Lead With Your Story: Finding Power in Lived Experience

For many Black women, leadership has come with an unspoken condition: be capable, but not too visible; bring results but leave parts of yourself at the door. In a recent Network for Black Women Leaders Elevate Session, Lead with Your Story: Finding Power in Your Lived Experience, award-winning business storytelling coach Beatrice Kabutakapua challenged that narrative, inviting Black women to reclaim their stories as sources of authority, clarity, and leadership power.

The interactive session created a reflective, psychologically safe space for Black women to explore how lived experience, often minimised or misunderstood in professional settings, can be transformed into a strategic leadership asset.

From invisibility to intentional visibility

Beatrice opened the session by sharing her own journey, from growing up as one of the only Black girls in her town in Italy, to becoming a visible leader, author, and speaker. She spoke candidly about introversion, fear of exposure, and the long process of learning how to be seen on her own terms. Rather than presenting storytelling as confidence theatre or performance, she reframed it as a grounded practice rooted in self-knowledge.

Participants were invited to reflect on a simple but confronting statement: “You are a superhero.” The responses revealed how many Black women struggle to recognise their own power, particularly when leadership has been defined by over-giving, resilience without rest, or survival rather than choice.

Storytelling is not oversharing

A recurring concern raised in the session was the fear that storytelling equals emotional exposure. Beatrice was clear: leading with your story does not mean telling everything to everyone. Instead, it requires discernment, intention and safety.

She distinguished between storytelling for healing, which belongs in trusted, private spaces, and storytelling for leadership, which is about clarity, sharing lessons and service. When stories of emotional growth are shared without context or reflection, audiences are left with feelings of sympathy rather than insight. When shared with intention, these stories become tools for connection, influence and cultural change.

Finding, owning and leading with your story

Central to the session was Beatrice’s FOCUS™ framework, a structured approach to working with lived experience.

Participants explored how stories emerge in layers, from instinctive responses to childhood memories of trauma to stories remembered by others. Beatrice emphasised that confidence doesn’t come from polishing delivery alone, but from understanding where your authority comes from and trusting that it already exists.

Crucially, she encouraged participants to ask different questions of their experiences: What did I need? What did I have? What did I want? These reflections shift the narrative from pain alone to meaning, allowing lived experience to become a gift rather than a burden.

Navigating bias, tone and visibility

In the Q&A, participants raised familiar challenges: being perceived as “too young,” adjusting tone in white-dominated spaces, and navigating distrust in corporate environments. Beatrice’s responses centred preparation, embodiment and choice, reminding women that storytelling is always contextual and that not every space deserves full access to our stories.

She also named the cost of constant self-editing. When Black women shrink, over-adjust or erase themselves to be palatable, leadership becomes extractive rather than sustaining. Owning your story, she argued, is a way of resisting that erasure.

From survival to leadership on our own terms

The session closed with a powerful reminder: stories have always existed to teach, guide and connect. When Black women stop asking for permission to be visible and instead lead from lived truth, leadership becomes less about performance and more about integrity.

The work does not end with inspiration. It continues in reflection, practice and community. Spaces like the Network for Black Women Leaders, where Black women can lead without shrinking, over-explaining or carrying the cost alone.

Continue the journey with Beatrice Kabutakapua

There are several ways to extend your growth with Beatrice and continue developing your leadership voice through storytelling.

You can follow Beatrice on LinkedIn and explore her bestselling book, Lead With Your Story: How to Turn Your Lived Experience Into Your Leadership Superpower, available at lead-with-your-story.com.

For ongoing inspiration and insight, sign up for The Business Storytelling Centre Newsletter.

If you’re seeking deeper, personalised support, Beatrice offers 1:1 coaching (by application), as well as group coaching for collective learning and shared growth.

And for those drawn to a more intimate, embodied experience, you can also join the waitlist for the Lead With Your Story Dining Experience, a space where storytelling, connection and leadership come together around the table.

Your story matters.

Stay Connected with the Network for Black Women Leaders

If you want to continue developing your leadership, confidence and professional strategy, join the NBWL mailing list and follow us on LinkedIn for updates on networking events, mentoring, coaching opportunities and training.

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