Character-Driven WorkLife Stories That Shift How You Think
WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Issue One
This Week: a new way to work with School of WorkLife.
Something new begins, and it has been more than twenty years in the making. School of WorkLife has been built on stories — I believe they are our most powerful mechanism for teaching, learning and communicating who we really are. Starting this week, that belief takes shape in a new form: WorkLife Stories, a weekly publication of character-driven stories and story-based resources that support self-coaching, self-directing and self-leadership across a working life.
This Week:
Five Stories
One about self-coaching — a woman with a decision to make and ten days to make it, who sat down each evening and coached herself to her own answer.
One about what stories to tell in an interview — a candidate in a final round of five at the top of their game, who went looking for what only he could say.
One about answering “tell me about yourself” — a woman with a career in three chapters that didn’t seem to belong to the same book, until she found the thread.
One about discovering your origin story — the unexpected invitations one woman had dismissed, and the pattern she found when she finally looked back at them.
And one about a man pushed to move faster, whose methodical approach turned out to be exactly what the moment had needed — when the prototype crashed in front of the client.
One WorkLife Question
What strengths do others consistently notice about you?
Three Professional Self-Coaching Resources
Get the Job — Professional Self-Coaching for Job Interviews
Get the Client — Professional Self-Coaching for Networking and Building Professional Relationships
Get the Seat at the Table — Professional Self-Coaching for Strategic Influence
WorkLife Storytelling
The stories we tell are one of our most powerful ways of expressing who we are. They reveal our character, values and beliefs, our thinking and individuality — and help us speak our truth in ways that create connection and credibility.
Each WorkLife Storytelling piece helps you find, shape and tell the right story at the right time — in interviews, conversations, presentations, networking and the many moments when your story matters.
THE STORIES
What Is Self-Coaching?
Ten Days, a Notebook and the Practice of Finding Your Own Answers
Orla had ten days. A director role opening up, a case to make to the leadership team — and a life that wasn’t going to pause for it. What she had was one quiet hour each evening after the house went silent, a twenty-five-minute bus ride, and a notebook. On the first night she wrote a question at the top of a page, and rejected her own first answer.
Read and Listen → What Is Self-Coaching?
What Stories Should I Tell in a Job Interview?
A Final Round of Five at the Top of Their Game — and the Man Who Went Looking for What Only He Could Say
Emeka had earned his place in the final round. The problem was the room: four other candidates, every one of them at the top of their game, because at final round that’s the entry fee. The first evening, he read his prepared answers back out loud — and heard that any one of the five could deliver them.
Read and Listen → What Stories Should I Tell in a Job Interview?
How Do I Answer “Tell Me About Yourself”?
The Question Every Interview Opens With — and the Thread That Turns Your Whole Career Into One Answer
Miranda’s career had three chapters that didn’t obviously belong to the same book. Five days before a first-round interview, she recorded herself answering the question every interview opens with — and watched a capable woman explain her own career like a route she’d wandered by accident.
Read and Listen → How Do I Answer “Tell Me About Yourself”?
How to Discover Your Origin Story: When Opportunity Meets Support
A Story About How Unexpected Invitations Revealed Professional Superpowers — and Why Having a Champion Matters
Daisy’s story: the catalysts she had dismissed, the pattern she found when she looked back at them, and the moment she became a champion for someone else standing at the same crossroads.
Read and Listen → How to Discover Your Origin Story: When Opportunity Meets Support
The Stories Behind the Stories: Leon
“Methodical thinking isn’t about being slow. It’s about being intelligent about where you apply your speed.”
The prototype crashed in front of the client. In the silence that followed, Leon’s risk assessment sat open on his laptop. Every problem they were experiencing, clearly outlined — four weeks earlier.
Read and Listen → The Stories Behind the Stories: Leon
THE WORKLIFE QUESTION
What strengths do others consistently notice about you?
This week I sat with Myra and this question — exploring what it means when the strengths others experience in you are so consistently present that neither you nor they have thought to separate them out. Until someone finally asks.
Read and Listen → What strengths do others consistently notice about you?
The stories above are free to read. If you’d like to take the work deeper, there are three new Professional Self-Coaching resources this week.
Professional Self-Coaching
Self-coaching is the ability to guide yourself through every part of your WorkLife journey — through stable times and times of change and uncertainty. It is asking yourself the questions that bring clarity, finding your own answers, and acting on what you learn.
Each Professional Self-Coaching resource is created for one important professional moment. One purpose. One challenge. One outcome. Distilled from more than twenty years of professional coaching, writing and practice.
THE RESOURCES
Get the Job — Professional Self-Coaching for Job Interviews
You have an interview. It matters. You know you have the experience. You know you can do the job. Get the Job takes you, step by step, from your experience to three prepared professional stories — your success, failure and passion stories — so you walk into your interview able to communicate your value, your character and your potential with clarity and confidence.
Explore → Get the Job
Get the Client — Professional Self-Coaching for Networking and Building Professional Relationships
You know your next client, collaboration or opportunity will come through people. Get the Client takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories, built for the spoken moment and connected into one complete picture of how you think, what you’ve learnt and what drives your work. Because when people understand those three things, they don’t just remember you. They know exactly when to call you.
Explore → Get the Client
Get the Seat at the Table — Professional Self-Coaching for Strategic Influence
Your work is good. Better than good — it prevents mistakes, it finds what others miss, and people rely on it. And yet, when the strategic conversation happens, you’re the person who provides the input rather than the one who shapes the decision. Get the Seat at the Table takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that make your thinking visible — so your expertise stops being something people use, and becomes something they consult.
Explore → Get the Seat at the Table
Work With Me: Commissioned learning resources, speaking engagements, and organisational partnerships.
Support This Work: Your support makes a difference and helps me to continue creating resources that are accessible to everyone. Thank you. Carmel
Share These Learning Resources:
These resources are designed as short, effective learning experiences—for individuals managing their own development and companies supporting their people’s growth.
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A colleague.
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That’s how this work finds the people it’s meant for.
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