Me
I want to talk about that way I transitioned from hospitality (hereafter hospo) jobs to remote work jobs involving digital skills. I worked in hospo out of necessity, not by choice. I had bombed out of uni right after high school – I just wasn’t ready at the time. I was a very confused (and probably depressed?) teenager who had left home at seventeen and suddenly found myself in a different city and with very little employability. After bouncing around a few jobs – call centres, retail – I found myself working in a hotel kitchen, eventually working my way through the front desk and to the role of Duty Manager. Several years later, I became a barista slash café all-rounder at an Inner West Sydney breakfast hotspot. I’m providing this brief background as I feel the extra context is important to provide.
Hospo out of necessity. Am I glad I spent those years in hospo? Yeah, I guess. I learned valuable social and task management skills. I learned how to manage both my own time and other people. I learned how to value my own work.
A couple of years ago, a mutual friend introduced me to my current employer, and all of a sudden I was offered a very different kind of job. After years of getting up early, running around on my feet, serving customers – suddenly I was working from home, with flexible hours, using my digital skills to organise, design and project manage. It was a massive and very welcome shift for me. The biggest thing was that I could work on things in my own time. Rather than working based on someone else’s clock (go here, do this – right now), I could set my own ETAs and work on things when I felt best able to. It was a remarkable change in doing things and I quickly understood how much more value I was able to create by working according to my own needs. I think the change I went through is a welcome one and one that should be the norm in project-based workplaces.
Outsider Witnessing
In the 1980s, Michael White and David Epston pioneered narrative therapy, challenging dominant social systems that pathologised individuals (OSWAN, ‘Outsider-witnessing In Conversation with David Stapleton and Special Guests‘). Rooted in a post-structuralist model, they rejected the notion of fixed identities, emphasising instead the fluidity of personal narratives and the influence of power dynamics, both in society and therapeutic settings. White introduced the idea that individuals often share ‘thin descriptions,’ problem-centric narratives that overshadow the myriad of other stories that contradict or resist this central problem. By focusing on ‘re-authoring,’ narrative therapy seeks to uncover these alternative, often overshadowed narratives, enabling individuals to redefine their life stories beyond problem-saturated accounts.
Outsider witnessing, a narrative therapy technique, is a process in which individuals who are not directly involved in a person’s life or a particular event (the “outsiders”) are invited to listen to and respond to someone’s story or narrative. The goal of outsider witnessing is to validate the narrator’s experiences, break feelings of isolation, and foster a richer understanding of one’s own story by hearing it reflected through others. It provides an opportunity for people to see their experiences in a new light, often with a greater sense of agency, connection, or understanding. Outsider listening is not only useful for the storyteller, but also for the outsider, as it helps them understand what they’re drawn to and why.
The understanding of identity as a multi-voiced phenomena is one that contrasts significantly with structuralist understandings that establish identity as a single voiced phenomena, as an expression of a self that is to be found at the centre of personhood.
Michael White, ‘Reflecting Teamwork as Definitional Ceremony revisited’, 2000
GPT-4
So this is kind of wacky, but I told my story to GPT-4, and asked it to play the role of the observer. While the AI’s lack of emotional intuition and lived experiences presented interesting challenges, I was excited to hear what a Large Language Model would come up with. All things considered, it did really well!
Honestly, I didn’t expect it to do so well! I was able to reflect on what I had written in ways I hadn’t previously considered. Unlike a human playing the role of the observer, the AI’s response was uncoloured by personal biases or emotional undertones and presented a distilled & objective reflection of my narrative. This objectivity, paradoxically, offered a fresh perspective that was both validating and enlightening. While a human observer might naturally interject with their own experiences or emotional reactions, GPT-4’s feedback was purely rooted in the words I provided. This was definitely a detriment, and highlights how important it is to conduct outsider witnessing with a human. All things considered, this session underscored the irreplaceable value of genuine human empathy, but in a way I think it also hinted at the complementary roles technology and humanity might play in future therapeutic landscapes. It would be very difficult to get such succinct and constructive language out of a human on such short notice.
Welcome to the Thunderdome 