The Voices You Center Shape the Leader You Become

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

I’ve been thinking a lot about where my ideas about leadership come from.

Not the ones I say I believe.

The ones I return to. The ones that shape how I move, decide, respond.

Because leadership isn’t just built through experience. It’s built through exposure.

Who you read.
Who you listen to.
Who you quote.
Who you trust enough to learn from.

Most of us were trained on a pretty narrow set of voices.

Voices that were easy to access. Easy to teach. Easy to repeat.

And whether we meant to or not, those voices start to define what leadership sounds like.

What it values.
What it ignores.
What it assumes is normal.

If leadership is shaped by repetition, then expanding who we learn from isn’t a side project.

It’s the work.

This is something I’ve been more intentional about over the past few years.

Not just reading more widely, but actually returning to voices that challenge and stretch me.

Voices that come from different cultural frameworks. Different lived experiences. Different ways of understanding power, responsibility, and community.

In honor of AAPI Heritage Month, I want to celebrate Asian American voices.

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner — a beautiful, gutting look at grief, culture, and identity that has stayed with me

• Good Soil by Jeff Chu — a reflection on faith, belonging, and what it means to grow something meaningful (I started recommending this book to strangers while I was on Chapter One!)

• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande — this one’s been on my list forever, and I’m finally taking this month as my excuse to read it

This isn’t about “diversifying your reading” in a performative way.

It’s about understanding that what you take in becomes how you lead—and choosing, intentionally, to widen that lens.

Because if all we take in is one perspective, our leadership will reflect that—whether we realize it or not.

The goal isn’t to master someone else’s experience.

It’s to let it change how we think.

How we listen.
How we lead.

So this month, I’m paying attention to who I’m learning from.

Not just what I agree with.
But what stretches me.

What complicates things in a useful way.

What makes me lead differently.

Because the voices you center don’t just influence what you know.

They shape who you become.

Whose voices are shaping your leadership right now and who’s missing?