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.
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How do we create WorkLives that matter?
Self-Discovery — understanding what truly matters to you.
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WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Professional Development: Are We Developing The Right Things?
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SHOW NOTES
WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife
Episode: Professional Development: Are We Developing The Right Things?
Segun works in cybersecurity for a growing technology company. He's highly capable technically, but as his workplace changes, his role changes with it.
He begins to discover that some of the development he needs next isn't technical.
He knows how to explain a technical problem.
What he is beginning to learn is how to help someone else understand what it means for them.
This raises a bigger question:
Are We Developing The Right Things?
And perhaps an even more personal one:
What Is Your WorkLife Asking You To Develop Now?
RESOURCES
The Storytelling Newsletter (Free) Short, focused, and grounded in real WorkLife situations — how we communicate, lead, make decisions, and navigate challenges at work.
Work With Me: Commissioned learning resources, speaking engagements, and organisational partnerships. schoolofworklife.com
The stories I write are based on real WorkLife challenges, obstacles, failures and successes. Persons and companies portrayed in the stories are not based on real people or entities. Carmel O' Reilly schoolofworklife.com
Professional Development: Are We Developing The Right Things? For Segun, the question emerged as his workplace began to change around him. Segun worked in cybersecurity for a growing technology company. He was good at it. He could spot vulnerabilities other people missed. He was methodical, curious and calm when something went wrong. He liked problems that required concentration and persistence, and he had become someone colleagues trusted when a technical issue needed untangling. Then the company began to grow. What had once been a small team was becoming a much larger one. There were new clients, new systems, new people and more demands on everyone's time. Segun's work was changing with it. He was spending less time solving problems himself and more time explaining them to other people. That was harder. Welcome to WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife. I'm Carmel O' Reilly. And today's episode is Professional Development: Are We Developing The Right Things? This story is about Segun. And about a growing technology company, a meeting that didn't go quite as expected, and the difference between knowing the answer and helping someone understand it. The Part of the Job Nobody Had Mentioned Segun knew how to explain a technical problem. What he was beginning to learn was how to help someone else understand what it meant for them. He could tell someone exactly what was wrong. He could show them the evidence. He could explain the risk. But sometimes the conversation ended there. People nodded. Then nothing happened. At first, Segun thought the problem was that people didn't understand cybersecurity. Then he began to wonder whether he was making it harder for them to understand. He started paying attention to the conversations that went well. One colleague didn't give people more information. He gave them less. He started with what mattered to them. Another asked questions before offering an answer. And someone else had a way of explaining a serious problem without making the person hearing it feel that they were being blamed for causing it. Segun began experimenting. He Changed One Thing At the next meeting, Segun had a long explanation prepared. He didn't use it. Instead, he asked: "What are you most concerned about here?" The answer took the conversation somewhere he hadn't expected. The issue wasn't the technical problem itself. It was what the client thought might happen if they got it wrong. Once Segun understood that, he could explain the technical solution in a way that made sense to them. The meeting went better. Not because he knew more. He already knew enough. He had changed how he used what he knew. Development Can Change as the Work Changes Segun had spent years developing his technical expertise. That development mattered. It was the foundation of his work. But the work around him was changing, and so were the capabilities he needed. He was being asked to become capable of something more. Listening before answering. Explaining without overwhelming. Understanding what another person needed from the conversation. Building trust. Helping people make decisions. His technical knowledge had opened the door. It wasn't enough to walk him through every room. We Don't Always Notice the Next Thing Professional Development can be easiest to recognise when someone tells us what we need to learn. A course identifies the gap. A manager suggests training. A qualification gives us a goal. But sometimes our work tells us first. The difficult conversation. The responsibility we weren't expecting. The part of the job we keep avoiding. The thing that seems to come naturally to someone else. The situation in which being good at what we already do suddenly isn't enough. These moments can be uncomfortable. They can also be useful. They can show us where our development needs to go next. Segun Didn't Need to Become Someone Else He didn't need to stop being the person who loved solving technical problems. He didn't need to become the most confident person in the room. He needed to add something to what he already knew. And perhaps that is one of the less obvious questions within Professional Development: Are We Developing the Right Things for the WorkLife We Are Actually Living? Not the work we had when we started. Not the work we imagine we should be doing. The work that is changing around us. The work we are moving towards. The work we may want to create for ourselves. Segun's technical ability had brought him to this point. Now his working life was asking something different of him. He was still developing his expertise. He was also learning how to make that expertise useful to other people. And that was development too. What is your WorkLife asking you to develop now? CLOSING That's today's WorkLife Story — Professional Development: Are We Developing The Right Things? — a School of WorkLife Story. And if you want to explore more professional development resources you’ll find details and links in the show notes, or you can visit schoolofworklife.com Remember: Sometimes professional development begins with noticing what the work is asking of you now.