Character-Driven WorkLife Stories That Shift How You Think
WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Issue 11
This Week:
Seven Stories
One about being passed over for promotion — a laboratory technician whose work was flawless and whose judgement was trusted by everyone around her, yet who had been passed over three times because the thinking behind her work had remained invisible.
One about turning a client into a partner — a commercial photographer who had spent twenty years being booked, delivering excellent work and receiving the next brief, until one meeting made him realise that showing what he could do was keeping him a supplier.
One about passing on what you know — a stonemason with thirty-eight years of experience who had been giving apprentices the conclusions of her working life, until one difficult afternoon showed her what happens when you hand on the experience that made those conclusions true.
One about seeing differently — an operations manager whose five years in luxury hospitality had always seemed like a background detail rather than part of her professional identity, until an emergency waiting room revealed what her healthcare training had taught her not to see.
One about self-coaching as a practice for everyday working life — a man who enjoyed his work but began wondering how much he actually learned from the experience of doing it, and started paying attention to what was going well, what he was becoming stronger at and what he wanted more of.
One about building a WorkLife in which you get to keep doing the work you love and make it financially sustainable — continuing my nine-month exploration of what the next chapter might look like, and how the different parts of what I create, deliver and share might support the way I want to work and live.
One about what our stories tell us about who we are becoming — a man who had always thought he was telling a story about leadership, until looking at it again revealed a story about how his understanding of leadership had changed and how the experience had shaped the professional he became.
One new Story Lesson — How Vision and Motivated Abilities Unite Your Multiple Interests: A Story About Discovering How Seemingly Unrelated Capabilities Serve One Coherent Purpose
One new Professional Self-Coaching resource —Focus Your Strengths Where They Matter: Professional Self-Coaching for Doing Your Best Work Through Your Natural Character Traits
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
Why Do I Keep Getting Passed Over for Promotion? — A Story About Being Seen for What You Actually Do Before the Decision Is Made
Fen was a laboratory technician in a large diagnostics lab, and by every measure that seemed to matter, the best they had. Her results were flawless, her turnaround was the fastest, and when something was complex or didn’t look right, it came to Fen because she caught what others missed. Yet three times the senior role came up, and three times it went to someone else. Fen had assumed that being the best at her job would eventually be enough. She was wrong about what the decision was actually based on. This new WorkLife Story explores what happened when Fen finally understood the difference between proving you can do the job you have and making visible the judgement required for the one you want.
Read and Listen → Why Do I Keep Getting Passed Over for Promotion?
How Do I Turn a Client Into a Partner? — A Story About Asking Instead of Showing
Hayato was a commercial photographer, twenty years in, and very good at being booked. The work came in reliably, he delivered excellent results and his clients were pleased. But every commission ended the same way: another brief would arrive, he would do the job, invoice and wait for the next one. He had spent years seeing things about the businesses he photographed that nobody had thought to ask him about. Then, in one meeting, he never opened his portfolio. This new WorkLife Story follows what happened when Hayato stopped showing what he could do and started asking what his clients were actually trying to be.
Read and Listen → How Do I Turn a Client Into a Partner?
How Do I Pass On What I Know? — A Story About Handing On Experience So It Actually Reaches Someone
Miriam was a stonemason, thirty-eight years in, and had begun taking on apprentices because she wanted to pass on what she knew. But she had started to notice that what she told them arrived in pieces. They listened, wrote things down and tried hard, yet still missed the moments when her advice mattered. Then, one wet Thursday, an apprentice ruined a piece of stone and admitted he had known something wasn’t right but had carried on anyway. Instead of giving him the instruction she’d given before, Miriam told him what had happened to her at twenty-nine. This new WorkLife Story explores what happens when we stop handing on conclusions and start handing on the experience that made them true.
Read and Listen → How Do I Pass On What I Know?
