Hello there. Hello there. Thank you for joining me here in this session. Story driven leadership, unlocking engagement, accountability, and results. My name is Aleah Harris.I am a strategic storytelling consultant and also the kind of person that companies come to when they're having leadership issues, culture issues, and they're looking for a way to unite people together. So if that is you and you're looking at how you can become a stronger leader. Well, you're in the right place. And welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I wanna start off by asking you a question. What story is your leadership telling without you even realizing it? And when I say leadership, I don't mean the people that are leading you. I mean your own leadership out in the world as you are leading people, what are you saying? How are you engaging with people? What stories are you telling?

And are you doing it, most importantly, on purpose or accidentally? Many of us lead and were never told how to lead, especially in tech. You were really good at what you did, and so then you were put as the team lead of that team. But that doesn't actually mean that, like, you know how to do the leading, not just the doing. So many of us end up having people under our care that we just simply don't know what to do with. And that's what we're going to tackle today. If your leadership feels disconnected, if you as a leader feel like, I don't think I'm doing this right, it's okay. One, you're in the right place. And two, it's super, super common. You might have a lack of self awareness with which many of us do. Spoiler alert.

Especially the ones that say I'm super self aware, those are usually the ones that have the worst self awareness. My husband's boss is kind of like that, shh, don't tell him that I told you. You also could have misaligned values, either within yourself when you're having an internal conflict or your values don't match your team or your company. And that means that you don't know how to exist in this leadership space. There could be some struggles with inclusion if you have a organization that emphasizes silo working versus team collaboration or just in general low engagement. If you're in one of those companies where everyone was mandated to come back to work and you're like, just we're really failing it, I don't blame you.

Many people are not, and that actually has been shown to decrease engagement. So if any of that sounds like you and you're feeling disconnected, that is okay. Go ahead and type in chat, hey. That's me. Hey. That's not me, or any other problems that you might be dealing with with leadership, and we'll see how we can help address those as we deal in our short, short, short twenty minutes here together. The hidden cost of that disengagement of you not being able to tell a story and be a leader that can pull people into a story is that not only will you feel fractured and burned out, but the culture that you're trying to build either on your team or in your organization will also feel burned out.

You'll miss opportunities because your brain is all over the place and also because you're not able to work at the capacity or with the streamline mentality that you would be if everything were more cohesive. Plus you're giving unclear direction. You think you're saying left, they hear you're saying right, you think you're saying up, they hear you're saying down, and none of it works. And most importantly, your mental health suffers. So I am a proud mama. I have a two year old who is the cutest two year old on the planet Earth. If you have a two year old, my cutest two year old is cuter than your cuter than your two year old. I kid. I kid. I kid. But she's pretty darn stinking cute. But what does that mean? It means that I also went through eleven months of deep postpartum depression. My brain seemed like it was still living between my ears, but it really wasn't. It left me. My finances tanked. I was burnt out. I was tired.

I couldn't process. I wasn't even participating in my own story. So that meant that I wasn't able to lead my team effectively. I was making less money as an entrepreneur, and I still was fighting against myself trying to turn it all around. So trust me, when I say that I understand what it's like to have a fractured story, to not know your story, to be out of touch with your story, I get it. I get it. And thank you, Anna. I appreciate you. It's 04:00 my time. I'm in California, so I gotta bring the energy at the end of the day. And we have not a leader by title yet, but hope to get there and you will. Baranita, you will get there and you will inspire even more. But we're all exactly leaders where we are. Say that for the people in the back. Leadership. Through leadership and we're gonna get into this.

Through leadership starts with self leadership. So if you can find yourself as an active participant in your own story, then you have already basically figured out most of the game. So I'm so glad that you said that, Parinita. I'm so glad because we're gonna talk about what self leadership and then leading others talks about. Postpartum depression, you had it too, Christie, but you're we can talk all about this motherhood situation because I have a feeling that Ruby Coral, that's my baby girl's name. She's gonna end up being an only child. I don't think I can do that yet. So today, we're gonna talk about how to move from the fractured place, the disconnected place, the place where you kinda don't know what you're doing, but you feel like you're supposed to, which by the way is the definition of imposter syndrome.

