The Stories Behind the Stories: James

SHOW NOTES

The Stories Behind the Stories Episode James

I always start with an idea. 

But the character takes over. 

Writing James taught me about James. 

And it taught me about the work of creating learning that truly reaches people.

James spent eight months interviewing with fifteen years of experience — and silence after every interview. In this episode, I go deeper into the failure, success and passion stories behind the character — and into the real pattern I was observing when I wrote him. The story that reveals who you are professionally is always there. James shows what happens when it finally gets told.

RESOURCES 

How to Tell Your Stories in Job Interviews

The Stories Behind the Stories: Aisling aka Carmel 

The Programme Behind the Story: The Art of WorkLife Storytelling: Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity

Your Three Stories Takeaway

Before you go — something to take with you.

Your Failure Story. 

What have you learnt from a professional setback that shaped how you work? 

Your Success Story. 

What have you accomplished that reveals something distinctive about how you work? 

Your Passion Story. 

What environment do you want to create for the people around you? 

Read the written version here: The Stories Behind the Stories: James

A Note to Listeners

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I always start with an idea, but the character takes over. Writing James taught me about James, and it taught me about the work of creating learning that truly reaches people. Hello, it's Carmel from School of Work Life. Welcome to The Stories Behind the Stories, where I go deeper into the work-life stories I've crafted, the thinking behind the ideas, the experiences that shape that thinking, the lessons learned from those experiences. Today's episode is James. His story is featured in the episode How to Tell Your Story in Job Interviews. In the last episode, I told you my three stories and Ashlings Success Story, Failure Story, and Passion Story. Today I want to go deeper into James's failure, success, and passion stories. Together they reveal something that no single story could show alone. Who he is professionally, what shaped him, and what drives him. The story behind the stories, three stories, one room, everything changed. The stories you haven't told yet are often the most important ones. James spent eight months interviewing, fifteen years of experience, strong results, and silence after every interview. I wrote James a story because interviews are the moment when this gap becomes most visible and most costly. In an interview, the gap between what you've done and who you are sits right there in a room. And yet so many people prepare for interviews by rehearsing what they've achieved, and so few prepare to speak about who they are, because credentials are easy to list. The experiences that shape them are harder to name, and harder still to shape into a story we're telling. The failure at the heart of James's story isn't the one that looks like failure. It's not the eight months of rejection. That's just a symptom. The real failure is quieter. James walks into every interview and presents his credentials accurately, professionally and completely, interchangeably with every other candidate. He has a story that would change everything. He just doesn't think of it as a story worth telling. Here's what I think was behind that. The failure at the heart of James's story was so subtle it wasn't obvious to him. He believed polished answers were what was expected. That showing the struggle, the failure, the learning, the cost would make him appear weak, unprofessional. So he kept giving interviewers the surface, and they kept seeing exactly that. What people dismiss as ordinary is often exactly what makes them distinctive. James had been dismissing his most powerful story for eight months. And it wasn't only his failure story he couldn't see. His success story was there too. Sitting in eight months of interviews, unrecognized. The moment that most clearly showed what he was capable of, what he had actually achieved, hadn't yet been named as a success. It hadn't been shaped into something worth telling. Here's what I think was behind that. He thought success had to look a certain way, the expected format, a list, quantified, impressive, and completely impersonal. What James didn't yet know was that the success that would matter most wasn't on SCV at all. He'd been conditioned to present success the way employers said they wanted it, measurable, transferable, forgettable. The real success was sitting right there. It just didn't look like what he thought success was supposed to look like. And his passion story, the thing that drove him most deeply in his work, I was invisible too. Not because it wasn't real, because they hadn't yet found the words for it. Here's what I think was behind that. People believe passion doesn't belong in an interview room, that it's too personal, too revealing, that it belongs in their private life, not a professional one. So they leave it at a door and walk in with everything except the thing that most clearly shows who they are. Three stories all present, all waiting. None of them told. Everything turns on a question. The interviewer Sarah asked James something nobody has asked him before. Tell me about a project that taught you something important about yourself. Not about his CB, not about his achievements about himself. James told her about a software implementation that went wrong, not technically, but humanly. He had managed the timeline perfectly and missed what the people around him actually needed. That was enough. Sarah leaned forward. The question is the whole school of work life mythology in a single sentence, and that question matters to me because it's what I did in that room in Ireland. I stopped following the plan I had prepared and asked something different. Not what have you achieved on paper, but what have you achieved that matters to you? I was Sarah in that room. The enabling moment doesn't always come from a course or a program. Sometimes it comes from one question that opens everything up. Then Sarah asks something different. Tell me about a success that mattered. Not a success that impressed, not a success that looked good on a CV, a success that mattered. That single word changes everything. James had been listing successes for eight months, projects delivered, budgets managed, teams coordinated, all true, all professional, and none of them what Sarah was asking for. This question stopped him because nobody had asked him this before, not what you achieved, what mattered. And in that pause, something shifted. James described a moment, a team member who had struggled most with the new system became the person training everyone else, not his achievements, someone else's growth, made possible by how he worked. The first question had cracked something open. This one went deeper. James had never separated the two before, what he achieved and what he actually mattered to him about it. There's a difference between a success that looks impressive and a success that reveals who you are. Sarah was asking for the second. This is the question I find powerful in this work, because it asks people to value their own experience, not perform it. Then Sarah asks what excites them about the role, and this is where James answers differently, not from the job description, not from what he thinks she wants to hear, from somewhere real, because something had been established between them by now. The failure question had cracked it opened. The success question had gone deeper, and this one gave him permission. Permission to say what he actually believed, what drove him, what he had never said out loud in an interview before. I care about creating environments where people can do their best work without fear. Not a rehearsed answer, not what the job description asks for, the truth. And Sarah heard it. The passion question only opens when trust has been