The Audit
Your leadership narrative audit
Three tests. Three minutes. One honest score.
Fifty-six percent of employees say they are staying with their employer out of necessity rather than commitment. Among senior leaders, the number runs higher, and the reason is rarely the market. Most are well liked and well reviewed. Most are still not the name that comes up when a stretch project or promotion is decided in a room they are not in.
Being liked and being advocated for are two different things. This audit tells you which one describes you right now.
The scorecard
Open your LinkedIn profile. Run each test on yourself. Score one point per test you pass.
Test 1
The Retell Test
Think of one person who would advocate for you. A former manager, a peer, a client. Write the one sentence they would say about you if a recruiter called them tomorrow. What they would actually say, based on what they have seen. Not what you wish they would say.
Now answer two questions about that sentence:
- Does it describe what you produced rather than what you are capable of? "He ran our biggest event" is an output. "She gets sales to co-own marketing programs" is a capability. Outputs get you referred to the same job again.
- Would it get you the role you already had, rather than the one you want?
Score 1 point only if you answered no to both. Anything else is 0.
Test 2
The Logo-Swap
Copy your headline and the first two lines of your About section into a note. Delete every company name and your job title. Read what is left out loud.
Now answer three questions about what remains:
- Could it belong to anyone else with your title? If a peer at another company could paste it onto their profile unchanged, that is a yes.
- Is your headline a list? "Brand, demand gen, events, team leadership" describes a job description, not a person.
- Is the most specific thing left a number? Numbers feel specific and are the most interchangeable form of proof. Every VP has a pipeline figure. Only you have the decision that produced it.
Score 1 point only if you answered no to all three. Anything else is 0.
Test 3
The Undersell Audit
Read your About section and count every verb.
Then answer two questions:
- How many of your verbs describe carrying out someone else's decision? Supported, helped, managed, delivered, was responsible for, partnered with. Count them. If they are more than a third of your verbs, that is a yes.
- Is there a decision in there that was yours? A call you made that another person with your title would not have made. Not "led the rebrand." The moment inside it where you chose differently.
Score 1 point only if you answered no to both. Anything else is 0.
Your score: ___ / 3
What the score means
3
Your story is holding. Post something.
2
One test is where your story breaks. Usually it is the one you found hardest to score honestly.
0 or 1
This is where most senior leaders land, including people who build brand narratives for a living. You are too close to your own story to see the shape of it. The audit shows you where it breaks. It cannot tell you why, or what to say instead.
The next step
The full version is the Career Narrative Diagnostic.
It runs four checks, not three. The fourth is the one you cannot run on yourself: the gap between your reputation inside the building and your narrative outside it.
It is a structured conversation about your whole career, not the last two roles, followed by a written, scored readout of where your story falls apart and why. Clients consistently say the conversation itself is what they valued most: a point of view they had never said out loud, surfaced in an hour.
Answer these, then pick a time to talk through what broke. No prep, no commitment. I read every answer before we speak.