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
Introducing Discover Your True Direction
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Discover Your True Direction. There may be a part of your working life you've quietly labelled as not the real thing — the side project, the volunteering, the work you do simply because you love it. And it's possible that's exactly where the most authentic part of you comes alive. This resource takes you from recognising where your traits come most alive, to seeing they're one set of capabilities across all your worlds, to designing a true direction that honours the whole of who you are — and helping others recognise where their own dismissed traits belong.
How Do I Speak Up in Meetings Without Feeling Like I’m Interrupting?
Tomasz was the person who usually knew — the engineer who understood the system more deeply than anyone, where it was fragile, what would break. In meetings, he said almost nothing. He'd watch a decision move toward a choice he knew was wrong, feel the words build up, and not say them — because to speak, he'd have to cut across someone, and there was never a clean gap. He'd fixed more bad decisions at his desk, after the fact, than he'd ever prevented in the room. Then he watched a quiet colleague do the one thing he never could — and understood how a person like him ends up at the table where the decisions are made, instead of at the desk where they get fixed afterwards.
Creating My Next WorkLife Chapter
I’m exploring what else my work could become and where it could go. This week, that has meant creating student project opportunities, approaching publications with my writing and thinking, and exploring how professional self-coaching could reach people through organisations.
How Could Story Structure Enhance Experiences?
How could story structure enhance experiences? In this episode of The WorkLife Question, I sit with Annie and the question — exploring what the five-layer framework created for herself, for her learners, for her fellow trainers and for the organisation. And why story structure doesn't just improve content. It creates a different kind of experience entirely.
Could Self-Coaching Change Professional Development?
Imani's organisation took professional development seriously. There were programmes, workshops, resources and regular development conversations. But when her manager asked what she wanted to work on, Imani's answers — leadership, confidence, strategic thinking — didn't tell her very much about what she actually needed. Then a moment in a meeting prompted a different question: What is my working life trying to teach me? What followed is a story about self-coaching, professional development and what changes when we become active participants in directing our own learning.
Introducing How a Clear Vision Transforms Expertise Into Motivated Abilities
Introducing How a Clear Vision Transforms Expertise Into Motivated Abilities — telling Rod’s story — a senior systems architect who believes his expertise is neutral — until the same skills, pointed at a community clinic rather than a trading platform, feel like entirely different work. The lesson follows him as he separates the abilities that genuinely move him from the ones that merely occupy him, clarifies a vision specific enough to decide by, and brings the two into one direction — and shows how the expertise you already have can come alive in service of a vision that's truly yours.
How Do I Get People to Listen to My Ideas at Work?
Sam was a UX researcher, and very good at finding out what was actually true. His research was a direct line to how the product really worked — exactly what the strategy meetings needed. In practice, he watched the glaze: the polite nods, the eyes going unfocused, the "thanks, Sam, really useful," and the room deciding what it had been going to decide anyway. He'd started to wonder if he was just bad at presenting. Then he watched a colleague present the same kind of finding — and the room leaned in.
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.
Can You Coach Yourself Into Better Professional Relationships?
Brendan was thirty-three, a research scientist, and had just been made responsible for something he'd never done: partnerships, licensing, rooms full of people from the business side. He'd been to three events. At each one he'd explained his work with total accuracy and watched faces politely close. So he found a coach — a good one, expensive, booked solid for three months. She rang him anyway — she had no space for him, and asked what the problem was regardless — and told him what she would actually do in those sessions. He put the phone down and went to find a notebook.