According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, 42 percent of employers expect talent availability to decline between 2025 and 2030, resulting in a net negative (-13 percent) expectation of improvement and highlighting growing concerns about finding the right future talent (https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/). But what if business leaders have the talent (or could nurture it) through something fundamental and universal—the powerful narrative?
Our reliance on digital devices, coupled with dramatic changes in working practices during and after the global pandemic, primes us for new ways to manage the workforce. With personal and professional lives blending like never before, perhaps it is time to consider how some of the techniques used to address personal challenges can be adopted in the workplace.
One suggestion is the varied techniques of Narrative Practice, applied in the fields of psychotherapy and counselling, which stem from the intellectual partnership of family therapist Michael White and New Zealand therapist David Epston. Working together over many years, the two therapists invited people to express deep-seated concerns or challenges. They used powerful storytelling techniques to liberate those who feel stuck with thoughts or behaviours that are questionable, inaccurate, or simply unhelpful.
How Narrative Practice Concepts Can Innovate a Workforce
- Externalize challenging situations: When individuals view their problems as external influences rather than being wrapped up with who they are, it’s easier to address and manage them; in short, “the person is not the problem. The problem is the problem.” We’ve all had moments of catastrophizing—toxic thinking like: “I’ll never be any good at [insert skill]” or “I’m never going to be promoted.” By stepping back from those descriptions and freeing employees from judgment or blame, Narrative Practice can help them to view workplace difficulties more objectively and can enable leaders to reframe career decision-making.
- Uncover the narrative: By examining and breaking down the key or recurring stories that tend to dominate people’s lives, it is possible to uncover and deconstruct the assumptions and values that lie beneath. In this way, it’s easier to see how certain beliefs are shaped by societal norms, cultural expectations, or personal history, and how these may limit potential. Once employees have deconstructed their career story, they should be encouraged to “re-author” their narrative. This is not suggesting that they fabricate experiences or play “make-believe” about a career they’d rather have had, but about viewing and articulating those challenging aspects in a different light. Creating new, more empowering stories that better align with what people value, hope to achieve, and how they see themselves offers rich possibilities and positive progress.
- Encourage collaboration: Countering a negative view can lead to greater resilience and renewal—important attributes to introduce transformational change. Collaboration lies at the heart of Narrative Practice, and once people believe they are the authors of their own story, they can work to reshape an existing narrative and co-create a new story. Collaboration helps people to feel safe to expose their vulnerabilities and reassures them that they are not alone in finding answers to their difficulties. Narrative Practice can be applied in group settings or support education, training, or learning journeys, especially in organizations that want to define their culture or mission for a wide group of people.
Putting Narrative Practice to Work
Five Narrative Practice techniques can be applied in a working context (visit www.nynclub.co.uk for a free downloadable Workbook of Narrative Practice exercises). One of those techniques, the dot exercise, was developed by Jill Freedman and Gene Combs and is used to help people find new meaning in their lives, especially to improve their mental health. In a picture of a series of dots, a person is asked to imagine that each dot represents a life experience. When they first start working with a therapist, people often have a single line that connects their life path so far; the therapist listens but can point out that this is one possible thread connecting these dots—there are other dots with multiple events outside that story, which are also representative.
By connecting those dots—possibly overlapping with the existing story but taking it in a different direction—people can find rich, complex meaning in their lives. This could be applied similarly in the workplace. The series of dots and the ways they are connected suggest multiple possibilities for employees’ careers. Problematic stories and situations can take on a whole new meaning when seen as just one strand in a multi-storied landscape.
Ask employees to consider their experiences and how events have influenced their working lives. Help them to undertake an exercise to join and discover the connections between performance and progress to guide their futures. Map the dots to life- and career-defining events and help them to find out how those events might overlap and build their work profile. Sometimes negative aspects of their career also can connect to positive outcomes and new directions. Even a role that doesn’t seem to be taking their career in the right direction could be a “red thread” that leads to a role they were destined for all along.
Tell a New Story
To serve their economies, many governments are keen to keep as many people in work as cost-effectively as possible. So it’s no surprise that improving recruitment, retention, or progression is often top of mind for most businesses.
Everyone has complexity in their lives, and by acknowledging the different strands and how they knit together into an overall story, we can see the bigger picture, find hidden strengths, recognize achievements, and better understand our experiences to influence our careers positively.
By using new techniques, tried and tested in a therapeutic context, employees can grow and feel heard, seen, and understood, helping themselves and their leaders to gain control, build confidence, and honor lived experiences.
