“Leadership isn’t something you imitate. It’s something you discover.”
— Dr. Ann Gatty
Every once in a while, something happens that changes how you see your life’s work. At the time, you don’t realize you’re standing at a crossroads. Years later, you recognize it was the moment everything changed. For me, that moment happened in a university classroom.
I loved teaching the concept of leadership. I loved watching students wrestle with ideas, challenge assumptions, and prepare for careers where they could make a difference.
But over time, something began to bother me.
Every semester my students learned the popular and timeless leadership theories. They studied transformational leadership, servant leadership, situational leadership, and the work of respected researchers. They could compare models, quote the experts, and explain the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
They became very good at talking about leadership.
But I wasn’t convinced they were becoming leaders.
The more I taught, the more I realized something important. Leadership isn’t discovered by becoming a better student of someone else’s leadership model.
Leadership is discovered by understanding who you are, what you value, and how you are uniquely equipped to influence others. That realization changed the direction of my career.
I didn’t want to spend my life teaching people about leadership. I wanted to help them become leaders.
Years later, I recognized the same pattern outside the classroom. Not in students but in the accomplished women I coach. I coach women who have built successful businesses, meaningful careers, and lives that others admired. Yet many of them were still measuring themselves against expectations they never created. They were defining their success and value based on someone else’s criteria.
Somewhere along the way, they stopped measuring themselves with the wisdom they had earned and started measuring themselves against expectations they had inherited. Many of them had become incredibly successful by someone else’s definition while quietly wondering why success no longer felt fulfilling. They spent years trying to become someone else’s model instead of trusting their own well-earned wisdom.
It would take me years to realize that what I learned in that classroom wasn’t only true about leadership education. It was true about life. Especially for accomplished women. Eventually, many of these accomplished women ask the same quiet question. “Is this really who I am now?”
I’ve come to realize that this question isn’t a sign of failure. It’s a sign of growth. It often means you’ve grown beyond the success that once defined you and are beginning to search for the next chapter of your story.
That’s why I no longer believe leadership is something that we try to copy. I believe it’s something we uncover. You don’t have to become someone else or imitate another’s model of leadership. Every person has a unique expression of leadership. It isn’t something you borrow. It isn’t something you imitate. It’s something you discover through your values, experiences, mistakes, successes, and the courage to become more fully yourself.
Every chapter of your life changes you. The experiences that once challenged you eventually become wisdom. The lessons you once struggled to learn eventually become the perspective you offer others. Leadership evolves because you evolve. That’s why I believe your success was never meant to be the identifying chapter of your life. It was preparing you for your next one.
I believe that your leadership style is always getting better and more refined.
People sometimes ask me,
“What’s your greatest accomplishment?”
My answer is always the same.
My next one.
Not because I don’t appreciate everything that’s come before.
But because I believe every chapter has prepared me for the next.
I’m not done yet.
And…
I don’t believe you are either.
Your Next Chapter
If today’s article caused you to pause…
Good.
The best questions rarely arrive with immediate answers.
They arrive quietly, inviting us to reconsider what success, leadership, and purpose mean in this season of our lives.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about The Next Chapter Journey™ and the tools I’m developing to help accomplished women navigate life’s transitions with greater clarity and confidence.
If you’d like to follow that journey, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Because…
You’re not done yet.