Stories That Shaped Us: What We Learn When People Tell the Truth

That idea became especially powerful as three very different stories unfolded. Carlo Odicino told a story about feedback, failure, and realizing that the way he was leading was having the opposite effect of what he intended. Anna Vafeiadou shared the moment she decided to leave a secure career in environmental advocacy and create something of her own. Dr. Sona Sharratt explored belonging, unwritten rules, and the invisible adjustments people make in order to fit into a room, a country, or a workplace.

Different stories. Different settings. Different moments of change. And yet a clear through line emerged: who we become is often shaped by the moments when something interrupts the version of ourselves we thought was working.

When the Results Are Not the Whole Story

Carlo began with a sentence that landed immediately: “You were kind of a dick.”

The comment came from a colleague after a late-night work call in 2018. Carlo had been frustrated about a delayed project. He had not yelled, but he knew the voice he had used: sharp, impatient, already convinced of the answers before asking the questions. The next morning, he apologized. His colleague told him plainly how he had come across, and Carlo thought the moment was resolved.

A few weeks later, he received the results of a 360-degree leadership assessment. The feedback was clear. Carlo was seen as direct and candid, but sometimes confrontational. People did not always feel that he was listening to understand. His lowest score was in one area: caring connection.

That result stopped him. Carlo knew he cared about the people he worked with, but many of them could not tell. That gap between intention and impact became the story.

Working with a coach, Carlo mapped out the beliefs and behaviors driving his leadership. Underneath them was a powerful internal rule: failure is not an option. Work harder. Try harder. Get the result. The behaviors that followed were equally clear: telling, criticizing, impatience, irritation, unapproachability. The result was less connection.

His coach offered a replacement belief: It’s all learning.

That simple shift changed the way Carlo understood performance. Results became information rather than identity. Failure became part of the process rather than proof that something had gone wrong.

Years later, running his own company, that lesson became part of how he led. During a difficult period when his team had missed several targets, the instinct in the room was to lower expectations and make the next goals feel safer. Carlo did the opposite. He encouraged the team to set an audacious goal and, in his words, double their rate of failure.

Not because failure was the objective, but because learning was.

The organization went on to have its best year. Carlo’s story was not a story about becoming less ambitious. It was a story about changing the conditions under which ambition could flourish. When people are afraid of failure, they protect themselves. When they are allowed to learn, they experiment, adapt, and grow.

The story also demonstrated something leadership advice often misses: awareness comes before choice. We cannot change a behavior we have not yet seen.

The Courage to Leave

Anna Vafeiadou’s story began somewhere entirely different: a vineyard in Greece.

She described a photograph from 2007 of herself and friends standing inside a barrel after a day of grape harvesting. They were eighteen years old, wearing shorts and plastic boots, surrounded by the fruits of their work. Their faces were full of joy. That image became a grounding point.

Years later, Anna would build a career as an environmental lawyer, working in policy advocacy and strategic litigation. Her work focused on the climate crisis and environmental protection, and the stakes were increasingly visible. The same landscapes she loved were threatened by recurring forest fires.

Then, during the ordinary task of monitoring new legislation, she encountered something unexpected: a draft law on forest-fire prevention that closely resembled a legislative proposal she and her colleagues had previously submitted. It was a moment of impact. The work had mattered. Something they had fought for had entered the system.

And yet, almost paradoxically, that success became part of a turning point. Anna felt a growing need for change. She wanted more responsibility, more freedom, and the opportunity to build her own business.

The difficult part was saying it out loud.

She first told her manager, who initially seemed unable to absorb what Anna was saying. Anna explained that she wanted to run her own business. Her manager replied as though the two things could coexist: so you will continue as our in-house lawyer and run a business too?

No, Anna said. She was leaving.

It took three conversations before the reality fully landed. Eventually, over coffee and sweets on a Sunday morning, they moved from resistance to imagining the future together: Anna’s new business and the person who might replace her.

Telling her boss produced a different reaction. Anna announced that she had a major change to share. “Are you getting married?” he asked.

No, she replied. She was starting her own business.

His answer surprised her: it was about time.

The story captured something deeply human about change. Even people who support us do not always arrive at that support immediately. Some need time. Some resist. Some misunderstand. Some surprise us.

Julienne reflected that leadership mythology often suggests the right response should appear instantly. But when a valued person leaves, the first reaction may be about loss. What will this mean for me, for the team, for the workload, for the organization? Support can take time.

What mattered was that Anna kept returning to the conversation and remained clear about her decision. Her story did not need a speech about bravery. The courage was visible in the dialogue.

The Rules No One Tells Us

Dr. Sona Sherratt’s story began with an admission: she met her husband because she misused her student loan.

At twenty-two, studying for her master’s degree in the United States, she and a friend used part of their loan money to backpack around Europe. On an overcrowded, increasingly unpleasant ferry to Santorini, they met three English men from rural Shropshire. One of them was celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday.

That evening, Sona and he began talking. They never really stopped.

Within a week, they were talking about marriage. Then came long-distance letters, expensive international phone calls, visits across the Atlantic, a move to New York, and eventually a move to England.

Sona thought she understood what it meant to change countries. She had been born in India and moved to the United States at eight. In India she had belonged to the majority. In America, she became “the Indian girl” who did not understand how things worked.

