7/11/2025 @Ormit, de Bilt.
Our final training day was about story telling, and I was tasked to write a story capturing my Startup Talents journey. To get started, I looked back at my notes from February of 2025 – what was it then that I wanted to learn? My notes were clear: I was focused on understanding leadership. A quote from my notebook: “I want to figure out what type of leader I want to be.”
Leadership was the central thread of my Startup Talents journey. There where many emotional, inspiring, and fun moments over the year – to many to list here in this story. Some where simple and to the point – as when Xander and I figured out over dinner that “soms ik gewoon mijn bek moet houden.” It doesn’t have to be complex I guess. But there is one story that I find quite telling for my grown understanding of leadership – and I would like to share this story with you.
During the ‘Find Your North Star’ day on October 15th, we had an exercise where we had to find our values out of a list of 200. Following the exercise I crossed out many values, grouped a bunch, until I ended with my four core values: Presence, Love, Collaboration, and Wisdom. “Tsja..” – I thought – “that doesn’t say a lot – those are the core values of Life, so of course I end up with these.” But when we shared our values with the group, I was surprised to find out that others had completely different values! After finding this out, I wrote the following in a journal:
Although my values feel obvious to me, I found they are actually unique. Therefore, by simply living my own core values, I am already a leading and powerful force in society. And additionally, I am the person I want to be.
I love this! It means that I can simply do what feels obvious to me, and positive change will follow.
One of the additional things I got to better understand through this program is how I can be quite wordy. Therefore, let me concisely summarize my learnings on how to be a great leader:
- Focus on being your best self.
- Trust the process.
- Good things will follow.
Some other learnings
- I am quite serious by default. It is almost guaranteed to improve the process if I crack a joke every now and then.
- I am wordy, I want to explain everything. It is almost guaranteed to improve the process if I try to say less things with less words.
- By default, I attend to the group. It is almost guaranteed to improve the process if I perpetually start action by attending from within.
- My personal mission statement:
- I am Bram Delisse – and every day, I follow my 4 core values:
- Presence: I live in the moment. I am not distracted. I live a non-dual life, part of the whole.
- Love: I smile. I feel. I connect with others through conversation and feeling. I enjoy.
- Cooperation: I look for win-wins. I try to build something bigger together.
- Wisdom: I seek the truth. I take the whole into account, and do what should be done.
Reason for writing
Wat wil ik schrijven?
Ik wil het process van Startup Talents afronden. Mijn core learnings hier vatten op een manier dat ik dat process kan afsluiten. Afronden als een stabiel blok waarop ik verder kan bouwen.
Naar wie schrijf ik het?
Naar de Bram over 1 jaar. Om contextual te informeren over wat er voor stappen stappen zijn gezet door de Bram van dan. Waar zat Bram mee – waar dacht hij over na – wat voor keuzes maakt hij en waarom. Eigenlijk een soort decision log. Het moet af in 45min. Dan is v1.0 klaar. Eventueel nog een likje verf later – maar dan hoef ik het iig niet meer aan te raken.