WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Character-Driven WorkLife Stories That Shift How You ThinkShort, character-driven stories about real WorkLife challenges — how we communicate, lead, make decisions, and navigate what happens at work.Each story shows a moment where something shifts: a conversation changes, an idea lands, a different approach opens up. Working examples you can recognise and use — designed to be useful immediately.The stories explore five themes, each a different lens on the same essential question: How do we create WorkLives that matter?Self-Discovery — understanding what truly matters to you. Book Club Books — learning from the wisdom found in great books. The Art of WorkLife Storytelling...
Self-Coaching Through Speaking
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Self-Coaching Through Speaking
In this episode, Philip has worked out what he wants his work to be and developed his thinking through writing. When he is asked to speak at a conference, he discovers that speaking does more than communicate what he already knows.
He begins with a question: What are we asking people to do with what we are teaching them?
The questions that follow make him clarify his th...
How Do I Turn One Project Into a Relationship?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Do I Turn One Project Into a Relationship?
How do I turn one project into a relationship is the question for anyone whose work is admired, whose projects close cleanly, and who keeps finding the next client from scratch — and the answer isn't to deliver better. A client brings you what they know you for, and they know you only for what they've seen. Show them only your finished work, and that becomes the whole of what th...
Introducing How the Values Integration Challenge Redefines Professional Success
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How the Values Integration Challenge Redefines Professional Success
Redefining professional success rarely begins with a failure. It often begins in a meeting where every number is improving.
Diego had spent seven years working his way up to operations manager at a city hospital, and every indicator on his dashboard was improving. This is the story of the question that began to change how he understood his work, and what the numbers were leaving o...
How a Management Book Develops Coaching Capacity and Transforms Leadership
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How a Management Book Develops Coaching Capacity and Transforms Leadership
How a management book develops coaching capacity and transforms leadership is rarely what mentors expect — but for many, it becomes the insight that changes everything about what they understand genuine helpfulness to actually require.
Amara had always been known as a responsive leader. She was mentoring well. But when she noticed her mentees were becoming more dependent rather than more capable as their mentoring rel...
Can I Coach Myself Into Being Understood?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Can I Coach Myself Into Being Understood?
Can I coach myself into being understood is the question that connects everything at School of WorkLife — and the answer is yes. Self-coaching is asking yourself the questions that bring clarity, finding your own answers, and acting on what you learn. The reason your expertise isn't landing is something you can work out for yourself.
Bruno spent three years producing reports that were thanked for and changed nothing. This is...
Professional Development: What Is Self-Discovery?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Professional Development: What Is Self-Discovery?
Albert, head of operations at a regional water company in the north of England, had spent years building his career, developing his expertise and taking on responsibilities that others trusted him to handle.
Yet when his director, Martin, asked what he wanted from his working life now, he realised that he had been making decisions without always considering what mattered most to him.
...
Introducing Know What You Stand For
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Introducing Know What You Stand For
Introducing Know What You Stand For — a new Professional Self-Coaching resource from School of WorkLife, created for aligning your work with what you value most.
You already have work that succeeds. And still, a clean result can leave something quietly unaddressed — a flatness beneath a success that should have felt complete. When your work is going well by every usual measure, it can b...
How Do I Get Clients to See How I Think?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Do I Get Clients to See How I Think?
How do I get clients to see how I think is the question for anyone whose thinking is their real value, and who has never let a client see it — and the answer isn't to produce better answers. A clean answer shows the output, and output is what a technician produces. Show a client only your finished results, and that's what they'll value, and the narrow tasks are al...
Postcards from Exploring WorkLife: People Who Give Forward
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THE STORY LESSON
How a Values Conflict Changes Your Professional Direction — A Story About Recognising When Success Contradicts Your Core Beliefs
Explore → How a Values Conflict Changes Your Professional Direction
THE SELF-COACHING RESOURCE
Know What You Stand For — Professional Self-Coaching for Aligning Your Work with What You Value Most
Explore → Know What You Stand For — Professional Self-Coaching for Aligning Your Work with What You Value Most.
Work With Me: In...
