Read The Ground: Your Origin Story Reveals Your Leadership Tendencies
No doubt you’ve heard or seen stories of how trackers studied the ground to follow a missing person who has passed through the area. Bent grass, impressions in the mud, broken twigs, dropped items, or pieces of torn clothing all reveal a story about the person being tracked. Similarly, you can become skilled at reading the ground upon which you are building your life.
How? By studying your origin story! You can use it as a diagnostic tool…to help us read the ground beneath your leadership style.
Hardworking. Focused. Clawing your way to the top. Breaking ceilings. Fighting for your place in the sun. This is how success is often defined for women. Everything else? A distraction. There’s no time for anything but what matters. And certainly no time for something as frivolous as fun. But what if that’s exactly where we’ve misunderstood something essential? What if delight is not a distraction from your power, but a vital part of it?
Self esteem in women doesn’t always look like insecurity. In fact, it often hides behind impressive résumés, packed calendars, and relentless competence. Many high-achieving women have learned how to succeed in nearly every area of life, yet still carry an underlying feeling that we must constantly prove our value. The question isn’t whether we’re capable. The question is why our worth still feels conditional.
I’ve discovered during the past 20 years… something about brilliant, professional women. There's a pattern that quietly follows these capable, thoughtful women through their lives. 
Wanting to feed your ambition comes with a complicated emotional landscape, especially if you’re a woman. I believe what Anthony Trollope said, “It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth.” Yet that ambition can feel surprisingly conflicted.