Coaching practices for Narrative Identity with My Team

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Narrative Identity with My Team, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I’ve spotted a few moments where I was braver than my usual story says, but they feel like isolated flukes
  • I can recount exactly what happened
  • My whole story is achievement, achievement, achievement
  • There’s a story I tell about my past
  • I say "I’m someone who never quits," but my history is full of things I walked away from, and that gap between who I claim to be and what I’ve actually done sits in me as a low hum of unease I can’t quite name.

Practices that may help

  1. Narrative Identity, Made Practical
    Dan McAdams’ narrative identity theory holds that identity itself is a personal myth — an internalized, evolving story that integrates your past, present, and imagined future into a coherent sense of self. The structure and tone of that story (whether it moves toward redemption or contamination, agency or communion) predicts psychological well-being, and the story can be deliberately revised. Evidence is primarily observational but robustly consistent.
  2. Re-Authoring the Alternative Story
    Build a preferred story of identity by thickening the exceptions into a narrative with a plot.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  3. Landscape of Identity and Action Questions
    Use two question types to map both what the person DID (action) and what that reveals about who they ARE (identity).
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  4. Balance agency and communion themes in your story
    Check whether your life narrative is weighted toward self-expansion (agency) or connection (communion).
    Narrative Identity, Made Practical
  5. Revise your life narrative when it limits you
    Identify and reauthor the story you tell about your past that constrains what you believe is possible.
    The Life Crafting Intervention: Scripting Your Future Self
  6. Test your story for coherence and credibility
    Identify the parts of your self-narrative that are contradictory or no longer true.
    Narrative Identity, Made Practical
  7. Definitional Ceremonies and Outsider Witnesses
    Invite meaningful others to witness and retell the new story — being known differently by others consolidates the new identity.
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  8. Write a brief narrative of your season to make it coherent
    People who can tell a coherent story about their life stage navigate it more effectively than those who cannot.
    Seasons of Life
  9. Build a coherent narrative across your three plans
    Find the values and themes that appear across all three plans — they are your non-negotiables.
    Odyssey Plans: Designing Three Alternative Futures
  10. Align around collective results, not individual status
    Teams fail when members prioritize their own visibility or department’s success over the shared goal.
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical

Related concerns

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