Seven Months to My Next WorkLife Chapter
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Eight Months to My Next WorkLife Chapter
Two months into my nine-month experiment, my writing has taken me forward and back.
My first piece has been published in Employee Experience Magazine, a story about a manager learning to coach himself through one insightful question. I’ve also returned to self-discovery, the first body of work I developed, in the first story of a new trilogy.
In other ways, I’...
Self-Coaching Through Writing
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Self-Coaching Through Writing
Philip had made a decision about his working life. Now he had to work out what he actually meant by wanting to stay close to the work, create, write and develop ideas.
He opened a blank document and began writing.
What started as an attempt to work out what he wanted became a way of seeing his own thinking more clearly. He noticed the language he had learned to u...
My Work Is Good. So Why Am I Replaceable?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: My Work Is Good. So Why Am I Replaceable?
My work is good, so why am I replaceable is the question for anyone whose work is strong, whose clients are satisfied, and who still feels interchangeable — and the answer isn't to be more polished. Good work, on its own, is the most replaceable thing there is. Everyone at your level can produce a clean result, so it's the one thing you all have in common. What can't be sw...
Introducing How a Values Conflict Changes Your Professional Direction
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How a Values Conflict Changes Your Professional Direction
Recognising when success contradicts your core beliefs rarely begins with a crisis. It often begins in a meeting where everything being said is technically sound.
Janis had spent six years building towards partnership. Then a high-profile case arrived that could secure it, and he felt sick. This is the story of the meeting where one direct question could not be answered by technical skill al...
How Vision Turns Your Motivated Abilities Into Authentic Leadership
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Vision Turns Your Motivated Abilities Into Authentic Leadership
How Vision Turns Your Motivated Abilities Into Authentic Leadership — a Self-Discovery Story Lesson from School of WorkLife, exploring a real WorkLife moment where a long-held assumption is quietly challenged.
Mel had just been promoted to director of operations. Fresh from a leadership programme full of models and frameworks, he felt lost — unsure which leadership style to adopt, and certain none of them felt like him. Then a week...
Why Does My Expertise Feel Wasted?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Why Does My Expertise Feel Wasted?
Why does my expertise feel wasted is the question for anyone whose work is genuinely good and never quite reaches the room where things are decided — and the answer isn't more rigour. A finding can be filed. Judgement has to be brought into a conversation. A document enters a process as a fixed object: it can't respond, ask a question, or notice the discussion has moved somewhere it doesn't cover.
Sh...
Professional Development: The Best Thing I Learned Wasn’t on the Course
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Professional Development: The Best Thing I Learned Wasn’t on the Course
Raymond had completed plenty of training over the years.
But when a meeting room became increasingly difficult for people to use, there was no obvious fault to find and no procedure that told him exactly what to do.
So he started asking questions, listening to the people who used the room and observing what was actually ha...
Introducing Build What You Believe In
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Introducing Build What You Believe In
Introducing Build What You Believe In — a new Professional Self-Coaching resource from School of WorkLife, created for designing work that reflects what you value.
You already have work that holds up. And still, technically flawless work can leave something unaddressed — a gap between what you build and who it's actually for. When your work is going well by every usual measure, it can be easy to leav...
How Do I Get My Team to Care the Way I Do?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How Do I Get My Team to Care the Way I Do?
How do I get my team to care the way I do is the question for anyone established enough that their people meet their authority long before they meet the person behind it — and the answer isn't to raise the stakes or restate the mission. People can't share a purpose you've never shown them. After years of leading through position and expertise, your team kno...
12 Rooms of a WorkLife Room 2 Finding My People
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Show Notes
WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: 12 Rooms of a WorkLife: Room 2 Finding My People
For a long time, I've avoided networking. Two very different events run by the London Irish Business Society made me think differently about networking, belonging and what it means to find your people.
This episode explores the importance of connection and community alongside a WorkLife that also gives me space for solitude.
Maybe I just hadn't been in the right...
Self-Coaching Through Reading
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Self-Coaching Through Reading
Self-Coaching Through Reading explores what can happen when someone else’s story gives you a different way to look at your own working life.
Philip has three weeks to decide whether to take a regional role — a bigger team, a bigger budget and more influence. He has spent years working towards opportunities like this. So why doesn't he want it?
