Discovering Your Leadership Superpowers and Origin Story

Abstract

Like all superheroes, healthcare administrators, leaders, and managers have superpowers and origin stories, even though many do not recognize them. This article explains why discovering and using origin stories is useful for both leaders and their followers. It teaches healthcare leaders how to identify their superpowers and how to draft and tell compelling origin stories. This article describes the characteristics of the best origin stories and provides 10 questions to help leaders identify the pivotal experiences in their lives that shaped them into the leaders they are. It suggests four possible themes for origin stories and warns that leaders inadvertently choose their themes through a gendered lens, even though this can limit them in their leadership. This article also offers 11 strategies for crafting a compelling leadership origin story and suggests when and how leaders can tell their stories most effectively. Finally, this article provides a list of more than 75 possible leadership superpowers and explains how readers can identify their top three to five, to drive their leadership origin stories.