And we're going to talk about story driven leadership. We're gonna talk about how to uncover it, how to align with your story, and and how to cocreate a better story on your team. So why does story work? Humans think in story. I know. I'm with all of my little tech girlies here. Hey, girl. Hey. And you're like, data. And I'm like, yes. And story. Because without story, the data and the numbers and the facts don't come to life. People do not remember them. We think in story, and we also are intrigued by story. So if I sat here and I was like, oh, girl. Let me tell you about the time when I don't care who you are. If I hear a oh, girl, I'm leaning in.

I know that a story is about to be told, and I could tell you stats and figures left and right, but it's a story that you are going to remember. And stories also shape behaviors. Think about if you're a mom out there or if you're an auntie, the stories you tell the littles in your life. Right? The fables, Aesop's fables. Right? And stories also build trust. Two whole seconds ago, you didn't know that I was a postpartum, depression survivor. Now you know that. And don't you feel like we can hang out a little bit more? I mean, like, also, I'm a cool person. But now that you know that story about me, you trust me a little bit more. I was vulnerable. I was authentic. And you feel like, oh, well, now we can connect. We can talk about something because you're being your true self based on story.

I developed because I believe so much in story, the story driven leadership framework. I nested a couple of other frameworks and philosophies together so you got the most bang for your buck. So you have the philosophy and the mindset around story. You have the actionable steps, step one, step two, step three, on how to deliver it, and you have the tools and the techniques to do that. So spark is the philosophy, story spark is the process, and race is the outcome, and you're gonna see all of it in just a little bit. And we're gonna are we gonna go through the steps of getting real? That's the hardest part because it's getting real with yourself. Getting clear, because once you know what you are all about and know what your story is, you're practicing self leadership, and you have to be able to articulate that to somebody else.

And then it's about getting connected to the people that are on your team so that you can have sustainable, inclusive leadership. And inclusion means you too. It means that you are including yourself in the team on the journey because often we don't. We think we need to lead from ahead, and, really, we are one of our most valuable team members. So spark is the guiding force. Spark stands for storytelling, perspective, alignment, resilience, and kinship. This is the mindset that you need to get in in order to be a story driven leader. You wanna own your narrative. Own your narrative. No one else can tell your story better than you. No one. No one. Own your narrative. Step into your power. I once had a coach who was a narcissistic energy vampire. Oh, we have a child.

She ran a number on me to the point where I felt like I couldn't even tell my own story without asking her for permission first. It was bad. Once I reclaimed that and owned my narrative, I became a better leader in my business. I made more money, and more importantly, I recovered something that I could never have taken away from me again, which was my voice, and I use that voice to empower others. P, perspective. You you reframe with purpose. What are we telling and why? And then you make sure that there's an alignment between your values and your vision. Where am I now? Why am I here? Where am I trying to go? And what will life look like when I get there? And life is challenging. Don't ignore it. Things will happen, which will require resiliency. The most successful teams are resilient.

So how can you grow through that challenge and think about that resiliency mindset from the get go and then lead with connection? You're not a leader if nobody's following you. You're just taking a walk And no one behind you as you're heading off and charging into the distance, you're just purging by yourself. So you need to make sure that you're building something that people want to be a part of. They want to see themselves in it. So let's take that mindset and then get in some steps. The first step is you need to get real with yourself, look yourself in the mirror, and encourage your team members to do this as well so that you can recognize, hey.

Where am I within alignment with myself? How do I want to lead? How do I want to be led? What are my goals? Do they actually align with the project, the role, the my ability to show up every day as a human being, or do they not? This is when I encourage story excavation, writing down your crisis stories. What were the most critical elements of your life? Also, think about yourself, about your biases and beliefs. I'm not gonna lie. I'm biased towards women. I love me some women. I will shout about a woman in a room that she's not in. I will share resumes for women first in rooms that that they're not in. I am all about supporting other women. So what did I mess around and do accidentally? It meant that when I had a team of 20, they were accidentally all women. That's not a good thing.

I love me some women because I think that we collaborate well. We have the passion. We have the empathy. I mean, I love my husband too, and I actually have hired him as well, but he you know, that's nepotism. I then needed to make sure that when I kept my biases and my beliefs, I was not just leaning towards something that was familiar. I needed to make sure that I had was the ability had the ability to lead everyone. And then take stock of the stories that you tell yourself. You know the ones that you tell over and over and over again? The ones that you're almost sick and tired of hearing yourself? See if you can listen and catch yourself and ask yourself, what does that story tell about you?

