Entering My 50th Year: Reflections
I’m stepping into my fiftieth year. Where did the time go? More importantly, where have I come from and where does that mean I want to go….
Yes - Yesterday was my 49th birthday.
Which means I’m stepping into my fiftieth year.
Where did the time go?
In my head, I’m still 25 - young, strong, driven like nothing I’ve ever seen to succeed. Other than my Dad, maybe. And importantly, driven to serve others. I always was.
The day felt like a pause point.
Not a milestone to celebrate loudly, but one that invites reflection. What follows are my thoughts as I look ahead to what I hope will be a second half of a full century on this beautiful planet.
The walk…
As I walk into this year, I find myself thinking less about achievements and more about the questions life has taught me to ask.
Only then does it occur to me that I’ve spent more than half my life coaching.
Alongside that, I’ve led teams, worked in change, and supported organisations as a consultant - sometimes all at once. Looking back, it feels less like a career path and more like a long apprenticeship in people, systems, and responsibility.
And now, as a dad, I’m realising something else:
My children are teaching me more about all of this than I ever could have imagined.
Looking back, I can see a pattern forming - gently, over time.
Leadership, for me, hasn’t been shaped by the answers I’ve given once I’ve had authority.
It’s been shaped by the questions I learned to ask before I did.
I was taught to coach leaders before I was ever asked to lead.
Which, in hindsight, was a gift.
So when I led my first sales team at 24 - 44 sellers - I didn’t start with targets.
I started with a question:
What do we want to be known for?
That question didn’t come from a management textbook. It came from a question I first learned to ask myself as a child:
“What is the right thing to do, even if no one else will?”
Once, I found myself standing up to twelve lads on a dark night - not because I wanted to fight, but because I wouldn’t allow them to believe it was okay to bully me, or anyone else.
When the police arrived, they tried to blame me for starting it.
I didn’t care.
I did what was right.
That early question - the one about doing what is right - has followed me into leadership ever since. So when my team decided we wanted to be known for making a difference to our customers, they hit their target for the first time in two years - within twelve weeks.
Later, when I led my first full programme of change, I didn’t start with the plan.
I asked:
Why should we do this? And what happens if we don’t?
That question, too, came from earlier in life - from the fights and scrapes of childhood, standing up for what I believed was right, even when the odds were stacked against me.
When I founded my coffee house, I didn’t begin with the brand.
I asked:
What does our community need?
We wanted to live in a thriving community. We believed that if we built it right, the people would come.
And they did.
And during Covid - when we needed the community to help save us - they responded again.
Doing what is right for those around you is a condition of humanity, not an option. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.
When my marriage ended, I handed over the coffee house and I was asked if I would coach again - by a leader in the Civil Service.
The first question I asked wasn’t about goals or performance.
I’d had my fill of that.
It was simply:
What do you need from me?
That was three years ago.
Now, in many guises, that same question is being asked across the Civil Service.
Then something else shifted.
When my father became ill, I realised something I’d managed to keep abstract until then.
I won’t be here forever to protect my children.
That knowledge changes the questions you ask.
A longer horizon comes into view.
You begin to think about the cradle you are creating for those who come after you.
And a more purposeful question surfaces:
What am I leaving behind for the people I care about?
In many ways, the ultimate question of stewardship.
Because stewardship, at its heart, is about agency.
The greatest thing we can give our children - and one another - is not control or certainty, but agency.
The ability to care.
To choose.
To steward people, place, and planet.
Over the past year, I’ve spoken a lot about stewardship.
Not because it’s a new idea to me.
But because I can now see it’s been quietly running through my life all along.
Leadership still matters to me.
Change still matters.
But neither is enough on its own.
The questions that truly shaped me were never about power or performance.
They were always about stewardship - and about how we give agency to people, place, and planet.
And if I’m honest, I can see that I’ve spent years helping others find steadiness and joy - and I’m now learning how to absorb more of that for myself, too.
So as I step into this fiftieth year - contemplating how to bring Be The Waves fully into the world, listening carefully to what my clients say about me and our work together, and trying to be the father I want to be - two questions sit with me more deliberately than ever:
How do I give more people the agency to steward people, place, and planet?
And:
How do we do all of this with joy?
The year ahead feels less about me and more about the work I’m drawn to: helping organisations and leaders step into stewardship, and become better at giving agency to those in their care. Because it’s in those conversations - the ones where responsibility is held well and people are empowered - that the magic happens for all of us.
Because stewardship is about how we carry responsibility.
And joy is about learning to carry it well.
Without letting it crush us.
Without letting it harden us.
Held more lightly on the self.
With warmth.
With humanity.
And with space left for joy.
Because we all deserve to feel joy.
And as I move into this fiftieth year, I feel more optimism than I did as a little boy - not because the world is simpler or safer, but because I now know this:
Joy is not naïve.
It is an act of care.
A form of stewardship.
And a responsibility worth carrying well.
Happy birthday, Stef.
The best years really are still to come.
Enjoyed reading this? Consider doing one of these:
Get in touch - If any of this topic resonated with you and you have something you’d like to share with me or if you’d like to discuss working with me on this topic - stefan@stefanpowell.co.uk works really well for me.
Read more about how I help individuals, teams and organisations here
Book an inquisitive session with me to find out more about what I do and how I do it or run a challenge or thought you have passed me.
Connect with me on linked in and read my long form posts on the rotating topics of Work, Rest. Play, Sustenance and Love every Thursday
Sign up to my newsletter ‘Be The Waves” here - which collates each weeks long form post on a monthly basis and you’ll get to read it later in the month
Follow me on strava.