established. Sarah had established it. James had barely said this to himself before, let alone in an interview room. This is what passion needs most, not the right words, permission. Passion feels too exposed in a professional setting, too raw, too real. But when someone finally gives you permission to say what actually drives you, everything changes. That's what Sarah did. That's what I try to do in this work. Create the conditions where people feel safe enough to say what's true. And James experienced exactly that. Three questions, three stories, all three told for the first time in one conversation, in one room. That's when everything changed. There's a moment after the interview. James sits down and writes. He tries to understand what happened, why it worked, and he realizes it wasn't a technique, it was honesty. I put this indeliberately because writing is how I find out what I actually think. It's how I've always worked, and it's how characters in this series find out what they actually think too. Patrick Winston, the celebrated MIT professor whose thinking has guided my work, believes that success depends on your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. Writing comes before the speaking for me, always. Writing is how the thinking becomes clearer. James writes that night because the understanding couldn't arrive any other way. It had to be named on the page before it could be carried forward. James discovers something else that evening. He realizes he's been telling partial stories for eight months, achievements without the failures that shaped them, competence without a humanity behind it, successes without the moments have revealed what he was truly capable of, impact without the story of how it happened. Wreck without the belief that drove it, professionalism without the purpose behind it. He's been given employers the polished surface and keeping the real story, the one that actually reveals who he is to himself. The untold story. That's the phrase I keep returning to in this work, because the untold story is almost always where the real professional identity lives. The untold story, the phase is important to me. I've worked with people who were carrying stories they had completely forgotten or dismissed as ordinary or never recognized as significant. The room in Ireland was full of them. When those stories finally got told, something shifted. Not just professionally, personally. James had been sitting on his for eight months, not knowing it was the most important thing he had to say. Three untold stories sitting right there, waiting, all found in one evening, written down for the first time, named and finally his. Three days later the call. James gets the role. But that's not where this story ends. In his new role he notices a colleague, David, preparing for a director interview. David is struggling with the same thing James struggled with for eight months. He can't make his real value visible. James recognizes himself immediately, and he knows exactly how to help. Two months later, David gets the director role. Then James facilitates a team development session. He introduces the three story types to his whole team. And something happens that he didn't anticipate. People who had worked together for years discovered aspects of each other's professional journeys they had never known. Learning travels. That's what I believe. It always travels. I've seen this happen. Someone receives something, a question, an insight, a moment of clarity, and goes on to offer it to someone else. That's how it worked in Ireland. I helped a room full of people find their stories. Their stories helped me find my direction. Ashling, whose story I shared in the first bonus episode from the program The Art of Work Life Storytelling, creating three fundamental stories that define your identity, does the same thing. She sets out to help people tell their stories and discovers that creating the resources is her real calling. The learning never stays still. It always finds somewhere to go. That's what this work is, something received, something passed on. James is also invited into a wider room, a cross-departmental strategy meeting where leaders are trying to fix a failing digital transformation. Everyone is focused on the technical problem. James asked a question nobody else had asked. Has anyone talked to the teams about what actually concerns them? The room shifts. He no longer the project manager offering analysis. He's the person who can see what others are missing. That's what the three stories did. They didn't just change how James interviewed, they changed how he was seen. That's the shift I find most significant. This is what I've always wanted for the people I work with, not only to be valued for what they deliver, but to be recognized for how they think. There's a difference between being useful and being seen. James had been useful for 15 years. His story has made him visible. That's what this work is for. What I hope you take from James beyond the story, beyond the framework, is something simpler. The most powerful thing you can share professionally isn't your achievements. It's your understanding of yourself. James is every professional who has something real to say, a failure that shaped them, a success that revealed them, a passion that drives them, whose experiences are harder to name and harder still to shape into a story worth telling until they do. From my notebook, on quotes, I use quotes deliberately in my work, not as decoration, as an opening. A quote reaches people where they are. Someone at a crossroad reads one one way. Someone who has just found their direction reads it another way. That's what stories you haven't told yet are often the most important ones, does. It opens something up before the story begins. On James, I chose James's story first. Interviews felt like the right place to begin, because the gap between who you are and what employers see is nowhere more visible. On writing characters for every program, I write eight story lessons. I create eight characters, different genders, different ages, different backgrounds and cultures, different career stages, eight characters to access more learning, more depth, more ways in. Because learning travels further when it reaches more people. I always start with an idea, but the character takes over. Writing James taught me about James. James showed me how completely someone can dismiss their own most important stories. That's what following a story does. It takes you somewhere a plan never could. On the three stories, Sarah's three questions gave me the clearest demonstrations I had ever seen of the three story types in action. Not because I designed it that way, because I watched it happen. A failure question, a success question, a passion question. Three questions that together reveal something no single question could, who James was professionally. That's where the certainty came from. Not theory, a room, one interviewer who knew how to ask, and a professional who finally answered honestly, because trust had been established. On the door in, any one of the three stories can be the door in. In my story, it was a success story, the room in Ireland. In Ashing's story, it was a passion story, the words she spoke on the stage. In James's story, it was a failure story, the software implementation that went wrong. The door is different for everyone, but it always opens into the same place. A story that reveals who you are, your three stories. Before you go, something to take with you. Your failure story. What have you learned from a professional setback that shaped how you work? Your success story. What have you accomplished that reveals something distinctive about how you work? Your passion story. What environment do you want to create for the people around you? In the next episode, I'll go deeper into Lisa's failure, success, and passion stories from the episode How to Build Authentic Connections through Storytelling to take you inside the story, behind the story. Thank you for listening.