Character-Driven WorkLife Stories That Shift How You Think
WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Issue 15
A Personal Note
Welcome to WorkLife Stories.
This week, I’ve been thinking about walking — one of my simplest and most important daily practices.
As I think about my next WorkLife chapter, I’m noticing what walking gives me, physically and mentally, and how making space for simple things helps me live in the present while continuing to build for the future.
Writing this week’s stories, I noticed how many of them are about finding clarity. Sometimes it comes on our own, with time, a notebook and the right questions. Sometimes it comes through conversation, when we put our ideas into the world and let other people question and respond to them. And sometimes it comes from returning to our values, purpose, vision and motivated abilities, and letting them guide the choices we make. I hope this week’s stories help you make space for what matters in your own working life.
Wishing you a good WorkLife week.
Remember: Every working life is a story. Some chapters are told. Some are waiting to be.
Keep writing your WorkLife story,
Carmel
New: this issue is now available as a podcast. Listen on WorkLife Stories Sunday Edition
This Week:
Seven Stories
One about coaching yourself into being understood — a data analyst at a charity whose reports were always thanked and rarely used, until one evening he took the problem apart and found three questions that changed how his work landed.
One about turning one project into a relationship — a landscape architect whose gardens were admired but whose clients had only ever seen the finished result, until a call asking for a referral led him to think out loud about a difficult site.
One about what a flawless career can quietly cost — a management consultant with a spotless thirty-year record who realised no client had ever really known how she thinks, and that there was still time to change it.
One about developing others through questions — a senior engineering manager whose mentees were becoming more dependent, not less, until a management book showed her what her advice had been preventing.
One about self-coaching through speaking — a man asked to speak at a conference, whose audience’s questions help him clarify what he means and see how his ideas could travel beyond his own work.
One about walking into my next WorkLife chapter — a writer exploring how a simple daily practice supports her physical and mental wellbeing, and helps her live in the present while building for the future.
One about self-discovery in action — a head of operations weighing an attractive career opportunity, who learned to evaluate it against his values, purpose, vision and motivated abilities.
One new Story Lesson — How the Values Integration Challenge Redefines Professional Success — A Story About Aligning Personal Beliefs with Professional Demands
One new Professional Self-Coaching resource — Choose What You Prevent — Professional Self-Coaching for Redirecting Your Expertise Toward What You Value Most
One new page — The Reading List for WorkLife Learning — every fiction and non-fiction book featured in the Book Club Books stories, with links to the stories and podcast episodes for each one.
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
Can I Coach Myself Into Being Understood? — A Story About Working Out, on Your Own, Why Your Expertise Isn’t Landing
Bruno was a data analyst at a charity working with families in temporary housing. His quarterly reports were clear, well-structured and honest about what the data couldn’t say, and the senior team and trustees received them with genuine appreciation. Then decisions would get made that his reports had quietly argued against — not in defiance of them, but alongside them. He’d sit in those meetings with the report in front of him and think: it’s all in there. This new WorkLife Story follows what happened when, one Tuesday evening, Bruno got a notebook and did what he does with any problem — took it apart.
Read and Listen → Can I Coach Myself Into Being Understood?
How Do I Turn One Project Into a Relationship? Henrik’s Admired Gardens, the Referral Call That Wasn’t a Job, and the Line That Explained His Career
Henrik was a Danish landscape architect whose gardens were beautiful and, more than that, worked — and every project ended when the planting was done. The genuinely difficult sites, the ones he’d have loved most, always went to someone else; he assumed others were better placed for them. Then a former client rang, not with a project but for a referral: he had a hard new site and wanted a name, because he thought of Henrik as the man who made beautiful gardens, and this was something else. Instead of giving a name, Henrik thought out loud about the site — and the client went quiet, and said: I didn’t know you did this. It was never the quality of the work. It was that his clients had only ever seen the finished result.
Read and Listen → How Do I Turn One Project Into a Relationship?
Nothing Went Wrong. So Why Didn’t It Go Anywhere? Jacqui’s Spotless Record, the Question She Couldn’t Answer, and What a Flawless Career Can Quietly Cost
Jacqui was sixty-four, a management consultant with a spotless thirty-year record — and near the end of it, taking stock, she felt that for all its polish the career had never gone anywhere deeper than the next engagement. Then a colleague she was mentoring asked which client had really known how she thinks, and she found she had no answer. Not because the relationships had failed — because she’d spent thirty years delivering flawless conclusions and never once letting a client see her think. What she found, sitting with that, was that the thing she’d missed was never a talent she lacked — only a choice she’d never made, and there was still time to make it.
