Hey there,
I hope your week has been a good one and that you’re managing to come up for air.
I wanted to share something that really stayed with me after a day on my psychotherapy training. It links deeply to confidence, leadership and how we show up at work, and I think it will resonate with you and your teams.
This week, I sat across from a colleague on my course, someone my age but with a very different beginning. She grew up in Latvia, where her parents were born into the shadow of war, occupation and collective trauma. Pain that shaped the culture and settled into the bones of entire generations.
My own family’s story stems from the same war, but the narrative I inherited was different. My grandmother told her stories with pride. Trauma turned into triumph. The hardship became proof of strength.
Same history. Two completely different emotional inheritances.
And it made me think about something we often overlook in leadership and in life. We don’t just inherit our eye colour. We inherit our family’s relationship with suffering too. Their beliefs about resilience. Their default response to challenge. Their meaning-making around struggle.
In family systems work, we explore how trauma and emotional patterns travel through generations. What struck me this week wasn’t the trauma itself, but the story wrapped around it.
Some of us inherit a story of overcoming.
Some inherit endurance.
Some inherit silence.
Some inherit shame.
Some inherit pride.
And these stories do not stay at home. They walk into the boardroom with us. They show up in our confidence levels, our leadership style, our reactions under pressure, our ability to ask for help, our comfort with ambition and our default assumptions about people.
This isn’t about judging any narrative, because there is no right or wrong. It is about acknowledging that the starting point is rarely the same for all of us. Which means the people we lead are often carrying far more than we can see.
Here are a few reflective prompts that might be helpful for you or your managers:
1. What story about struggle did you inherit?
Was it strength, silence, endurance, stoicism? And does that story still serve you?
2. Where does your confidence come from?
Was it modelled for you or did you have to build it alone?
3. What stories might your team be carrying?
What might sit behind a hesitation, a reaction, a drop in confidence, or a need for reassurance?
4. How could curiosity help you lead better?
What opens up when we ask what shaped someone rather than assuming we already understand them?
5. What’s one story you want to put down and what’s one you want to keep?
Because awareness gives us choice, and choice gives us freedom.
If you are leading people, especially in this increasingly uncertain environment, understanding someone’s emotional inheritance is one of the most underrated leadership tools. It brings compassion where there could be frustration. It brings patience where there could be judgement. And it creates psychological safety far quicker than any model or framework ever can.
So here’s my gentle invitation for the week. Take five quiet minutes and ask yourself which stories you’re still carrying and which ones you might be ready to rewrite.
And perhaps even more importantly, consider how being curious about the stories of those around you could shift the way you lead next week.
Wishing you a restful week.
Cate x
Hey there,
I hope your week has been a good one and that you’re managing to come up for air.
I wanted to share something that really stayed with me after a day on my psychotherapy training. It links deeply to confidence, leadership and how we show up at work, and I think it will resonate with you and your teams.
This week, I sat across from a colleague on my course, someone my age but with a very different beginning. She grew up in Latvia, where her parents were born into the shadow of war, occupation and collective trauma. Pain that shaped the culture and settled into the bones of entire generations.
My own family’s story stems from the same war, but the narrative I inherited was different. My grandmother told her stories with pride. Trauma turned into triumph. The hardship became proof of strength.
Same history. Two completely different emotional inheritances.
And it made me think about something we often overlook in leadership and in life. We don’t just inherit our eye colour. We inherit our family’s relationship with suffering too. Their beliefs about resilience. Their default response to challenge. Their meaning-making around struggle.
In family systems work, we explore how trauma and emotional patterns travel through generations. What struck me this week wasn’t the trauma itself, but the story wrapped around it.
Some of us inherit a story of overcoming.
Some inherit endurance.
Some inherit silence.
Some inherit shame.
Some inherit pride.
And these stories do not stay at home. They walk into the boardroom with us. They show up in our confidence levels, our leadership style, our reactions under pressure, our ability to ask for help, our comfort with ambition and our default assumptions about people.
This isn’t about judging any narrative, because there is no right or wrong. It is about acknowledging that the starting point is rarely the same for all of us. Which means the people we lead are often carrying far more than we can see.
Here are a few reflective prompts that might be helpful for you or your managers:
1. What story about struggle did you inherit?
Was it strength, silence, endurance, stoicism? And does that story still serve you?
2. Where does your confidence come from?
Was it modelled for you or did you have to build it alone?
3. What stories might your team be carrying?
What might sit behind a hesitation, a reaction, a drop in confidence, or a need for reassurance?
4. How could curiosity help you lead better?
What opens up when we ask what shaped someone rather than assuming we already understand them?
5. What’s one story you want to put down and what’s one you want to keep?
Because awareness gives us choice, and choice gives us freedom.
If you are leading people, especially in this increasingly uncertain environment, understanding someone’s emotional inheritance is one of the most underrated leadership tools. It brings compassion where there could be frustration. It brings patience where there could be judgement. And it creates psychological safety far quicker than any model or framework ever can.
So here’s my gentle invitation for the week. Take five quiet minutes and ask yourself which stories you’re still carrying and which ones you might be ready to rewrite.
And perhaps even more importantly, consider how being curious about the stories of those around you could shift the way you lead next week.
Wishing you a restful week.
Cate x
