» Work stories

jeremy@emotionalintelligenceatwork.com | 01453 764 615

People like hearing stories. If you can tell a pertinent story, your message has a far greater chance of lodging in the listener’s mind. Stories can be stories about you and your clients, or about other people’s clients, or be more metaphorical as are these: Stories.

Below are some true stories—case studies, if you will—about actual clients and others, anonymised, which illustrate aspects of emotional intelligence in the workplace.

However, there are many more work stories dotted around in other pages and this page lists all the ones I’ve found so far:

Work story index

Related material:
> Structure your story well
> Why tell a story?
> A story about stories

Case study

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The chorusmaster’s tale

Havergal Brian's Gothic symphony remains one of the most challenging works in the choral repertoire. Far from being the random jottings of a deluded old man, the work is a

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Ledger

Some years ago, when I used to have lots of one to one meetings with people I met at networking events, I arranged to have such a get together with an accountant.

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Another shiny red car

A few years ago, it was time to replace my car. Off I went to Bristol Street Motors in Stroud, where I had already bought two second hand cars, in search of a third.

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Fresh fish sold here daily

I once came across a fishmonger in the high street (in a bygone age when we had fishmongers and we had high streets). He was proudly displaying a large message board on which

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How to transform a relationship in twenty minutes

The client of a colleague reported difficulty being a parent to his middle child. The child was clearly unhappy. The father was unhappy because he did not know what to do

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Alsatians

When I was quite small, my mother let me play out in the street when I was at home... Trouble was, in the house at the top of the road, there lived an Alsatian dog and,

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Networking: just do it

Maggie was one of two directors of a small business. The directors knew that business networking was an important part of their strategy for growing the business, but only

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Trust me, I’m a director

... the board wanted me to interview each member of the business... One finding was very prominent: the staff believed that the directors didn’t trust them.

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Work story index

This page lists all the work stories on this site.

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Recruiting for attitude

I trotted along to the IT department, having prepared myself for the interview. I was, however, surprised as the interview progressed that the personnel manager seemed not to

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Shiny red car

One day, a driving instructor wrote in and asked for comments about his website. Could we think of any ways to improve it?

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Time and motion

It was a care home. He couldn’t be entirely clear what their problem was, but they had said they needed a time and motion study and, did I do those?

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A story about stories

One Friday afternoon, the telephone rang. It was a woman who asked me if she could discuss my website. Thinking that this was another website developer cold calling about my website

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Seeing the light

I’d been working with Mike and his business for some time. One morning, we were talking about his five year plan and his strategy to meet the targets in the plan.

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Don’t push—be curious

My company is called Jeremy Marchant Limited. But that makes it too much about me, so I decided to trade under the brand emotional intelligence at work

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How one client got out of his own way

In this video, Jeremy Marchant tells a powerful story about a client who had to accept that holding on to an issue was holding him back in his business.

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An emotionally intelligent approach to sales

...Amazingly, the salesman still persisted – so my client walked out, the laptops not bought...

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Expecting a response

"I seem to have a problem when I congratulate people for something and they don't say anything in return ..."

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Train

Back when I was a business consultant, one of my clients was a train operating company. So I asked them what a train was.

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Too busy

Daisy impressed me by the diligence she put into ensuring that her staff got the training they needed. Eventually, I turned to her and said, “So who trains you, Daisy?”

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Tears before bedtime

"A TV boss has been embarrassed after an email she sent to colleagues was belatedly leaked..."

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High anxiety

Jack had one problem. If things went well on the client site, and he was able to fix the problem, he had no problem. But if he arrived and, after a period of time, couldn’t

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Email blizzard

One of Dave's clients had accepted some work without criticism but, sixty days later, still hadn’t paid up. Dave was getting irritated...

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Retailer

Martha wanted to increase the revenue from her shops and was sure that her sales staff had room to improve their selling skills. But...