GET THE SEAT AT THE TABLE
Professional Self-Coaching for Strategic Influence
Tell the Three Stories That Turn Your Expertise Into a Voice People Listen To
Make Your Thinking Visible — So It Shapes the Decisions That Matter
Your work is good. Better than good — it prevents mistakes, it finds what others miss, and people rely on it. And yet, when the strategic conversation happens, you are the person who provides the input rather than the person who shapes the decision.
Nothing about your expertise needs fixing. What is missing is that nobody can see how you think — and thinking, unlike output, is what a room asks for when it needs a decision.
Expertise becomes influential not simply when it is correct — but when others can understand the thinking, the learning, and the purpose behind it. When people can see the patterns you see, your expertise becomes part of the conversation that shapes decisions. This resource takes you, step by step, from your experience to three prepared professional stories that make your thinking visible — and shows you where to position them so that they change what gets decided.
Get the Seat at the Table distils more than twenty years of professional coaching, writing and practice into a structured method that enables you to coach yourself through one important professional challenge. It captures the thinking, the sequence, the questions and the frameworks a coach would bring to hours of one-to-one work — and places them in your hands, to work through in your own space and time.
Who This Is For
Someone whose expertise is respected and whose judgement is rarely asked for. The analyst whose numbers are used but whose interpretation is never invited. The engineer, the researcher, the specialist, the technical lead — anyone who has watched a strategic decision go the wrong way while holding the information that would have changed it, and said nothing, because they didn't know how. Everything in it is designed to be completed by you, in your own space and time. All you need is somewhere to write — paper or screen, whichever is your preferred way of working.
What You'll Learn
- Why expertise stays invisible when it is shared as information rather than as thinking
- How to identify the failure, success and passion stories within your own work — and dig past your first answer to the insight underneath
- How to translate technical insight into a story that a non-specialist can act on
- How to connect your three stories into one complete picture of how you think, what you've learnt and what drives your work
- Where to position your stories so they arrive at the moment a decision is being made, rather than after it
- How to use the same framework to make other people's thinking visible — which is what strategic influence ultimately is
How This Self-Coaching Resource Works
Get the Seat at the Table is built in three parts, nine steps.
Part One — Identify Your Three Stories
- Step 1 — Identify Your Failure Story
- Step 2 — Identify Your Success Story
- Step 3 — Identify Your Passion Story
Part Two — Translate Expertise Into Story
- Step 4 — Turn Your Insight Into a Story Others Can Use
- Step 5 — Connect Your Three Stories
- Step 6 — Find the Moment to Speak
Part Three — Turn Voice Into Influence
- Step 7 — Adapt Your Stories to the Rooms You're In
- Step 8 — Make Other People's Thinking Visible
- Step 9 — Hold the Seat
Every step asks the questions that bring clarity, and every step ends in writing — that's what self-coaching means here: you find your own answers, and the work is yours. By the final page you will have three completed professional stories that didn't exist before you began — and a clear sense of where and when to use them.
Throughout, you'll follow David, a data analyst in a digital marketing agency who spent two years being excellent and invisible. His insights prevented costly mistakes and found opportunities that won significant business. They also lived in spreadsheets that people referenced and never really discussed — while the account managers and creative directors shaped every strategic conversation around him. Everything changed in a single meeting, when he stopped reporting his numbers and told a story about what he had found. The room turned toward him — something that rarely happened during strategy discussions. Eight months later he was Strategic Data Director, in a role that had not previously existed. At each step, you'll see how David worked through it before you work through it yourself.
Why These Three Stories
When people cannot see how you think, they can only use what you produce. That is the whole of it — and it is why excellent professionals spend years being consulted and never being heard.
Three stories change what people can see:
Your Failure Story reveals what shaped how you work — the learning behind your judgement.
Your Success Story demonstrates your distinctive perspective — what you see that others walk past, and what it made possible.
Your Passion Story communicates what drives your work — why it matters to you beyond the task.
Any one of these alone is a partial picture. Together, they show how you think, what you've learnt, and why your work matters — and thinking, unlike information, cannot be filed. It has to be reckoned with.
What You Finish With
- Three completed professional stories — failure, success and passion — each built to translate your expertise into something a non-specialist can act on
- One connected picture — the links between your three stories, so they land as one view of your professional judgement rather than three anecdotes
- The insight line for each story — the single sentence that carries your thinking and can be repeated by someone else in a room you're not in
- A map of the moments — where in a meeting, a project or a decision your stories belong, and how to enter without waiting to be invited
- The reflect-back — how to give other people their own three stories, which is the most powerful move in this entire resource
- Your Influence Page — a single page to review before any meeting where something important is being decided
About Professional Self-Coaching
Self-coaching is the ability to guide yourself through every part of your WorkLife journey — through stable times and times of change and uncertainty. It is asking yourself the questions that bring clarity, finding your own answers, and acting on what you learn.
Each Professional Self-Coaching resource is created for one important professional moment. One purpose. One challenge. One outcome. The thinking, frameworks and practical guidance within each resource are distilled from the School of WorkLife programmes — a body of work developed through twenty years of practice — and focused entirely on helping you prepare for the moment in front of you. Every resource strengthens the three abilities at the heart of School of WorkLife: self-coaching, self-directing and self-leadership.
Get the Seat at the Table is drawn from The Art of WorkLife Storytelling: Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity — the complete programme exploring how the stories we tell shape the way we communicate who we are at work: our values, our thinking, our experiences, and what we stand for.
About School of WorkLife
School of WorkLife creates story-based learning resources that help people think more clearly about the challenges, conversations, and decisions that shape a working life.
Each story is drawn from real WorkLife situations and developed into practical learning experiences that combine narrative, reflection, and structured application.
Author's Note
The stories I write are based on real WorkLife challenges, obstacles and successes. Persons and companies portrayed in the stories are not based on real people or entities. Carmel O' Reilly. www.schoolofworklife.com