How to discover who you are through indirect self-reflection

Executive overview

Most leaders cannot answer "what do I value?" directly — the question is too abstract to yield honest answers. Hortense le Gentil's approach bypasses the direct question entirely, using childhood dreams, heroes, and life's twists and turns as indirect lenses that surface real values and identity.

Alignment — connecting who you are with what you say, love, and do — unlocks energy, joy, and leadership effectiveness. The tools to find it are already embedded in your life story; they just need a different kind of looking.

When you stop asking "what do I value?" and start asking "who did I want to be?", the answers are already there.

Finding yourself through indirect questions

• Ask about childhood dreams, not current goals — the specifics of what attracted you (speed, altitude, creativity) reveal who you still are.
• Ask who someone admires and why — people unconsciously describe themselves through their heroes.
• Three to four heroes with clear reasons is enough to identify core traits.
• Anti-heroes work equally well: the boss you never want to be shows you what you actually value.
• If the direct question stalls, use projective questions: "If you were a tree, what would it be and why?" — these lower resistance and still surface real patterns.

Reading life's twists and turns

• Every major decision, setback, and pivot is data — there are no coincidences.
• Walk through the full arc: early wins, inflection points, and failures in sequence.
• For each setback, the key question is "what did you learn?" not "what happened?"
• Unresolved anger at a past moment signals an unclosed door — alignment requires making peace with it before moving forward.
• Closed doors enable new chapters; open wounds reopen under pressure.

The hero mirror

• People try to become their heroes without awareness — which means heroes encode their aspirational self-image.
• Hortense stopped smoking once she noticed all her female heroes smoked — awareness alone broke the pattern.
• Vocabulary and metaphors someone uses spontaneously often trace back to an old dream (the client who talked like a film director without realising it).
• Naming the pattern increases the talent: the film director client became a better communicator once he understood his own frame.

Applying this as a leader

• Leaders who ask "who do you admire?" and listen for self-description get more insight into values than any direct assessment.
• Listen for what's not said, not only what is — the pattern across answers matters more than any single answer.
• Trust and psychological safety are prerequisites: 99% of the work is building confidence before asking anything deep.
• The modern leader's role is increasingly that of a coach — connecting each person's values to the organisation's direction.
• You didn't leave your personal self at home this morning; what someone struggles with at work they typically struggle with at home too.

Building alignment over time

• Alignment is not a one-time exercise — it's a progressive painting built across many conversations.
• Each conversation closes one door and illuminates the larger picture.
• Alignment produces compounding returns: joy, energy, and the sense that anything is possible.
• Even highly successful people can become more successful and more energised by deepening alignment.
• Hortense's own pivot — from corporate advertising to entrepreneurship — only became legible in retrospect, once she looked back at her childhood dream.