How Seeing Differently Reveals Your Origin Story — A Story About Cross-Industry Experience: How Your Unique Perspective Becomes Your Professional Breakthrough
Daphne had built her career in healthcare, seven years as an operations manager at a major teaching hospital in Toronto, where every operational measure told the same story: she was succeeding. Yet one problem refused to budge. Patient experience remained stubbornly mediocre, and none of the solutions her field offered seemed to explain why. Daphne had spent five years in luxury hospitality before moving into healthcare — an experience her colleagues knew about but didn’t think mattered. Then she saw something in an emergency waiting room that her healthcare training had never taught her to see. This new WorkLife Story explores what happened when Daphne stopped treating her unconventional background as something to set aside and recognised it as the source of a perspective her profession needed.
Read and Listen → How Seeing Differently Reveals Your Origin Story
Self-Coaching A Practice for Everyday Working Life — A story about noticing, questioning and learning from our experience as we work
Otto enjoyed his role, liked the people he worked with and found the work interesting. But one Friday afternoon he became curious: he spent a great deal of time doing his work, but how much time did he spend learning from the experience of doing it? So Otto began paying attention — to what was going well, what he enjoyed, where he was becoming stronger and what he wanted more of. A story about self-coaching as a practice for noticing, questioning and learning from everyday working life.
Read and Listen → Self-Coaching: A Practice for Everyday Working Life
How Do I Build a WorkLife in Which I Get to Keep Doing the Work I Love and Make It Financially Sustainable?
I’m exploring what it might take to make my WorkLife financially sustainable for the next chapter. Not simply how to earn from my work, but how the different parts of what I create, deliver and share might support the way I want to work and live.
I don’t have the answer yet. I’m exploring it through the work itself, and through the writing, thinking and learning that happens along the way.
Read and Listen → How Do I Build a WorkLife in Which I Get to Keep Doing the Work I Love and Make It Financially Sustainable?
Professional Development: What Do Our Stories Tell Us About Who We Are Becoming?
Anthony has told the same working-life story many times. He has always thought it was a story about leadership. But when he looks at it again, he begins to see something different — a story about how his understanding of leadership changed, and how the experience helped shape the professional he became.
Read and Listen → Professional Development: What Do Our Stories Tell Us About Who We Are Becoming?
The stories above are free to read. If you’d like to take the work deeper, there’s a new Story Lesson and a new Professional Self-Coaching resource this week.
Story Lessons
Each Story Lesson explores a real WorkLife moment where something important becomes visible — a conversation shifts, an assumption is challenged, or a different way of thinking begins to emerge.
From that moment, the lesson unfolds into a structured learning experience that helps you understand what happened, why it mattered, and how to apply the insight to your own WorkLife.
THE STORY LESSON
How Vision and Motivated Abilities Unite Your Multiple Interests — A Story About Discovering How Seemingly Unrelated Capabilities Serve One Coherent Purpose
There may be a range of interests you’ve been told to narrow down — a working life others call unfocused, that you’ve never quite been able to cut without feeling you were abandoning part of yourself. And it’s possible that range isn’t indecision at all. How Vision and Motivated Abilities Unite Your Multiple Interests follows Kevin, told for twenty years that he had too many interests — until a single weekend revealed that his six apparently unrelated pursuits were one purpose expressed through many tools, and that choosing between them would only ever have crippled the thing they all served.
Explore → How Vision and Motivated Abilities Unite Your Multiple Interests
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 SELF-COACHING RESOURCE
Focus Your Strengths Where They Matter — Professional Self-Coaching for Doing Your Best Work Through Your Natural Character Traits
There’s a particular kind of tiredness that doesn’t come from having too much work — it comes from watching everything you produce sit at good rather than great, however hard you push. It isn’t a problem of capacity or workload; it’s how you’re deploying the strengths you already have. Focus Your Strengths Where They Matter takes you, step by step, from recognising how you deploy your strengths to focusing them where they create distinctive value — seeing where you downshift, matching the rest to others whose traits serve it better, and discovering the capabilities that focusing, and developing others, reveal in you. Because your best work was never about bringing your full strength to everything.
Explore → Focus Your Strengths Where They Matter
Work With Me: Individual WorkLife Coaching, 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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