Levi trusted frameworks, not stories. His competency models could show anyone, precisely, what growth looked like — until he was asked to develop Katherine, and the page that had never failed him did nothing at all. What unlocked her wasn’t a clearer framework. It was a story. And what Levi learned next surprised him more: the same person needs different things at different moments — sometimes a story to break through, sometimes the framework to build on — and the whole art is reading which the moment is asking for. Professional Development Through Our Stories — why the framework tells us what development looks like, and the story tells us what it means.
Category Archives: The Art of WorkLife Storytelling
What Is WorkLife Storytelling?
Niamh has plenty of stories from her working life — stories of success, failure, passion and moments that made people laugh. But when a colleague asks, “What’s the story of your working life?”, she begins to realise that the anecdotes she tells so easily may be only the beginning. What lies beneath them demonstrates Professional Development Through Our Stories — How experience becomes meaning, learning and identity
How Leaving Security Behind Reveals Your Origin Story
The complete lesson follows Jed’s full journey — including the case that finally proved what his legal skills were for, the pattern he recognised when he looked back at three earlier moments he’d rationalised away, and the question he eventually learned to ask that no one had ever put to him — and shows how you can use the same process to recognise your own period of hardship as origin story material — and begin telling the story of your authentic professional purpose with the clarity that only sacrifice can provide.
Introducing Get the Strategic Influence
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Strategic Influence. Your expertise is respected — and still, people value the technical service and treat it as operational, while the strategic insight you carry rarely reaches the table. The gap isn’t that you lack a voice; 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 — so people stop treating you as a technical service and start treating you as a strategic mind.
Introducing Get the Thinking Across
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Thinking Across. You do good work, and your clients are satisfied — and still, 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. A finished result shows what you made, not how you made it. Get the Thinking Across takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that get the thinking behind your work across — so clients stop receiving your work and start thinking the problem through with you.
Introducing Get the Trust
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Trust. You lead well, and your team respects you — and still, 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. Respect is earned through effectiveness, and effectiveness keeps people at a distance. Get the Trust takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that let people see the thinking behind how you lead — so they stop waiting to be directed and start navigating the work with you.
What Is Self-Directing?
Everyone assumed Orla would apply for the permanent role. Her managing director said it in passing: “You’ll apply, obviously.” It took her four days to notice that one word was doing all the work — and one evening at the kitchen table to start asking whose answer it really was. Her story is about self-directing: knowing your values, motivations and priorities, and choosing a path that’s genuinely yours — even when you have to write it yourself.
Introducing Get the Partnership
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Partnership. You know your subject, and your expertise is taken — and still the work stays transactional. People accept what you tell them, but the real engagement never comes. When expertise fails to create partnership, the thinking itself is rarely the reason. It fails because the thinking arrives without the journey that produced it. Get the Partnership takes you from your expertise to three prepared professional stories that carry that journey — so people stop receiving your work and start building on it with you.
Introducing Get the Recognition
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Recognition. You are probably doing more than your job title describes — work that has quietly grown beyond the role it was written for, into something that has no name yet. And because it has no name, nobody sees it, including you. Get the Recognition takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that make your real value visible: first to yourself, then to the people around you, and finally in a way that lets you draw out the value in others.
Why “What Are the Best Books for Leaders?” Is the Wrong Question
Nadia had read the lists. The ten books every leader must read, the essential reading for every new manager. She’d read many of the books themselves — she could quote them. And she was still stuck, still unsure of herself as a leader. Then she asked a different question — and the same books began doing something they had never done before. Her story is about why “what are the best books for leaders?” is the wrong question, and about the question beneath it: the one that turns reading into becoming.