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Your leadership superpowers begin with unlearning shame and outdated patterns.
We rarely talk about love at work, but we should. Not romantic love—rather, the loving kindness described by Dr. Ken Ginsburg, a leading expert on positive youth development: a deep human respect for one another and a genuine desire to lift each other up. Imagine a workplace where we truly see one another, celebrate each other’s authentic selves, and operate from that foundation. The world would be transformed.
This kind of culture starts with self-love. The cliché holds true: you cannot sustainably love and support others until you first love and understand yourself. Yet many high-achieving leaders are their own harshest critics, believing that self-criticism fuels success. It may work in the short term, but it eventually backfires. You cannot offer genuine care and understanding to others while treating yourself as the enemy. Sustainable leadership requires self-understanding first.
Self-Understanding: A True Leadership Superpower
Self-understanding is the foundation of powerful leadership. Leaders who know themselves deeply are confident in their strengths and clear about what they bring to the world. They no longer apologize for their vulnerabilities or hesitate to ask for what they need. Most importantly, they extend that same generosity and empathy to others—without abandoning their own boundaries or burning out.
When you honor and love yourself, you can give freely without resentment or depletion. You stop contorting yourself to meet everyone else’s expectations.
To get there, invest time in truly knowing yourself: your neurotype, your history, your mental and emotional patterns, your unique gifts, the questions that fascinate you, and the problems you feel compelled to solve. Then deliberately design a work life that leverages your strengths rather than fighting against them.
The Great Unlearning
Before we can build true self-understanding, we must unlearn. None of us arrives at work as a blank slate. We carry our uniqueness, but also our “stuff”—survival habits, hidden parts of ourselves, and layers of shame accumulated over the years.
I graduated from Brown University convinced I was a failure. I had struggled with depression and panic attacks throughout college, watching peers seem to glide through while I barely dragged myself across the finish line. The internalized message was clear: *I don’t belong here. Something is wrong with me.* It took years in the real world—where my thinking, connecting, and contributing finally clicked—to realize I wasn’t broken. I had simply been in the wrong environment.
Many leaders carry similar outdated stories formed in childhood or early environments that didn’t fit them. We absorb beliefs about our capabilities under conditions where we have little power to challenge the narrative. These mislearnings become the invisible foundation of our careers—until we decide to do **The Great Unlearning**.
Common Patterns Worth Unlearning
This process is especially visible among neurodivergent leaders and those with mental health challenges, though every leader has their own shame traps and limiting beliefs.
Research following adults diagnosed with ADHD in childhood revealed a striking truth: many of their so-called “deficits” were highly context-dependent. Traits that caused struggles in rigid school environments—high energy, rapid attention shifts—became superpowers in self-chosen careers. Some even began questioning whether they had ADHD at all, or whether they had simply been in the wrong container as children.
Family dynamics also shape us profoundly. Many recognize themselves in the “eldest child of a single mother” archetype: the highly competent overfunctioner who takes on too much, driven by anxiety that everything will collapse without their control. This often pairs with underfunctioners who withdraw to manage anxiety. Both are autopilot survival strategies rather than intentional leadership behaviors. They may have served us once, but they rarely scale into healthy, sustainable leadership.
Even accomplished leaders carry remnants of old shame. David Flink—dyslexic, ADHD, founder of the Neurodiversity Alliance, CNN Hero, and GQ Man of the Year—shared a powerful example. At his mother’s gravesite, when handed a passage to read aloud, he gently declined. Not because he couldn’t, but because the old shame around reading still flickered. In that safest of moments, he still had to consciously choose authenticity over performance.
David’s insight is profound: great leaders don’t waste energy trying to look like everyone else. They identify where their brain lights up and run toward it. They learn to say no. They stop mistaking exhausting compensation strategies for their true identity.
Your Turn: What Do You Need to Unlearn?
Take a moment to reflect:
- What belief about your capabilities have you carried since childhood or early career?
- Who originally taught or reinforced it—a parent, teacher, boss, or peer?
- Is there current evidence that it’s still true, or have you been unconsciously carrying an outdated story?
Try this simple exercise: Identify one thing you believe you’re “not good at” (public speaking, managing up, strategic thinking, “the numbers,” etc.). Ask yourself: *How old is this belief? Is it still serving me, or is it time to let it go?*
Leadership doesn’t have to feel constantly hard. When you release the old stories and shame, you create space for genuine self-understanding—and from there, the ability to truly see, respect, and elevate others.
The Great Unlearning isn’t easy, but it may be the most important work a leader ever does.