She learned by watching. She watched how other children spoke, what made them laugh, what seemed normal, and what might make her appear less foreign. She learned English. She learned how to fit in. She even stopped speaking her mother tongue because, to her, belonging sounded like English.

Years later, moving from the United States to England, she expected the transition to be easier. The language was the same. How different could it be?

For a long time, she did not notice herself changing.

Then one day, a Dutch friend enthusiastically described an expensive home-furnishing brand she had discovered. Her friend was simply excited, but Sona felt herself internally wince. She wanted her to tone it down, to be less enthusiastic, less open about liking something expensive.

Then Sona noticed herself looking at the faces of the British women around her, reading their reactions.

Why?

Her friend had done nothing wrong.

Sona realized she had learned another unwritten rule. In the United States, aspiration and enthusiasm may be expressed openly. In Britain, she had learned to understate, not to appear too impressed with herself or overly excited.

Her Dutch friend had unknowingly broken a rule nobody had ever explained to her. More importantly, Sona realized she had not merely noticed the rule. She had absorbed it.

“I Prepare My Face”

Years later, during her doctoral research at Cambridge, Sona interviewed people about the unwritten rules they encountered at work. One participant described how he prepared for meetings.

“I prepare my face,” he told her.

The phrase stopped her.

He was not only preparing his presentation or choosing his words. He was deciding how much emotion it was safe to show, what tone to use, how much space he could occupy.

Suddenly Sona saw the connection between experiences separated by decades. The eight-year-old girl arriving in America and watching other children, the Dutch woman unknowingly violating a British social rule, the employee preparing his face before a meeting, and Sona herself standing among her friends, checking everyone else’s expressions before deciding how to react.

Each person was trying to answer essentially the same question: who is it safe to be seen to be?

That question sits at the heart of belonging. We may enter a workplace, relationship, organization, or country and technically be welcomed. But the deeper question is whether we can remain ourselves once we arrive.

When the Body Knows First

Sona’s current research focuses on psychological safety and the invisible forces that determine who feels able to speak, challenge, ask questions, and take up space.

One of the insights from her work is that belonging is often felt before it is consciously understood. Our bodies register the room.

When we feel safe and genuinely accepted, the body relaxes. Ideas flow more easily. We expand. When we feel judged, unheard, or out of place, something different happens. We contract. The stomach drops. The chest tightens. We become more careful.

Those responses can be particularly powerful for people who differ from the majority in a room, whether through language, culture, race, gender, status, or another aspect of identity. Those in the majority may never notice the rules because the rules already work for them.

The people on the outside become experts in noticing. They read the room, watch faces, listen for what is not said, and learn when to soften themselves.

Sona’s hope is that becoming aware of those dynamics allows leaders and teams to create something different: environments built on curiosity, listening, and enough psychological safety that people do not have to spend so much energy translating themselves before they speak.

The Story Beneath the Story

Jerome and Julienne noted that none of the three storytellers had coordinated their stories in advance. And yet they spoke to one another.

Carlo’s story explored the gap between how he saw himself and how others experienced him. Anna’s story showed how a major change disrupted the expectations of people around her and required her to remain clear about who she was becoming. Sona’s story explored the countless smaller adaptations people make as they read the room and decide how much of themselves it is safe to reveal.

All three stories involved being seen. All three involved listening. And all three involved the tension between adaptation and authenticity.

Leadership often focuses on what people should do: communicate clearly, set goals, manage performance, create strategy, build culture. But these stories remind us that underneath those activities are human beings continually interpreting one another.

We are constantly asking ourselves questions that rarely appear on an organizational chart. How am I being received? What does this room expect of me? What am I allowed to say here? What happens if I fail? What happens if I change? Will you still recognize me?

Those questions shape workplaces every day.

Listening Changes the Story

That is why the event began with listening.

Narativ’s approach is grounded in the belief that the quality of our listening changes what becomes possible in the conversation. When people feel genuinely listened to, they may reveal something that would otherwise remain hidden.

Carlo could tell a story about a leadership failure without turning it into a polished success narrative. Anna could take us into the awkward, imperfect conversations surrounding her resignation. Sona could admit to judging her friend and then show how that moment exposed something she had absorbed about belonging.

These were not stories of flawless people. They were stories of people noticing themselves.

That is where the leadership lesson lives.

What Will You Carry Forward?

At the end of the event, the audience was invited to reflect on one moment, idea, or feeling they wanted to carry with them.

That may be the most useful way to experience personal storytelling. Not by searching immediately for a neat moral or a single correct interpretation, but by asking what we recognized in ourselves.

Maybe it was Carlo’s realization that caring about people and making them feel cared for are not the same thing. Maybe it was Anna returning to the conversation until the people around her could finally see the future she had already begun to imagine. Maybe it was Sona’s participant saying, “I prepare my face,” and the realization of how much energy people spend managing how they appear before they ever enter the room.

The stories that shape us do not always announce themselves as important when they happen. Sometimes they begin with a difficult phone call. Sometimes with a resignation. Sometimes on a ferry to Santorini.

And sometimes the change happens later, when we finally have enough distance — and enough listening — to understand what the moment was trying to teach us.