A Story About Using Someone Else’s Story to Understand Your Own
Self-coaching through reading wasn’t something Philip had ever considered. He hadn’t been looking for answers when he picked up the novel.
The Decision
Philip was supposed to give his answer on Friday.
His manager had asked him three weeks earlier whether he would take the regional role.
He had said he needed some time to think.
Three weeks had passed.
The role would give him responsibility for learning and development across three counties. There would be a larger team, a larger budget and considerably more influence.
It was a good opportunity.
Everyone around him seemed to think so.
His manager thought he was ready.
Philip could see the logic.
What he couldn’t work out was why the prospect left him feeling less excited each time he thought about it.
He had spent years working towards opportunities like this.
Now that one had arrived, he wasn’t sure he wanted it.
He wondered if that meant he had lost the ambition he once had.
The Book
On Wednesday evening, Philip went to a bookshop.
He wasn’t looking for anything in particular.
He wandered through the shelves, picked up a few books, read their backs and put them down again.
Then he saw Stoner by John Williams.
He knew the title. He had heard people talk about it. He knew it was about a university professor, but he had never read it.
He bought it.
He went home and began reading.
William Stoner enters the University of Missouri intending to study agriculture.
A seminar in English literature changes the direction of his life.
He leaves agriculture behind and becomes an academic.
Philip stopped there for a moment.
He had expected the story to be about a man who had discovered his calling.
Perhaps it was.
But as he read on, Stoner’s life didn’t unfold as a simple story of finding the right career and being rewarded for it.
His working life became complicated.
His career was stymied.
His university life involved professional conflict.
His commitment to teaching and learning remained important to him, even when his circumstances were difficult.
Philip found himself thinking about that distinction.
Not Was Stoner successful?
Something else.
What was Stoner actually trying to be successful at?
He kept reading.
What Philip Recognises
The next morning, Philip arrived at work early.
He had a meeting about the regional role at eleven.
Before then, he had to approve the final version of a learning programme his team had developed.
He opened the document.
It was good.
There was nothing wrong with it.
The objectives were clear. The structure was sound. The content was accurate.
It was exactly the kind of work he had learned to value: clear, thoughtful and well put together. Yet looking at it, he felt strangely detached from it.
Instead, he found himself thinking about Stoner.
Not because the two men had similar lives.
They didn’t.
Philip wasn’t an academic. He wasn’t teaching literature. His working life was entirely different.
But Stoner cared deeply about teaching and learning.
And Philip had once cared deeply about the work he did too.
He closed the document.
He realised he couldn’t remember the last time he had created something himself.
He had spent the past few years reviewing other people’s work.
Approving it.
Improving it.
Managing it.
Talking about it.
He had become very good at managing the work.
What he missed was being close enough to it to shape it.
The Conversation
At eleven, his manager asked him again.
“Have you decided?”
Philip looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve had three weeks.”
“I know.”
“What is making it difficult?”
Philip nearly said nothing.
Instead, he heard himself say:
“I think I’m trying to work out what I want my work to be.”
His manager looked surprised.
“You mean the role?”
“No. I mean my work.”
They talked for twenty minutes.
His manager pointed out all the things the new role would allow him to do.
More influence.
More strategic responsibility.
More opportunity to shape learning across the organisation.
Philip knew she was right.
And yet he left the meeting no closer to an answer.
His manager gave him a few more days to think about it.
Reading Himself Through Someone Else’s Story
That evening, he read more of Stoner.
Stoner’s professional life becomes increasingly difficult.
There are conflicts, disappointments and compromises, and much of what happens to him is beyond his control.
But that wasn’t what Philip found himself thinking about.
He kept coming back to the fact that Stoner had discovered something that mattered to him.
He had gone to university intending to study agriculture, but his encounter with English literature changed the direction of his life.
From then on, literature and teaching became central to his working life.
Philip thought about that.
His own working life had unfolded rather differently.
He had done good work, taken on more responsibility and been trusted with increasingly important roles.
He had been rewarded for doing well.
There was nothing wrong with the way his career had developed.
That was what made his reaction to the regional role so difficult to understand.
He wanted to be able to look at the opportunity and feel what everyone else seemed to feel.
Instead, he kept hesitating.
He went back to something he had read earlier in the novel.
Stoner had not set out with a five-year plan to become the person he became.
Something he encountered had made him pay attention to what mattered to him, and he had followed that discovery.
Philip closed the book.
Perhaps that was what he needed to pay attention to.
Not whether the regional role was a good opportunity.
Not whether he was capable of doing it.
But what his own reaction to it was telling him.
Looking Again
The following evening, Philip went back to the beginning of the novel.
He wasn’t rereading it because he had missed anything.
He was rereading because something had begun to bother him.
Stoner had changed the direction of his life because of something he encountered while studying.
That didn’t mean Philip should change the direction of his own.
But it made him think about the relationship between the work you do and the person you become while doing it.
Philip thought about his own career.
He had started in learning and development because he liked understanding how people learned.
He liked creating lessons.
He liked taking a complicated idea and finding a way to make it understandable.
He liked writing.
He liked working with people and seeing something shift when an idea finally made sense to them.
Over time, he had taken on more responsibility.
Then more.
And more.
Nothing had gone wrong.
That was the strange part.
His career had developed exactly as a successful career was supposed to develop.
But somewhere along the way, the work itself had changed.
Or perhaps he had.
He wasn’t sure which.
