WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Character-Driven WorkLife Stories That Shift How You Think
Short, character-driven stories about real WorkLife challenges — how we communicate, lead, make decisions, and navigate what happens at work.
Each story shows a moment where something shifts: a conversation changes, an idea lands, a different approach opens up.
Working examples you can recognise and use — designed to be useful immediately.
The stories explore five themes, each a different lens on the same essential question:
How do we create WorkLives that matter?
Self-Discovery — understanding what truly matters to you.
Book Club Books — learning from the wisdom found in great books.
The Art of WorkLife Storytelling — crafting your distinctive narratives.
Character Traits — enhancing your natural strengths.
Mental Health and Wellbeing — navigating workplace wellbeing challenges.
Every episode is complete and free to listen.
Each story connects to a full Story Lesson — a deeper, structured resource with frameworks, reflection, and practical application.
And for those who want to go deeper still, Story Lessons connect to Guided Programmes — comprehensive learning journeys available at School of WorkLife.
New episodes every Tuesday.
WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
The WorkLife Question: Emma
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
SHOW NOTES
Today's Question: How do you create emotional connection?
How do you create emotional connection? In this episode of The WorkLife Question, I explore what Emma discovered about emotional connection — not in her opening, not in her close, but in the middle of three pitch conversations where the right question changed everything. Not through performance. Through making space for what people actually needed to say.
RESOURCES
Today’s question is from Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity: Success, Failure and Passion Stories Question Bank — from the section Creating Engaging Middles.
Emma is the main protagonist in the Story Lesson: How to Unlock Hidden Strategic Value Through Storytelling.
Her story is featured in the episode: The Stories Behind the Stories: Emma.
Emma's story was told in WorkLife Stories: How to Unlock Hidden Strategic Value Through Storytelling. (Free to listen).
Deepen the practice with the WorkLife Compass Guided Programme:The Art of WorkLife Storytelling: Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity Programme Crafting Success, Failure, and Passion Narratives with Powerful Beginnings, Engaging Middles, and Memorable Endings
Welcome to the Work Life Question from School of Work Life, a weekly question to ponder what matters in your work life. Each question is drawn from the School of Work Life question banks. I'm your show host, Carmel O'Reilly. This week's question is, how do you create emotional connection? That's the question I want you to sit with today. How do you create emotional connection? Let's explore the question through a character I created, Emma. Emma is a main protagonist in the story lesson, How to Unlock Hidden Strategic Value through Storytelling. Her story is featured in the episode The Stories Behind the Stories, Emma. Emma's story was told in the Work Life Stories, How to Unlock Hidden Strategic Value through Storytelling. If you haven't already, listening to that story will help you understand how your emotional connection transforms the middle of a professional conversation and go deeper with this question. Emma didn't set out to create emotional connection. She set out to understand what people actually needed. Those two things turned out to be the same. In her new business development role, Emma discovered something unexpected. What happened after the opening question was just as important as the question itself. The opening got her into the room. The middle was where everything happened. In the middle of every pitch conversation, something shifted. With the food distributor, Emma asked the CEO to describe a time when logistics had worked brilliantly. His tone changed immediately. He described a temporary coordinator who had understood a restaurant client's needed precise timing for every catering, not just delivery, coordination with kitchen teams, ingredients arriving exactly when Prep needed to begin. He hadn't been asked about this before, and in the telling, something opened up. Emma didn't move on. She stayed with it. She asked what had gone wrong, not the logistics failure, the real impact, what they had actually lost when a provider had optimized for cost and damaged their relationships with restaurant chefs. And then she asked what drove his business beyond the logistics himself. The CEO described something he clearly hadn't said out loud in a pitch meeting before. There were the bridges between small food producers and independent restaurants, both doing important work, both needing someone to take care of the logistics so they could focus on what mattered. That's when the conversation stopped being a pitch. The same thing happened with the medical supply director, skeptical at a start, waiting to hear what every other provider had said. Emma asked about success first, then about failure, not the logistics failure, but the real impact. Clinics that couldn't serve patients, a reputation damage because commitments couldn't be met. And then she asked what drove the business beyond moving medical supplies, healthcare equity, ensuring rural and underserved communities had access to the same quality supplies as urban hospitals. The director said it quietly, as if it wasn't something she usually said in rooms like this. That's emotional connection, not creative through performance or persuasion, through a question that gave someone permission to say what was true. Emma understood something through those conversations. Emotional connection in the middle of a conversation doesn't come from what you say. It comes from what you make space for. The right question in the middle of a conversation does something that no opening can do alone. It creates the conditions for the other person to say what they actually mean. And when that happens, everything changes. Not just the conversation, the relationship. So the question isn't just Emma's, it's yours. How do you create emotional connection? Today's question is from the creating three fundamental stories that define your identity, success, failure, and passion stories question bank from this section creating engaging middles. You'll find all the resources mentioned in the show notes. Thank you for listening.