The Stories We Carry: Reflective Writing as a Practice for Leadership

By Salem Islas-Madlo

What can happen when we step outside our usual routines and give ourselves the time, space and structure to listen more closely to ourselves, others, and the environments around us?

At the end of August, I travelled to Andalucía, Spain, to attend the course, Narrative and Reflective Inquiry for Leadership. The purpose was not simply to write. It was to explore how narrative and reflective practices can become tools for adult education and leadership development: supporting emotional intelligence, self-awareness, resilience, intercultural communication and our capacity to navigate change.

I went to Spain as an educator, facilitator and writer. I returned with a deeper understanding of something I had already sensed through my work: the stories we tell about ourselves influence how we understand ourselves, how we relate to others and how we lead.

Creating Space for Reflective Learning

One of the most valuable aspects of the mobility was its structure.

The learning programme combined three interconnected approaches: contemplative inner inquiry, nature-based embodied observation, and cultural-historical research. Residential days included meditation and contemplative practice, observation in nature, guided and independent writing, mentoring, peer exchange and an integration learning log. Cultural immersion days added research, observation and reflective writing connected to place and history.

Moving between these different forms of learning changed the writing process.

Instead of immediately trying to analyse an experience or arrive at an answer, I practised slowing down enough to observe first. What am I noticing? What is happening in my body? What image keeps returning? What changes when I walk with a question rather than trying immediately to solve it?

For those of us who facilitate learning, this distinction matters.

Reflection is sometimes treated as the activity that happens after learning: we have an experience and then reflect upon it. During this mobility, I experienced reflection as part of the learning process itself. Walking, observing, writing, receiving feedback and returning to the writing became an iterative cycle.

That process created space for discoveries that I could not have planned in advance.

Place as a Source of Inquiry

The cultural immersion component was particularly important to me.

Our framework invited us to consider questions such as: What stories live in built spaces? How does architecture hold memory? What evidence of power, conquest, assimilation and resistance remains visible? What symbols repeat? What emotional responses arise when we encounter a place and its history?

I carried these questions with me during my time in Andalucía, including a visit to the Alhambra in Granada.

I found myself paying particular attention to architecture: windows, doorways, courtyards, gardens and the movement from one space into another. These were not simply beautiful details to observe. They gave me another way of thinking about narrative.

A doorway, for example, creates movement between two spaces. A courtyard offers a place of pause. A window determines what can be seen, and what remains outside the frame.

As a writer, I began considering how these same principles operate within a story. Where does a narrative invite us to pause? What remains unseen? What happens when the perspective shifts? What allows a story to move from one emotional or temporal space into another?

For me, this became one of the clearest examples of how cultural observation can deepen reflective and narrative practice.

The Stories Beneath the Story

Another learning objective of the mobility was to explore narrative inquiry in relation to ancestry, migration, identity, intergenerational memory, inherited beliefs, family stories and silence.

I worked with these questions through my own long-form writing project.

This gave me the opportunity not only to develop my writing, but to observe how narrative inquiry works.

When we write reflectively about an experience, we often discover that the first story is not necessarily the whole story. We may notice assumptions we have carried for years. We encounter gaps and silences. We recognise that a memory has been shaped by family, culture, place and the perspective we had at the time.

The purpose is not necessarily to replace one story with another.

It is to become curious about the stories we carry.

That curiosity has an important place in leadership development. Our internal narratives influence how we understand belonging, conflict, authority, uncertainty and change. Becoming more aware of those narratives can create greater choice in how we respond rather than simply repeating familiar patterns.

Reflection, Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

This is where the connection between writing and leadership became especially clear for me.

Leadership is often associated with what we do outwardly: communicating, making decisions, facilitating groups, managing complexity or creating change.

Those actions emerge from an internal landscape.

Writing can create a small, but important space between experience and response.

On the page, we can notice contradiction without immediately resolving it. We can encounter uncertainty without rushing toward an answer. We can recognise an emotional response and become curious about what lies underneath it.

These are writing skills, but they are also leadership capacities.

Learning With Others

Although writing can be deeply solitary, this course reminded me that reflective learning does not have to be.

Mentoring and peer exchange were built into the programme alongside independent practice. Feedback was not something reserved for a finished product; it became part of an ongoing process of writing, reflection, revision and learning.

Working in an international environment also brought another dimension to the experience. The interaction with writers from different cultural backgrounds and to practise peer-feedback approaches were grounded in active listening, inclusive dialogue and collaborative learning. This reinforced something important for my work as a facilitator: we do not need to interpret another person’s story for them.

Sometimes our role is to create the conditions in which they can hear themselves more clearly.

A Reflective Practice to Try

One of the things I am taking back into my work with ALP is a deeper interest in combining observation, writing and reflection rather than relying only on discussion.

You can experiment with a simple version of this practice yourself.

Choose a place where you can spend ten or fifteen minutes observing without distraction. It could be a garden, a street, a room, a building or a familiar place you normally move through without paying much attention.

First, observe. Notice physical details before interpreting them: sounds, shapes, movement, light, objects, boundaries and spaces.

Then, notice your response. What attracts your attention? What creates ease, resistance or curiosity? What memories or associations appear?

Finally, write. Begin with the sentence:

“What I notice now that I have slowed down is…”

Write continuously for ten minutes without trying to produce something polished.

When you finish, read what you have written and ask yourself:

What might this observation be showing me about how I am meeting my life, my work or my leadership right now?

The purpose is not to find the “correct” answer. The practice is in noticing what becomes available when we create enough space to pay attention.

Reflection requires space

Space between experience and interpretation. Space between a question and an answer. Space to notice the stories we have inherited and the stories we continue to tell. Space to discover whether those stories still reflect who we are becoming.

For educators, facilitators and leaders, creating that kind of space—for ourselves and for the people we work with—can itself be an act of leadership.

What might you discover if, instead of immediately searching for an answer, you gave yourself enough space to listen to the story underneath the question?