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Narratives

Career Leadership Identity

The stories we tell about ourselves at work matter.

Some help us make sense of where we’ve been. Some shape how we lead. Some keep us in places we’ve outgrown. And some are repeated so often - by organisations, industries and ourselves - that we stop noticing they’re stories at all.

Narratives is where I write about the stories shaping our working lives - and what we might see when we look at them again.

Four instant photographs of Nicky Torode on the beach

01

Career Narratives

The stories we tell ourselves about our working lives.

  • “I should be further ahead by now.”
  • “It’s too late to change.”
  • “I don’t know what else I could do.”
  • “My career doesn’t make sense.”

Redundancy, career change, promotion, returning to work or simply realising that something no longer fits can unsettle more than our plans. They can unsettle our sense of who we are.

Career Narratives explores the stories we carry about work: where they came from, what they make possible and what they might be preventing us from seeing.

Explore Career Narratives Looking for career coaching? →Related: In Another Life - The Working Lives Edit

02

Leadership Narratives

The stories we lead from.

  • “I need to have the answer.”
  • “If I don’t step in, I’m not adding value.”
  • “People resist change.”
  • “As the leader, I should know.”

Leadership comes with its own collection of stories about what a good leader is supposed to know, say and do.

Some are useful. Others quietly shape how much space we give people to think, how we respond to uncertainty and how readily we step in to fix, advise or take over.

Leadership Narratives looks underneath the behaviour to the assumptions driving it - across coaching, change, belonging, communication and working with other people’s thinking.

Explore Leadership Narratives Explore leadership coaching and workplace programmes →

03

Counter Narratives

Who gets to tell the story?

Essays, provocations and conversations that question received wisdom, bring overlooked perspectives into view and open up other ways of thinking, working and living.

A growing collection of questions. Some arise from research, some from conversations, some from the things we notice in everyday life. Each is an invitation to look again.

Latest - Provocation #1

Who gets to have a voice?

Explore Counter Narratives