In this article in Educational Action Research (2012) 20(1), 147-159 Rob Warwick and Douglas Board explore the way in which they worked with narratives of personal experience in their (separate) doctoral inquiries, which does not ask practitioners to attempt to reach a point of detached observation 'outside' the hurly-burly of intense practical interaction. They are developing this theme in a book to be published in 2013 by Palgrave Macmillan provisionally entitled 'The Social Development of Leadership and Knowledge'.