Reading John Williams's Stoner doesn't give Philip an answer. Inste...
Introducing How Professional Impact Deepens When Values and Expertise Converge
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How Professional Impact Deepens When Values and Expertise Converge
Deepening your professional impact rarely begins with a career change. It often begins with a question that interrupts a presentation and can't be taken back.
Ashley had spent eight years building exactly the career she'd been working towards. Then, in the middle of a retirement planning meeting, a client asked what kind of world her investments were creating for their grandchildren...
How Do I Get My Team to Take Ownership?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How Do I Get My Team to Take Ownership?
How do I get my team to take ownership is the question for anyone whose team does the work well and never quite makes it their own — and the answer isn't to be more on top of it. When you catch every problem yourself, your team stops catching them: not because they can't, but because there's no need and no room. The more vigilant you are, the...
How Treating Yourself With Kindness Restores the Happiness That Self-Criticism Takes Away
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Treating Yourself With Kindness Restores the Happiness That Self-Criticism Takes Away
Learning how treating yourself with kindness restores the happiness that self-criticism takes away begins with recognising that the inner critic telling you to be harder on yourself isn't protecting your standards — it is quietly removing the joy that makes your standards worth having.
Keiko had built her restaurant on precision, creativity, and an unwavering commitment to excellence. Her reputation was well earned. But the inn...
How Do I Become More Than a Service to My Clients?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Do I Become More Than a Service to My Clients?
How do I become more than a service to my clients is the question for anyone whose work is respected, used, and never quite becomes a relationship — and the answer isn't to do the work better. Finished work shows nothing of the thinking that produced it, so clients ask for the only thing they've ever seen you do. That isn't dismissal. It's reasonable.
Tui spent fi...
Professional Development: I Thought It Meant Moving Forward
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Professional Development: I Thought It Meant Moving Forward
Briony thought professional development meant finding the next thing to learn.
When she asked to attend a course, her manager asked her to consider what she had already learned through the projects she had worked on.
Looking back, Briony began to recognise the judgement, listening, confidence and awareness she had developed through experience.
Our working lives can teach...
Introducing Let Your Values Lead
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Introducing Let Your Values Lead
Introducing Let Your Values Lead — a new Professional Self-Coaching resource from School of WorkLife, created for moving from success to significance by letting your expertise be guided by what you value.
You already have expertise that works. And still, an achievement can arrive and leave something quietly unaddressed — a weight beneath a success that should have felt complete. When your work is going well, it can be easy to explain that weight away, and...
How Do I Get My Team to Speak Up?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How Do I Get My Team to Speak Up?
How do I get my team to speak up is the question for anyone newly in charge of a team that does everything right and offers nothing of its own — and the answer isn't to run a tighter ship. A team that only hears your instructions knows what you want, not what you're for. Show them the standard and nothing underneath it, and meeting it is all they can...
What Happens When Retirement Isn't Enough?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: What Happens When Retirement Isn't Enough?
Eric retired at sixty-three after thirty-five years as a teacher and headteacher.
For a while, retirement gave him exactly what he thought he wanted. But gradually, he began to miss something he hadn't expected: being useful, contributing and being part of something.
He didn't want his old job back. He began to wonder whether he could find a different way to use...
Can Self-Coaching Help Us See What We Already Know?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Can Self-Coaching Help Us See What We Already Know?
Can self-coaching help us see what we already know? That is the question I found myself asking when an editor's response to a pitch prompted me to look back at years of writing, thinking and developing my own body of WorkLife thought.
I had spent years developing my own body of WorkLife thought — writing books, creating story-based resources and developing practical approaches to self-coaching, self-directing and...
How Asking What Makes You Happy Transforms Professional Decisions When Answers Conflict
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Asking What Makes You Happy Transforms Professional Decisions When Answers Conflict
Discovering how to navigate conflicting happiness rarely happens through clarity — it often begins with an answer that should feel simple, and doesn't.
Ivan had spent twelve years building exactly the career he believed in. Seven days after an email arrived offering him everything he'd once said he wanted, he still couldn't say yes. This is the story of the week a...