So when I was in the the depths of postpartum depression, I would tell the story over and over of how good it used to be. How how good my brain used to be before I had a baby. How good it used to be and how bad it was now. Was that true? Not really. Yeah. I was going through some things, but, like, let's not say it, like, I didn't have every single thing altogether before. The story I was telling myself was a story about an unrealistic past that was doing more harm than good. So you need to recognize how are you leading yourself, and then what story would you like to change? Christy, yes. I don't even know who the non mom me is either. But I'm trying to find I'm trying to find her again. I've been doing all of the work.

We've got I only got twenty minutes. I could talk to y'all forever because these comments are giving me life. But I'll you'll see in my email address we chat because I'm doing some, like, NLP. There's these sexy dance classes I'm taking. Right? Getting myself back. Step two. Totally unrelated. Step two. You're gonna get clear. You're going to adapt and declare. The first one is recognize. We're using that race form formula. The second was adapt and clarify, r a c, and you get something in step three. We're gonna do the e. Have your team and yourself go through what if. What if I told a story that I was just as good of leading men as I was women? What if I told a story of postpartum was temporary rather than permanent? What if I told the story that I was a multimillionaire? What if?

And then you take those what ifs. You take those the stories that people wanna leave and people wanna take, and then you synthesize them to understand what your joint story could look like, and you develop those core themes. Let me tell you, baby, those core themes are so powerful. These are stronger than any team values because these themes were cocreated. They come from our individual and collective story. And they say things like, we are resilient and will be resilient. We are enduring, and people can remember the narratives that were told in that room that prove that those things are true. Once you get clear for yourself and your team, then you get connected. If you're doing this with a small leadership team, you broaden it out to have listening sessions.

And you say one of the core things that we that we unearthed and uncovered in in our leadership team was that we are enduring because of stories around, you know, illness and hurt and job loss. Can you tell me stories about your enduring nature And you start building out that story fabric that we endure throughout the team. Then you start creating larger stories around what enduring looks like for a certain project or for a certain time of the year, and you embed those stories in your culture. Imagine if what if you started every team meeting with a story about endurance, a story about hope, a story about perseverance, a story about love? What would that do? That would mean that every single day, people would be becoming closer and closer together in an intentional way, and you are building culture intentionally. Because culture is happening regardless. And to break it to you, you have a culture. In and of yourself, you have your personal culture, and you have your culture of your team.

But is it intentional? And it needs to be. When you go through these steps, you're gonna unlock inclusive value based leadership. You're going to increase accountability because it's not just your story or his story or her story. It's our story. And you're creating resilient aligned teams. Resiliency is just saying, I can do it. I can do it again. I can do it again. I can do it again. No matter what, I can do it again. And stories give people the motivation to do it again. And when people are motivated and there's a life and there's energy, that's something I wanna be a part of. I mean, wouldn't you? Doesn't that sound like an exciting thing to be a part of?

So when you are implementing story driven leadership, you go from silos to synergy and from silence where people are holding on to their stories afraid to share to producing a shared vision. So I ask you now a slight difference from the question I asked you earlier. What story can you uncover, align, and cocreate with your team today? What does it look like for you? What are you going to implement when you go back with yourself or with others? What are you gonna journal about? What stories are you going to write about so that you can have self leadership and then collective leadership? If you need a guide on how to do that, I encourage you to download this quick starter guide to use your story as a spark and use it wisely. You can go to evolutioncollective.com/story-leader. You'll get a mini overview of the framework that I just went over in rapid pace.

You'll get a checklist of the things that I just went over plus some extra here quick, try this real quick now. Here, try this real quick now. Because stories that are silent and stories that live in your head don't help anybody. If you know and you're taking the steps to do it right, you will actually be able to participate in your individual and collective transformation. Because I believe that you, as the strong, powerful human being you are, as the creator that you are, You can use stories to lead culture, create accountability, and develop connection that drives results. I would love to keep our stories connected. Again, my name is Alaya Harris, and we only have such a short time together. But I'd love to stay in contact with you. You can follow me on Instagram at Aleah Harris. I am, I promise, on LinkedIn.

Just right now, my LinkedIn is having a little bit of a glitch. But you can also send me an email, [email protected].