Author Archives: Carmel O' Reilly

Why Does My Work Go Unnoticed?

Padma was a teaching assistant, eleven years in, and — on paper — support staff. She sat beside the children who struggled and kept the classroom calm while the teacher taught. But something happened around Padma that nobody could account for: the children others had given up on, the disengaged and disruptive ones, tended to change when they were put with her. When it worked, everyone was pleased, and nobody asked how. It went down as the child “settling.” She’d stopped wondering why her work was never quite seen. She was wrong about why — and it had nothing to do with the work.

WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Issue Nine

This week: Seven stories: one about coaching yourself into being heard — a developer told to “be more visible” who broke the vague advice down like an unclear spec; one about the restlessness that means you’ve outgrown your frame — a physiotherapist good at his job and quietly stuck; one about getting recognised without bragging — a librarian who thought letting her value be seen meant selling herself; one about a clear vision transforming expertise into motivated abilities — a systems architect who felt hollow until the same skills pointed at a community clinic; one about why self-coaching is becoming essential — a man asking what he’s becoming useful for now; one about the space between the doing — a first postcard from Regent’s Canal; and one about what work reveals in us. One Story Lesson — How Vision and Motivated Abilities Brought His Two Selves Together. One resource in Professional Self-Coaching — Stand Firm Under Pressure.

How Do I Get Recognised at Work Without Bragging?

Rosa was a librarian, and had been one for nearly forty years — the reason a great many people in her town had become readers at all. She was the one who put exactly the right book into exactly the right hands: the quiet child handed the story that opened a whole new world, the retired man given the title that turned a passing curiosity into a passion. She had a real gift. And in forty years she’d never once described it as one. Now a role had opened where her understanding of what a library truly gives could help protect it — and she had no intention of putting herself forward. Because to do that, she felt, she’d have to sell herself. She was about to learn she’d had that wrong all along.

Introducing Stand Firm Under Pressure

A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Stand Firm Under Pressure. There’s a particular kind of pressure that doesn’t come from the work being too hard — it comes from everything around you telling you the way you work is wrong. Too careful, too slow, too much. Sometimes from people, sometimes from the situation itself. This resource takes you from recognising the trait you’re being pressured to suppress to standing firm in it — naming it truly, seeing what it prevents, articulating its value before a crisis proves it, and holding steady as leadership rather than stubbornness. Because the trait a culture pressures you to suppress is often the very thing it most needs.

Why Self-Coaching Is Becoming an Essential WorkLife Skill

Archie had spent much of his working life adapting to change. But when his organisation began changing around him, this time there was no obvious next step. His role wasn’t disappearing. It was becoming less clearly defined — and his manager invited him to help shape what came next. What followed is a story about self-coaching, recognising how our value evolves and learning to navigate when the next step isn’t mapped out for us.

I’m Good at My Job — So Why Do I Feel Stuck?

Tassos was a physiotherapist in a busy private clinic, and doing well in his job. His patients recovered, his diary was full, his reviews were strong. He should have been happy — he’d trained hard for this, wanted it badly, got it. And three years in, he felt a restlessness he couldn’t explain and was almost ashamed of. What did he have to complain about? He’d started to wonder whether he’d chosen the wrong career, whether the stuck feeling meant physiotherapy wasn’t for him. The thing he couldn’t see was that he wasn’t in the wrong job — he was doing the right one in a frame that left out the part he cared about most.

Introducing How Vision and Motivated Abilities Brought His Two Selves Together

Introducing How Vision and Motivated Abilities Brought His Two Selves Together — telling Peter’s story — a corporate solicitor who has lived as two people for eighteen years, until a single afternoon reviewing an arts centre lease shows him his analytical and creative selves were never incompatible. The lesson follows him as he sees the split as a habit rather than a necessity, recognises the pattern of when he feels whole, and names the vision that gives both halves of him one purpose to serve — and shows how discovering the vision that unites your personal and professional identity can transform not just how you work, but how whole you feel doing it.

How a Clear Vision Transforms Expertise Into Motivated Abilities

The complete lesson follows Rod’s full journey — the documentation that separated the abilities that moved him from the ones that merely paid him, the months of sharpening his vision until it was specific enough to use as a compass, the lucrative platform he declined and the health network role he accepted two weeks later, and the moment a genuine obstacle in the community work felt energising rather than draining — and shows how naming your motivated abilities and clarifying the vision they serve can transform both the work you choose and the working life you build.