Read and Listen → Nothing Went Wrong. So Why Didn’t It Go Anywhere?
How a Management Book Develops Coaching Capacity and Transforms Leadership — A Story About Questions, Curiosity, and Non-Fiction That Builds What Advice Prevents
Amara had always been known as a responsive leader. As a senior engineering manager at a financial technology company, she shared hard-won expertise, provided clear guidance and was always available when her mentees needed direction. Yet her mentees were becoming more dependent, not less, asking what she thought about plans they had already thought through well. She was beginning to suspect that being available with solutions and developing others’ capability were not the same thing. This new WorkLife Story follows what happened when a colleague mentioned a book whose title made Amara defensive — and she ordered it that night.
Read and Listen → How a Management Book Develops Coaching Capacity and Transforms Leadership
Self-Coaching Through Speaking — Finding Your Voice and Putting Your Ideas Into The World
Philip has worked out what he wants his work to be, but working it out for himself is only part of the process. When he is asked to speak at a conference, he discovers that speaking is not simply a way of communicating ideas he has already developed. The questions he receives make him think more mindfully, clarify what he means and see how his ideas might travel beyond his own work.
His story explores self-coaching through speaking — what happens when you take ideas you have developed through your own thinking and put them into a conversation where other people can question, test and respond to them.
Read and Listen → Self-Coaching Through Speaking
Walking Into My Next WorkLife Chapter for Good Physical and Mental Wellbeing — Living in the Present While Preparing for the Future: Making Space for the Simple Things
Walking has become one of my simplest and most important daily practices. As I think about my next WorkLife chapter, I’m exploring what walking gives me physically and mentally, and how making space for simple things can help me live in the present while continuing to build for the future.
Read and Listen → Walking Into My Next WorkLife Chapter for Good Physical and Mental Wellbeing
Professional Development: Self-Discovery in Action — Using Your Values, Purpose, Vision and Motivated Abilities to Make Career Choices
In this week’s Professional Development story, Albert, head of operations at a regional water company in the north of England, explores whether an attractive career opportunity reflects what matters most to him. By returning to his stories, questioning his assumptions and talking it through with his wife, Grace, he learns to evaluate opportunities differently, and uses self-coaching to prepare for an interview with a smaller organisation. His story explores how self-discovery can help us make more considered career choices and move towards a working life that reflects our values, purpose, vision and motivated abilities.
Read and Listen → Professional Development: Self-Discovery in Action
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 the Values Integration Challenge Redefines Professional Success — A Story About Aligning Personal Beliefs with Professional Demands
Diego had spent seven years working his way up to operations manager at a city hospital, with every indicator on his dashboard improving. Then, in a management meeting full of colleagues celebrating efficiency gains, he felt a growing disconnection between what the metrics measured and what he had entered healthcare to accomplish. This new WorkLife Story follows what happens when Diego begins asking what the numbers leave out, and what he discovers about aligning his beliefs with the demands of the role.
Explore → How the Values Integration Challenge Redefines Professional Success
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
Choose What You Prevent — Professional Self-Coaching for Redirecting Your Expertise Toward What You Value Most
You already have expertise that works — judgement your results can prove. Choose What You Prevent takes you, step by step, from noticing the gap between expertise that treats a serious problem and expertise that could have prevented it, to naming what you value, testing it against real work, and redirecting your expertise toward it.
Explore → Choose What You Prevent — Professional Self-Coaching for Redirecting Your Expertise Toward What You Value Most
Book Club Books
Literature offers timeless insights into human character, motivation and resilience. Book Club Books brings learning through fiction and non-fiction into real-life WorkLife situations, for individual and group learning, as a book club can be one person or many.
THE READING LIST
The Reading List for WorkLife Learning brings together every fiction and non-fiction book featured in the Book Club Books stories, with links to the stories and podcast episodes for each one. The stories draw on real WorkLife struggles and successes, showing how the books read by each protagonist helped them navigate their challenges, in their work and in their lives, bridging the gap between reading for pleasure and learning for work and life.
Book links go to Bookshop.org UK, which shares its profits with independent bookshops.
Explore → The Reading List for WorkLife Learning
The Thinking Behind the Work
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. Through character-driven narratives and structured reflection, WorkLife Stories helps you navigate your challenges, develop your professional capabilities and articulate your own journey — supporting self-coaching, self-directing and self-leadership across a working life.
Listen to the audio version here:
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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