The best work I do doesn't always happen at the laptop. It happens in the space between the doing — walking, stopping, letting my mind go where it wants. A first postcard on the moments of solitude and reflection I protect, and where I want my WorkLife to go next.
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.
Can You Coach Yourself Into Being Heard at Work?
Donovan was thirty-four, a developer, and the kind of essential that goes unnoticed. The team depended on him; few of them knew how much. In the meetings that set the direction, he might as well have been furniture. At his review, his manager offered the feedback warmly — "you need more presence, speak up more, be more visible" — and Donovan couldn't do a thing with it. "Be more visible" wasn't a step you could take; it was a result with the actual work missing from the middle. So he took it home and did to it what he'd do to any badly written spec. He sat down at his kitchen table and started breaking it down — and in doing it, he discovered self-coaching: asking yourself the questions that bring clarity, finding your own answers, and acting on what you learn.
WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Issue Eight
This week: Seven stories: one about getting a seat at the table — a compliance lead whose reports were trusted absolutely but who was never asked what she thought; one about getting the recognition — a chef de partie who'd outgrown his title; one about making your contribution visible — a service designer whose work showed up on no one's dashboard; one about a physiotherapist who mistook unlimited availability for dedication; one about a self-coach who could help everyone but herself; one about a live online class that didn't go to plan, and what it revealed about the conditions this work needs; and one about the difference between having an experience and learning from it. One Story Lesson — How Vision and Motivated Abilities Helped Overcome Impostor Syndrome. One resource in Professional Self-Coaching — Shape the Culture Around You.
Professional Development: What Happens When Experience Becomes Learning?
Professional Development: What Happens When Experience Becomes Learning? Kim discovers that experience doesn't automatically become learning. Something changes when we pay attention to what it teaches us.
Introducing Shape the Culture Around You
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Shape the Culture Around You. Some of the most valuable work in any organisation never appears on anyone's objectives — noticing who's left out, connecting the right people, creating the conditions in which collaboration grows. It's easy to dismiss as merely being helpful. This resource takes you from recognising the instinct you've been dismissing to shaping the culture around you with it — naming the character traits beneath it, learning to create the conditions for connection rather than forcing it, making the value of your work recognised, and helping others recognise the same strengths in themselves.
How Do I Show My Value at Work?
Yuuki was a service designer — the person whose fingerprints were on everything and visible on nothing. His job was to design how a whole service held together: the path a customer travelled, the places it flowed and the places it caught, the way work owned by five different teams was supposed to add up to one seamless experience. When he did it well, it disappeared — a service that works is one you never notice. In a company that measured contribution in deliverables, his work was the connective tissue between all of it, and connective tissue shows up on no one's dashboard. He'd started to wonder whether the absence of anything to point at meant there was less there than he'd thought. He was wrong — he'd just been measuring his value by the wrong yardstick.