How Do I Get My Team to Start Thinking With Me?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How Do I Get My Team to Start Thinking With Me?
How do I get my team to start thinking with me is the question for anyone whose team follows them faultlessly and never arrives alongside them — and the answer isn't to lead more expertly. Certainty in a leader teaches a team to wait for it. Show them only the confident, settled decision, and that is all they will ever carry out. That isn't reluctance. It's a sen...
How to Recognise Heritage Preservation as a Character Trait to Lead Change That Lasts
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How to Recognise Heritage Preservation as a Character Trait to Lead Change That Lasts
Learning how to recognise heritage preservation as a character trait to lead change that lasts begins with seeing what feels so natural you've never thought to call it a strength.
Eleanor had been head of archives and special collections at a regional museum for eight years, quietly dismissed for the one thing she understood more clearly than anyone around her: that change...
Can I Coach Myself Into Being Seen?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Can I Coach Myself Into Being Seen?
Can I coach myself into being seen is the question that connects everything at School of WorkLife — and the answer is yes. Being seen starts with seeing yourself clearly, and that's a skill you can learn to turn on your own work, without waiting for anyone else to do it for you. You ask yourself the questions that reveal your value, find your own answers, and act on what you learn.
...Professional Development: What Do Our Stories Tell Us About Who We Are Becoming?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Professional Development: What Do Our Stories Tell Us About Who We Are Becoming?
Anthony had told the same working-life story many times.
He had always thought it was a story about leadership.
But when he looked at it again, he began to see something different — a story about how his understanding of leadership had changed and how an experience had shaped the professional he was becoming.
Ou...
Introducing Focus Your Strengths Where They Matter
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: Introducing Focus Your Strengths Where They Matter
Introducing Focus Your Strengths Where They Matter — a new Professional Self-Coaching resource from School of WorkLife, created for doing your best work through your natural character traits.
There's a particular kind of tiredness that doesn't come from having too much work. It comes from everything you produce sitting at good rather than great, however hard you push. It isn't a problem of capacity or workload — it's how you're deploying the...
How Do I Pass On What I Know?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Do I Pass On What I Know?
How do I pass on what I know is the question for anyone with hard-won experience that keeps arriving as instructions — and the answer isn't a clearer summary. When you've done something for a long time, the road you took disappears and only the conclusion remains, so the conclusion is what you hand over. It's true, and it arrives with nothing underneath it.
Miriam had thirty-eight years as a...
How Do I Build a WorkLife in Which I Get to Keep Doing the Work I Love and Make It Financially Sustainable?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: How Do I Build a WorkLife in Which I Get to Keep Doing the Work I Love and Make It Financially Sustainable?
I love my work. The question I'm exploring now is how to make it financially sustainable for my next WorkLife chapter, while creating the freedom to work and live differently.
I'm exploring different possibilities - work I create for others, the evergreen work I've already created and continue...
Self-Coaching A Practice for Everyday Working Life
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Self-Coaching: A Practice for Everyday Working Life
Otto enjoys his role, has a good relationship with his manager, likes the people he works with and finds the work interesting.
But one Friday afternoon, Otto becomes curious about something.
He spends a great deal of time doing his work.
How much time does he spend learning from the experience of doing it?
Otto begins paying closer attention to his...
Introducing How Vision and Motivated Abilities Unite Your Multiple Interests
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Vision and Motivated Abilities Unite Your Multiple Interests
How Vision and Motivated Abilities Unite Your Multiple Interests — a Self-Discovery Story Lesson from School of WorkLife, exploring a real WorkLife moment where a long-held assumption is quietly challenged.
Kevin is an accountant, filmmaker, theatre director, photographer and facilitator who has been told for twenty years that he has too many interests. Then a weekend helping a social enterprise with both their finances and their film shows hi...
How Do I Turn a Client Into a Partner?
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Do I Turn a Client Into a Partner?
How do I turn a client into a partner is the question for anyone whose work is excellent, commissioned piece by piece, and never quite becomes a relationship — and the answer isn't a better portfolio. Showing your work puts the client in the position of assessing you against alternatives. That is the position of a buyer, and buyers compare.
Hayato spent twenty years being very good at be...
