GET THE STRATEGIC INFLUENCE
Professional Self-Coaching for Being Valued as a Strategic Mind, Not Only a Technical One
Tell the Three Stories That Reveal the Purpose Behind Your Expertise — So People See the Strategic Thinking Driving It
Share Why You See What You See — So Your Insight Enters the Conversations That Shape Decisions
You are good at what you do, and people know it. Your expertise is respected, your work is trusted, your results hold up. And still, something is missing: you are valued for the wrong part of what you offer. People see the technical service — the analysis, the delivery, the competent result — and treat it as operational. Meanwhile you can see patterns and possibilities that could reshape how they think about their whole situation, and those insights rarely reach the table.
The gap is not that you lack a voice. You are in the room, and you are heard. The gap is that people don't see the strategic thinking behind your expertise — so they bring you the operational problem and never the strategic one. What they're missing is the why: the purpose that shapes how you see, the reason you notice opportunity where others see cost or constraint. When people understand that, they stop seeing a technical service and start seeing a strategic mind. This resource takes you, step by step, from your experience to three prepared professional stories that reveal the purpose behind your expertise — so your insight enters the conversations where the real decisions are made.
Get the Strategic Influence 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
Anyone whose expertise is respected and somehow contained — valued for the technical work while the strategic insight stays unspoken. The consultant hired to solve the operational problem, who can see the strategic one. The specialist whose deep knowledge is treated as a service to be delivered rather than a perspective to be consulted. The adviser who is trusted with the task and never invited into the bigger conversation. If you have ever sat in a meeting knowing you could see something that would reshape the whole discussion, and watched it stay unsaid, this is for you. 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. You finish able to reveal the purpose behind your expertise, so people value your thinking, not only your output.
What You'll Learn
- Why technical excellence alone keeps you positioned as operational, while the purpose behind it is what makes you strategic
- How to recognise the passion, success and failure stories within your own experience — and dig past your first answer to the insight underneath
- The difference between delivering your expertise and revealing the purpose that shapes it — and why the second is what changes how you're valued
- How your three stories combine into one picture of what drives you, what becomes possible when you share it, and what its absence has cost
- How the same three questions help a client see the strategic opportunity inside what they thought was an operational problem
- Why the signals of strategic engagement and operational containment are quiet, and what to watch for
How This Self-Coaching Resource Works
Get the Strategic Influence is built in three parts, nine steps.
Part One — Recognise Your Three Stories
- Step 1 — Recognise Your Passion Story
- Step 2 — Recognise Your Success Story
- Step 3 — Recognise Your Failure Story
Part Two — Turn Your Stories Into Strategic Influence
- Step 4 — Lead With the Purpose, Not the Credentials
- Step 5 — Connect Your Three Stories
- Step 6 — Put Your Lens on Their Whole Problem
Part Three — Turn It Outward
- Step 7 — Draw Out the Opportunity Inside the Problem
- Step 8 — Reflect the Three Back as One Picture
- Step 9 — Draw It Out in the People Around You
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 — ready to use wherever your expertise needs to be seen as strategic.
Throughout, you'll follow Rachel, an independent sustainability consultant who spent four years being called in to handle environmental compliance efficiently. Her clients respected her expertise and treated it as an operational cost — while the strategic insight she carried, about how sustainability could reshape a whole business, rarely entered the conversation. Everything changed the day a CEO, at the end of a routine quarterly review, asked her a question she hadn't prepared for: what had made her passionate about this work in the first place. What Rachel discovered wasn't a presentation technique. It was a repeatable way of working: revealing the purpose behind her expertise, so clients stopped seeing a compliance service and started seeing a strategic partner. That method is what follows. At each step, you'll see how Rachel worked through it before you work through it yourself.
Why These Three Stories
Three stories give people the complete picture:
- Your Passion Story reveals why you see what you see — the purpose that makes your perspective distinctive.
- Your Success Story shows what becomes possible when you share that purpose instead of only your expertise.
- Your Failure Story reveals what you've learnt — that expertise delivered without its purpose stays unseen as strategy.
Any one alone is a partial picture. Together, they reveal what a technical report never can: not just what you know, but why you see it the way you do, what that makes possible, and what it costs when it stays hidden. That combination is what turns respected expertise into strategic influence.
What You Finish With
- Three completed professional stories — passion, success and failure — each carrying the experience that shaped how you see
- Your connected three stories — the professional identity that runs through all of them: what drives you, what it makes possible, and what its absence has cost
- Your judgement about the moment — knowing when the technical answer serves the client, and when the room needs the strategic perspective behind it
- The move of putting your lens on their whole problem — bringing your perspective to a client's wider strategy when they consult you, rather than retreating to the expertise you were hired for
- The three questions that draw out the strategic opportunity in a client's problem, and draw out the people around you
- Your Strategic Influence Page — a single page to carry into the conversations where your expertise needs to shape decisions, not just deliver results
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 Strategic Influence 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