The Questions Change
On Friday morning, Philip was still undecided.
His manager wanted an answer by the end of the day.
He went for a walk before work.
He thought about Stoner.
Not about what Stoner had done.
About why the story had stayed with him.
Philip had initially thought the novel was about a man who discovered what he wanted to do with his life.
Now he thought it was asking something more difficult.
What happens when the work that matters to you becomes less meaningful?
And another question followed.
Does less meaningful mean you have chosen the wrong work?
Philip thought about his own situation.
He had been interpreting his discomfort with the regional role as evidence that he lacked ambition.
Perhaps that wasn’t the problem.
Perhaps he was uncomfortable because the role would take him further away from the part of his work he valued most.
He stopped walking.
That was the first time he had put it that way.
Finding His Own Answer
He went back to his desk.
He opened a blank document.
He didn’t write a pros-and-cons list.
Instead, he wrote three headings.
What do I want more of?
Creating.
Writing.
Thinking.
Developing ideas.
Working directly with people.
What do I want less of?
Managing processes.
Meetings about meetings.
Spending more time reviewing than creating.
Being responsible for work he was no longer close enough to understand properly.
What do I want my work to make possible?
He paused.
Then he wrote:
I want to create learning that makes people think.
He read it again.
That sentence felt familiar.
It was something he had known for a long time.
He had simply stopped giving it enough weight.
The Decision
Philip now had a different problem.
He knew he didn’t want the regional role as it had been presented.
But that didn’t mean he knew what he wanted instead.
He could turn it down.
He could remain where he was.
Or he could ask whether there was another possibility.
That afternoon, he went back to his manager.
“I don’t think I should take the role as it stands.”
She looked disappointed.
“Why?”
Philip had rehearsed several explanations.
None of them seemed right.
So he told her the truth.
“I’ve realised that I want to stay close to the work.”
She waited.
“I want to create. I want to write. I want to develop ideas rather than spend most of my time managing the function.”
His manager was quiet.
“You’re asking for a different role.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure we can create one.”
“Neither am I.”
It was not the answer Philip had expected to give.
But it was his answer.
And for the first time in weeks, he felt as though he had actually made a decision.
What Reading Had Changed
That evening, Philip finished Stoner.
The ending stayed with him.
Stoner’s working life had not turned out as a simple story of achievement.
There had been disappointment, professional conflict, personal loss and illness.
His commitment to teaching and learning had existed alongside all of it.
The novel didn’t turn his life into a success story simply because he had found work he cared about.
Philip closed the book.
He thought about the question he had been asking for weeks.
Should I take the regional role?
It suddenly seemed like the wrong question.
The better question was:
What kind of working life do I want to create from here?
He didn’t know all the answers.
But he knew more than he had known a few weeks ago.
And he knew what he was going to do next.
He would stay.
He would ask for the opportunity to develop the work he cared about.
And if the organisation couldn’t offer that, he would have another decision to make.
For now, that was enough.
Reading as Self-Coaching
Philip hadn’t picked up Stoner because he was looking for professional advice.
John Williams wasn’t writing a book about career development.
The novel didn’t tell Philip what he should do.
It couldn’t.
William Stoner was not Philip.
His life was not Philip’s life.
His choices were not Philip’s choices.
But Philip’s response to Stoner’s story became a way of examining his own.
That is where reading can become self-coaching.
We often think of self-coaching as asking ourselves questions directly.
But sometimes a direct question is too close to the problem.
What do I want?
Why am I unhappy?
Should I take this opportunity?
We can ask ourselves those questions repeatedly without getting anywhere.
A story can give us some distance.
We can watch somebody else make choices.
We can notice what we admire.
What frustrates us.
What we disagree with.
What we understand.
What we don’t understand.
And then, sometimes, we begin to recognise our own assumptions in our reactions.
Philip didn’t read Stoner and find the answer to his dilemma.
He read about another person’s working life.
He thought about it.
He returned to it.
He compared what he was reading with what he knew about his own work.
He noticed what the story made him think about.
And gradually, the questions changed.
From:
Should I take the opportunity?
to:
What do I want my work to be?
That is a different question.
And it gave Philip a different choice.
Self-coaching is learning to guide yourself through your own working life — to notice what is happening, ask yourself questions that take you somewhere useful, make sense of what you discover and decide what you want to do with it.
Sometimes your own experience gives you the starting point.
Sometimes a conversation does.
And sometimes you need another story to help you think about your own.
What might reading someone else’s story help you see about your own working life?
You can find every book featured in the Book Club Books stories, with links to read and listen to each story, in The Reading List for WorkLife Learning.
The Book Behind the Stories
This story was inspired by my book, WorkLife Book Club Volume One Shoreditch by Carmel O’ Reilly, available to order from bookshops — following members of a London book club as they navigate WorkLife challenges through the wisdom found in the books they read together.
The featured book is Stoner by John Williams
Disclosure
Book links go to Bookshop.org UK, which shares its profits with independent bookshops. You can choose from the formats available. It currently ships to UK addresses only, so these links are for readers in the UK. I hope to find a way to offer something similar for readers elsewhere. If you buy through them, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps support this work.
Continue the Work
Read and listen to:
Self-Coaching Through Writing — the second part of Philip’s trilogy.
Self-Coaching Through Speaking — the final part of Philip’s trilogy.
Explore Professional Self-Coaching from School of WorkLife — each resource created for one important professional moment:
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
Listen to the audio version here:
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