How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw
Donna Lichaw (guest), Lenny Rachitsky (host), Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Donna Lichaw and Lenny Rachitsky, How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw explores rewrite your personal story to unlock leadership superpowers and growth Executive coach and author Donna Lichaw explains how the stories we tell ourselves shape our leadership effectiveness, confidence, and career trajectory. She argues that the most powerful form of storytelling isn’t what we present externally, but the internal narrative that defines whether we see ourselves as heroes or imposters. By identifying superpowers, understanding kryptonite, and running small “experiments” on ourselves (borrowed from product thinking), we can reshape those stories and create more intentional careers and lives. The conversation is rich with concrete client examples, practical exercises, and parallels between product development frameworks and personal development.
Rewrite your personal story to unlock leadership superpowers and growth
Executive coach and author Donna Lichaw explains how the stories we tell ourselves shape our leadership effectiveness, confidence, and career trajectory. She argues that the most powerful form of storytelling isn’t what we present externally, but the internal narrative that defines whether we see ourselves as heroes or imposters. By identifying superpowers, understanding kryptonite, and running small “experiments” on ourselves (borrowed from product thinking), we can reshape those stories and create more intentional careers and lives. The conversation is rich with concrete client examples, practical exercises, and parallels between product development frameworks and personal development.
Key Takeaways
Your internal story is more powerful than your external storytelling.
The narratives you repeat about yourself (e. ...
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Use data and feedback to test your self-story like a product hypothesis.
Treat beliefs about yourself as hypotheses and validate them by talking to your “customers” (colleagues, reports, stakeholders). ...
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Mine your past peak experiences to uncover your real superpowers.
Instead of relying only on strength tests, examine moments in childhood and adulthood when you were at your best and most energized. ...
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Superpowers and kryptonite sit on the same spectrum.
Many “weaknesses” (e. ...
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Design your work around energy, not just responsibility.
Notice which activities give you energy versus drain it (e. ...
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Run small, safe experiments to build new behaviors and identities.
Borrowing from lean product development, try tiny behavioral experiments (e. ...
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Start with the ending: define your ideal future, then work backward.
To surface buried goals and desires, vividly imagine a future where you’ve had the best few years of your life—what you’re doing, feeling, and impacting. ...
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Notable Quotes
“The most effective stories are the ones that we tell ourselves. They may or may not be true, our brain doesn't know the difference.”
— Donna Lichaw
“When superheroes discover what their superpowers actually are, they wreak havoc and they make a mess. It's uncomfortable.”
— Donna Lichaw
“It's a waste of energy to fix what's broken. When you can amplify your strengths, you have a much bigger impact.”
— Donna Lichaw
“Certain stories we tell ourselves are actually quite functional and do not necessarily need to be rewritten. Imposter syndrome can be one of those.”
— Donna Lichaw
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
— Dolly Parton (quoted by Donna Lichaw)
Questions Answered in This Episode
What are the most persistent stories I tell myself about my leadership, and how could I test whether they’re actually true?
Executive coach and author Donna Lichaw explains how the stories we tell ourselves shape our leadership effectiveness, confidence, and career trajectory. ...
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Looking back at my peak life and work experiences, what patterns point to my real superpowers—and where might I be underusing or overusing them?
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In what ways might my imposter syndrome or other ‘kryptonite’ actually be serving me, and where is it tipping into harm or burnout?
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If I imagined the best possible version of my life and career 5–10 years from now, what would I see—and what small experiment could I run this month to move toward it?
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Where is my current job or context fundamentally misaligned with my energy and strengths, and what concrete changes (role shifts, delegation, boundaries, or even job change) might be necessary?
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Transcript Preview
(instrumental music) When superheroes discover what their superpowers actually are, they wreak havoc and they make a mess, and it's uncomfortable. And even Superman tries to get rid of his superpowers. It's hard to know what you're really great at.
How does somebody identify their superpowers, their strengths?
Pull your superpowers out of your stories from your past, your present, and then eventually figure out how to apply them and transpose them to your future.
The person story, this is central to becoming a better leader.
The most effective stories are the ones that we tell ourselves. They may or may not be true, our brain doesn't know the difference. Once you can really understand that, you may as well leverage it to be that hero.
(instrumental music) Today my guest is Donna Lichow. Donna is an executive coach, speaker, and bestselling author. She helps founders, CEOs, and executive teams level up their leadership skills and scale their impact while staying true to their mission, their purpose, and themselves. Donna has worked with leaders at companies like Google, Disney, Twitter, Microsoft, and Adobe, and she's also the author of the book The Leader's Journey, which is what we spent our time on. In our conversation, we talk about why the story that we tell ourselves has so much impact on our success and failure, why knowing your superpowers and also your kryptonite is so important to your career, and how to identify these two things, how to reframe your feelings of imposter syndrome and actually use it as an advantage, how to identify your life goals even if you have no idea what they might be. Plus a ton of examples from her coaching practice of people unlocking their career using her frameworks, and how they went about doing this, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Donna Lichow after a short word from our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by OneSchema, the embeddable CSV importer for SaaS. Customers always seem to want to give you their data in the messiest possible CSV file, and building a spreadsheet importer becomes a never-ending sink for your engineering and support resources. You keep adding features to your spreadsheet importer, but customers keep running into issues. Six months later, you're fixing yet another date conversion edge case bug. Most tools aren't built for handling messy data, but OneSchema is. Companies like Scale AI and Pave are using OneSchema to make it fast and easy to launch delightful spreadsheet import experiences, from embeddable CSV import to importing CSVs from an SFTP folder on a recurring basis. Spreadsheet import is such an awful experience in so many products. Customers get frustrated by useless messages like, "Error on line 53," and never end up getting started with your product. OneSchema intelligently corrects messy data so that your customers don't have to spend hours in Excel just to get started with your product. For listeners of this podcast, OneSchema's offering a $1,000 discount. Learn more at oneschema.co/lenny. Let me tell you about a product called Sendbird, the all-in-one communications API platform designed for both web and mobile apps. In a world saturated with multi-channel communication, product teams are discovering the effectiveness of in-app communication. With Sendbird, businesses can elevate their in-app experience with decluttered and branded communication featuring AI-powered chatbots, one-way messages, chat, video calls, and livestream capabilities, all tailored for commerce, marketing, and top-tier support. Forward-thinking companies such as Hinge, Patreon, Yahoo, Accolade, and more use Sendbird to build in-app communication experiences that drive engagement, conversion, and retention. In-app communication has the highest conversion, highest engagement, and highest satisfaction of any communication channel. And when it comes to investing in this channel, trust Sendbird to take your in-app communication experience to the next level. Start today with Sendbird's free plan, and as a listener of Lenny's podcast, you'll get an additional two months of unlimited usage and access to all premium features, including creating your very own generative AI chatbot. Visit sendbird.com/lenny to begin your free journey. That's sendbird.com/lenny. (instrumental music) Donna, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.
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