The Art of WorkLife Storytelling at Work
Helping People Turn What Happened Into Stories That Build Trust, Share Learning and Show What Their Work Means
Every working day holds stories worth telling, and the ones that matter most are often the ones you would rather not tell, until you tell them completely: what went wrong, what went right and why it mattered.
The Art of WorkLife Storytelling at Work begins with a question Cillian Walsh can’t answer.
A Story-Based Learning Resource: Cillian’s Story — From the Timeline to the Story
Cillian is a product lead at a company that builds the ticketing app for a regional rail operator. On a Tuesday morning, a major update went live, and for three hours at the height of the morning rush, thousands of passengers couldn’t buy a ticket. By lunchtime it was fixed. Three weeks from now, he will present what happened to the leadership team.
The obvious answer is a timeline and a list of fixes. He has written plenty of those before, and he knows how to make one look thorough.
What he hasn’t yet examined is the story underneath it: what each person on his team saw that morning, what was missed and why, what the team did well under pressure, and why any of it matters to the people the app was built for.
The Art of WorkLife Storytelling at Work follows Cillian through the three weeks before that review. Through a question from his grandmother, five versions of the same morning, a warning nobody heard and a director who wants more than a timeline, he discovers that the account he was expected to give and the story that needs telling are very different, and that the second one has far more to offer his organisation.
Blending storytelling with Reflection Points, Learning Questions, Self-Coaching Exercises and The Art of WorkLife Storytelling at Work Workbook, the resource guides each of your people through the same journey Cillian takes. It is designed for independent learning and for facilitator-supported group sessions, with a full Facilitator Guide and a Manager’s Guide that explores the same story from the other side of the table.
The Art of WorkLife Storytelling explores how to find, shape and share the stories that communicate who you are, what you have learned and why your work matters. Here, the craft of powerful beginnings, engaging middles and memorable endings comes together in three complete stories, a Failure Story, a Success Story and a Passion Story, and they are brought to one of the moments organisations know best: the review of what happened.
For Your Organisation
The Challenge
Your organisation holds reviews. Project reviews, lessons learned sessions, updates to the leadership team and the conversations that follow when something hasn’t gone to plan. They are one of the most valuable ways an organisation learns from its own experience, a chance to understand what happened and carry that understanding forward.
The review is only as rich as the story told in it. When something has gone wrong, people under pressure tend to reach for a timeline and a list of fixes. Each fact is accurate, and the account is thorough. Yet the people who were there each carry a different version of events, and the most important parts, the warning that went unheard, the choices made under pressure and the people the work is for, are left out.
When that happens, the learning stays with the few people who were in the room. Reviews become something to get through rather than something to learn from. The same lessons are learned again, at greater cost. And the story an organisation tells itself about its own work becomes thinner each time.
The Art of WorkLife Storytelling at Work helps each person find the real story beneath the timeline, shape it so others can hear it, and tell it completely: what went wrong, what went right and why it mattered. And it helps managers and leaders ask for that story, so that reviews become the start of learning that reaches everyone in the organisation, whatever their stage.
Who This Is For
People preparing a project review, a lessons learned session, an update to leadership or any moment when they need to explain what happened to people who weren’t there.
Perhaps they are capable and well prepared, and still find their account sounds defensive. Perhaps they have presented a thorough review and watched the room lose interest halfway through. Perhaps they know there is a better story to tell and can’t yet find the shape of it.
It is also for the managers and leaders who ask for those reviews, and for the learning and development teams who design the programmes around them.
What Your People Will Learn
- How to recognise when a timeline is hiding the story that needs telling
- How to gather different versions of the same events, and find what each one reveals
- How to find the story beneath the facts, including the parts nobody wants to tell
- How to write a powerful beginning that draws people in from the first line
- How to build an engaging middle that holds attention through tension, turning points and the people involved
- How to create a memorable ending that carries the learning forward
- How to tell the same story to different audiences, from the leadership team to colleagues and customers
- How to tell a Failure Story, a Success Story and a Passion Story completely, so that together they build trust rather than defend a position
What Your Managers Will Learn
- How to ask for the story behind a review, as well as the facts
- How to make it safe for people to tell the parts that went wrong
- How to listen for the voices that went unheard
- How to turn one team’s story into learning for the whole organisation
What’s Included
- Cillian’s complete story, told in three parts
- Reflection Points, Learning Questions and Self-Coaching Exercises at every stage
- The five School of WorkLife practices for sustaining your storytelling: Self-Awareness, Observation, Effective Self-Feedback, Insightful Self-Questions and Writing Your WorkLife Stories
- The Art of WorkLife Storytelling at Work Workbook, including the Story Gathering Sheet, the Beginnings, Middles and Endings Worksheet, the Audience Map and the Three Complete Stories Worksheet
- A Facilitator Guide with three 90-minute session plans, facilitator questions and guidance on feedback in the group
- A Manager’s Guide, exploring the story from the director’s side of the table
How This Resource Works
The Art of WorkLife Storytelling at Work is built in three parts and nine stages.
Part One — Discover the Stories Already Being Told
- Stage 1 — The Request
- Stage 2 — Five Versions of the Same Morning
- Stage 3 — The Story Beneath the Timeline
Part Two — Develop the Story
- Stage 4 — Powerful Beginnings
- Stage 5 — Engaging Middles
- Stage 6 — Memorable Endings
Part Three — Direct the Telling
- Stage 7 — Knowing Your Audience
- Stage 8 — The Rehearsal
- Stage 9 — The Telling
Each stage follows Cillian through a moment in his three weeks, then turns to the experience of each of your people with a Reflection Point, Learning Questions and a Self-Coaching Exercise, and closes with time to write. By the final stage, each of your people has gathered the different versions of a story from their own working life, shaped it with a powerful beginning, an engaging middle and a memorable ending, and told it completely as a Failure Story, a Success Story and a Passion Story.