The complete lesson follows Daphne’s full journey — including the pattern she recognised when she looked back at three earlier moments she’d suppressed her different lens, the moment she became a champion for someone else whose unconventional background was being dismissed, and what she finally understood about the origin story that had been developing through every experience she’d been taught to set aside — and shows how you can use the same process to recognise what your own unconventional background has been revealing all along.
Category Archives: The Art of WorkLife Storytelling
How Do I Get People to Really Listen to Me?
Kojo was in his third year of teaching science, and better at it than his Thursday afternoons suggested. He knew his subject properly, he’d worked in a lab before he trained, and he could explain a concept three different ways until one of them fitted. When he was observed, the feedback was good. And in front of him was a room of fifteen-year-olds who were perfectly pleasant and entirely elsewhere — copying what he wrote, answering when asked, and forgetting all of it. The same misconception would reappear a fortnight after he’d spent twenty minutes taking it apart. Until a Friday when he was too tired to teach the lesson properly, and told it backwards instead. What happened in that room showed him what makes people lean in rather than sit politely.
How do I get people to really listen to me? Clear explanation isn’t enough on its own. Kojo’s story shows what makes people lean in rather than sit politely
Why Professional Development Needs Stories.
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.
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.