Character-Driven WorkLife Stories That Shift How You Think
This week: three new Professional Self-Coaching resources — Get the Trust. Get the Thinking Across. Get the Strategic Influence. Five stories — a crossroads where two doors didn’t fit. Two interview stories, one arriving the next day and one after a nine-year gap. A story about the joy professional life quietly consumes. A story about four character traits that only became a system under pressure. And one WorkLife question: how could this setback redirect you toward better alignment?
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
Introducing Get the Trust — Professional Self-Coaching for Leadership People Believe In
You lead well. Your team delivers, your meetings are efficient, your results hold up. People respect you, and they do what you ask. And still, something is missing: when a problem arrives, they wait for you to solve it. A team that respects you will do what you ask. A team that trusts you will do more than you ask. Get the Trust takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that let people see the thinking and purpose behind how you lead — first by recognising them in your own experience, then by leading from them, and finally by turning the same questions outward to draw out the stories of the people you lead. Because your effectiveness was never the problem.
Read and Listen → Get the Trust
Introducing Get the Thinking Across — Professional Self-Coaching for Work That Earns Trust and Referrals
You do good work. Your clients are satisfied, your projects land well, your results hold up. People approve what you propose, and they thank you for it. And still, something is missing: the relationship stays at the surface, and when a harder problem arrives, it isn’t you they turn to. A client who is satisfied has seen your work. A client who has seen how you think will bring you the harder things. Get the Thinking Across takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that get the thinking behind your work across — first by recognising them in your own experience, then by working from them, and finally by turning the same questions outward to draw out the thinking of the clients and people around you. Because the quality of your work was never the problem.
Read and Listen → Get the Thinking Across
Introducing Get the Strategic Influence — Professional Self-Coaching for Being Valued as a Strategic Mind, Not Only a Technical One
You are good at what you do, and people know it. Your expertise is respected, your work is trusted, your results hold up. And still, something is missing: you are valued for the wrong part of what you offer. People see the technical service and treat it as operational, while the insights that could reshape their whole situation rarely reach the table. The gap isn’t that you lack a voice — you are in the room, and you are heard. It’s that people don’t see the purpose behind how you see. Get the Strategic Influence takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that reveal the purpose behind your expertise — first by recognising them in your own experience, then by working from them, and finally by turning the same questions outward to draw out the strategic opportunity inside a client’s problem. Because your expertise was never the problem.
Read and Listen → Get the Strategic Influence
This completes the collection — all eight Professional Self-Coaching resources from The Art of WorkLife Storytelling:
Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity programme → Professional Self-Coaching
THE STORIES
What Is Self-Directing? Orla’s Crossroads, the Same Notebook and the Practice of Choosing Your Own Path
Everyone assumed Orla would apply for the permanent director role. Her managing director said it in passing: “You’ll apply, obviously.” Her team assumed it. Her family assumed it. Orla assumed it too — for about four days. Then she noticed one word was doing all the work. The final story in Orla’s trilogy completes the practice at the heart of this work: self-coaching was the method, self-leadership was how she carried the role, and self-directing is how she chose what came next — a third path, written where two doors didn’t fit.
Read and Listen → What Is Self-Directing?
How to Reclaim Your Happiness When Professional Life Has Quietly Consumed It A Story About Rediscovering Joy as Essential Fuel for Mental Wellbeing and Meaningful Work
Zoe had built exactly the purposeful career she’d always wanted. Her programmes helped young people. Her colleagues respected her. And still, the playlist she used to dance to sat silent, and the moments she’d loved most had started to feel like box-ticking. Then a teenager stayed behind to ask the real question — and she, already elsewhere in her head, missed it. A story about how joy slips away in the gap between one task and the next, and why protecting it is the most professional thing you can do.
Read and Listen → How to Reclaim Your Happiness When Professional Life Has Quietly Consumed It
How Do I Prepare for an Interview in One Day? One Evening, Twenty-Eight Years of Material and the Three Things Every Interview Turns On
The call came at four o’clock: hiring freeze Friday, interviews must finish tomorrow, can you do ten? Sandra had planned a proper week of preparation. What she had was one evening. So she did what twenty-eight years of supply chain had taught her to do when a timeline collapses — decide what actually matters, and cut the rest on purpose. And she knew what mattered, because twenty-eight years includes a lot of hiring.Three stories — and one evening to find each one.
Read and Listen → How Do I Prepare for an Interview in One Day?
The Stories Behind the Stories: Jon
“The character traits you discover in yourself through developing others can be as significant as the core traits that have always been present.”
Jon had four character traits — analytical thinking, empathy, creativity, relationship-building — and had been deploying them one at a time for three years. This episode goes deeper into what those four create when they work as a system, and the five further traits Jon discovered in himself only through developing others.
Read and Listen → The Stories Behind the Stories: Jon
This closes the second of two short series: Enhance Your Character Traits, which drew out the trait at the heart of each one. Eight characters, and the character traits at the heart of each — and the capabilities they revealed.
The first short series: The Art of WorkLife Storytelling, went behind the craft of the stories themselves to the deeper story of the protagonist in each of the stories.
You can read all the stories in the Category Archives: The Stories Behind the Stories
Can You Coach Yourself Through a Job Interview? What a Coach Actually Does — and the Interview That Proved You Can Do It for Yourself
Piotr hadn’t interviewed in nine years — the firm had kept promoting him. Then came the restructure, and an interview three weeks away for a role he genuinely wanted. His instinct was the sensible one: get a coach. His oldest friend was one — booked months out. What she told him down the phone instead changed his three weeks: “I wouldn’t give you a single answer. The answers were always going to come from you.” So he asked the question the story exists to answer: could I do that for myself?
Read and Listen → Can You Coach Yourself Through a Job Interview?
THE WORKLIFE QUESTION
How Could This Setback Redirect You Toward Better Alignment?
This week I sat with Mark and this question — a financial advisor who spent six months becoming someone he wasn’t. Trading courses, aggressive marketing, standardised packages, in response to a setback that felt like pressure to change. Until a client he’d served for years asked him one question that named exactly what he’d been moving away from — and showed him where he needed to go back to. A setback rarely feels like redirection in the moment. It feels like evidence that something needs to change. And the first thing that feels like it needs to change is often the thing that should stay.
Read and Listen → How Could This Setback Redirect You Toward Better Alignment?
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
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