Case Study Joseph’s Story Part 1: From Reluctant Leader to Purpose-Driven Impact

There are moments in leadership where someone speaks, and you feel the entire room shift. When I sat down with Joseph Muli, I felt exactly that, a presence both humble and powerful, honest yet grounded, shaped by migration, identity, love, and a long journey toward self-knowledge.

Joseph is a consultant at Xebia Netherlands, specializing in platform engineering and site reliability engineering. But like many of the leaders who join the Leadership Landing Program, his story begins long before titles, in Kenya, with a childhood understanding of “leadership” that never quite fit the truth he would later discover.

Today, I’m sharing the unedited first 10 minutes of our hour-long conversation a glimpse into Joseph’s journey of inner leadership, dragons, identity, and impact.

🐉 “It’s not just about me anymore.”

Joseph starts with a smile, speaking of six years in the Netherlands, the complexity of visas, and the greater complexity of love.

His partner sits in the room during the interview.

“Meeting her changed my perspective… do I go back home or do I stay?

It’s not just about me anymore. It’s about how we want to live and where we want to go.”

There’s something quietly beautiful about this: not the dramatic kind of transformation, but the gentle kind. The kind that rearranges priorities from the inside out.

🔥 What Drew Joseph to the Leadership Landing Program

Joseph first found me at SRE Day 2024, where I gave a talk about neurodivergence, self-understanding, and how leaders create space for their own minds.

“Your words triggered something…

It felt like you really know yourself, and I wanted to understand how you got there.”

He told me he skipped taking notes.

He went looking for me instead.

He wanted to learn directly.

“When you said you had a program, I said ‘sign me up.’”

That moment stayed with me, the sincerity, the hunger for growth, the spark of someone ready to meet their next dragon.

💚 Before the Program: Therapy, Guidance, and the Search for Self

Before joining the program, Joseph had already done years of personal work:

💚 Extensive psychological therapy

💚 Coaching through his people manager

💚 Structured goal-setting and emotional grounding at work

But he sensed something missing.

“I had done a lot of therapy, enough to take a break.

But this program… this was about how I support self.

Suddenly I went from moving 10 km/hour to 200.”

That line hit me deeply.

Because that’s exactly the purpose of Leadership Landing:

to help leaders reclaim the inner steering wheel.

🐉 “Leadership? I never wanted that word.”

When I asked Joseph what leadership meant before the program, he shared something many will relate to, especially those who grew up in contexts where the word “leader” meant power without responsibility.

“Growing up, the leaders I saw…

once you’re an adult you think,

‘How did these people even help me?’

So I never wanted to call myself a leader.”

He shied away from opportunities he was qualified for.

He didn’t want the title.

Not because he lacked confidence

but because the definition of leadership he grew up with felt fundamentally wrong.

The shift began when he learned about personal leadership in the program.

“Leadership wasn’t grounded or personal before.

Now I can define it.

I can take ownership of it.”

This is what inner leadership looks like

not dominance, not ego, but clarity.

💚 What Impact Means Now

Joseph’s understanding of impact transformed as well.

Now impact is:

💚 Deeper connection with his team

💚 Positive business outcomes grounded in relationships

💚 Watching people he teaches grow past him

“There’s a very big difference between teaching reliability engineering

and seeing someone you taught go way ahead of you.

Then suddenly I become the student.”

This is leadership at its most beautiful

the circular nature of growth.

The wheel, as he later says, that keeps turning.

🐲 The Dragons: Need to Be Needed, Complexity, Victim Mentality

And here is where the story deepens.

When we reached the topic of core dragons, Joseph’s voice shifts, that mixture of recognition, discomfort, and relief that comes when you finally put names to lifelong patterns:

“Discovering my dragons was a complete surprise.

The need to be needed, complexity, victim mentality, I was like wow, yeah… that feels real.”

But then this:

“Now that I can name them, I can take different actions.

And suddenly the world responds.

Promotions. Recognition.

It actually feels better.”

Naming the dragon is the first step to riding it.

And Joseph did, with courage, patience, and truth.

💬 What’s Coming Next

This is just Part 1.

The next segments of the interview go deeper into:

💚 Identity

💚 Belonging

💚 Psychological patterns

💚 Leadership transformation

💚 Core motivations

💚 And the dragons that shape us

Joseph’s story is one of migration, love, self-actualization, and breaking generational narratives around leadership.

It is powerful.

It is human.

It is impact in motion.

And I cannot wait to share the next part with you.

💚🔥🐉 Stay tuned for the rest of this most inspiring interview.