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Donna Lichaw

Executive Coach and Author

Donna Lichaw Coaching

🚀 Career & Leadership (2)⚡ Execution (1)

Key Takeaways

  • 1.Treat your leadership style like a product: conduct 'user research' with colleagues to validate if your internal stories (e.g., 'I'm too nice') match their reality.
  • 2.Reframe 'Imposter Syndrome' by asking 'How does this serve me?'—often it functions as a mechanism to drive deeper preparation or learning.
  • 3.Identify 'superpowers' by analyzing peak experiences from childhood, early career, and recent history to find the common thread, rather than relying on generic strength tests.
  • 4.Use the 'Head, Heart, Hands' framework to evaluate behavioral experiments: analyze thoughts, emotions, and physical body sensations.
  • 5.Apply the 'Gestalt Experiment' method: test scary behavioral changes in 30-second low-stakes increments before rolling them out to the wider team.
  • 6.Leverage 'Kryptonite': Weaknesses often have a functional upside (e.g., anxiety driving diligence); the goal is to manage the dose, not eliminate the trait.
  • 7.Start strategic planning with the ending: Vividly visualize the sensory details of the future state first, then work backward to build the roadmap.

Methodologies(3)

🚀 Career & Leadership

A framework that treats self-perception as a hypothesis that must be validated through 'user research' with colleagues. It replaces internal assumptions with data-driven reality to adjust leadership behavior.

Core Principles

  • 1.Identify the Story: Explicitly write down the recurring internal narrative hindering you (e.g., 'I am not authoritative enough').
  • 2.Conduct User Research: Interview peers and direct reports to validate this story. Ask how they actually experience your leadership.
  • 3.Analyze the Delta: Compare your internal story with the external data. (Often, 'too nice' is perceived as 'caring but needs to delegate more').
  • +1 more...

"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."

#narrative#validation#audit
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🚀 Career & Leadership

A biographical analysis method to identify innate strengths by examining peak experiences across a timeline, rather than using multiple-choice personality tests.

Core Principles

  • 1.Select Three Data Points: Identify a peak experience from childhood, one from your early career, and one from your recent past.
  • 2.Define 'Peak': Choose moments where you felt most 'lit up', energized, and effective (not necessarily just happy).
  • 3.Pattern Recognition: Overlay these stories to find the functional theme connecting them (e.g., 'Connecting people' vs. 'Attention to detail').
  • +1 more...

"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."

#superpower#extraction#protocol
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⚡ Execution

A micro-experimentation framework derived from Gestalt therapy to test new behaviors in real-time through three distinct sensory filters.

Core Principles

  • 1.Define the Micro-Experiment: Choose a very small, immediate action (e.g., 'Listen for 30 seconds without planning a response').
  • 2.Run In-The-Room: Execute the action immediately in a low-stakes environment (e.g., with a coach or peer) rather than waiting for a high-stakes meeting.
  • 3.Audit Head (Cognitive): What thoughts arose? (e.g., 'This is boring', 'I need to speak').
  • +2 more...

"Life is like product thinking... You run it through three filters: head, heart, hands."

#head-heart-hands#experiment#execution
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