming a successful leader. But somewhere along the way, it’s possible to become so good at meeting expectations that you stop questioning whether those expectations still fit.

That’s where authentic leadership identity begins to matter.

Success Has a Way of Shaping Us

None of us builds a career in a vacuum. We are shaped by our families, cultures, organizations, mentors, experiences, and ambitions. We pay attention to what gets rewarded and adjust accordingly.

That ability to adapt can be a tremendous strength. It can also make it difficult to distinguish between what you genuinely value and what you’ve simply learned to value because it helped you succeed.

The Center for Creative Leadership describes authentic leadership as an alignment between a leader’s internal values and beliefs and their external behavior. [ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/authenticity-1-idea-3-facts-5-tips] That alignment requires knowing what matters to you in the first place.

And that’s where things get interesting.

Because what happens when the definition of success that brought you this far no longer reflects what you want now?

You may still be performing well. You may still be earning recognition. From the outside, there may be no obvious reason to question anything.

But you know.

There’s an internal tension between the life you’ve built and the life you want to live.

When the “Shoulds” Get Loud

I know that tension personally.

By every traditional measure, I had built an impressive corporate career. I had held senior leadership positions, managed significant businesses, and achieved things I once believed would define success for me.

At the same time, I was navigating some of the hardest seasons of my life, including bankruptcy, divorce, and career setbacks. Eventually, I had to confront a question that was much harder than any business problem I had been asked to solve:

Who was I beyond the title?

I didn’t have a quick answer.

What I began to recognize was how many “shoulds” I had accumulated over the years. What success should look like. What I should want. What the next logical move should be. Who I should be by this point in my life.

The tricky thing about a “should” is that it can sound perfectly reasonable. Sometimes it even sounds like your own voice.

That’s why self-awareness is so critical to leadership. Research summarized by Harvard Business Review has linked greater self-awareness with benefits including stronger decision-making, communication, confidence, and relationships. [hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it]

Knowing yourself isn’t separate from leadership. It shapes how you lead.

The Question Isn’t Asking You to Go Back

When I ask, Who were you before the world told you who you should be?, I’m not suggesting that the answer is hidden somewhere in an earlier version of you.

You aren’t supposed to go backward.

You’ve lived, learned, failed, succeeded, changed your mind, discovered strengths you didn’t know you had, and hopefully gained some wisdom along the way.

The value of the question is that it creates enough space to examine what you’ve carried forward.

Which parts still belong to you?

Which expectations have you outgrown?

What are you continuing to pursue because you truly want it, and what are you pursuing because you’ve never stopped long enough to ask whether you still do?

For me, that process wasn’t about rediscovering who I used to be. It was about letting go of who I thought I should be so I could decide who I wanted to become.

There’s an important difference.

Who Do You Want to Become Now?

That may be the more powerful question for this season of your leadership.

Not, What should I do next?

Who do I want to become next?

Give yourself permission to sit with that question before rushing to answer it.

Consider the decisions you’re making right now. Which ones reflect what you value today? Where are expectations, titles, money, recognition, or other people’s opinions carrying more weight than they should? What would success look like if you defined it based on the person you are now rather than the person you were when you first started climbing?

These aren’t questions you answer once. They deserve to be revisited because you will continue to evolve.

Success should be allowed to evolve with you.

That’s part of what it means to move beyond success as the world defines it and create leadership—and a life—that reflects who you truly are.

Wondering where a “should” might still be writing the script for your life?

Take the 5-minute Beyond Success™ Reflection: Is “Should” the Script for Your Life? and discover where someone else’s agenda may have become your own.

Get it today at https://leadboldlywithlisa.com.

You’ve spent years becoming successful. Maybe the next chapter is about becoming more intentional about what success means to you.