Beauty - Stefan’s Week-notes 26/07/2025
Inspired by the weeknotes of friends and coachees including John Fitzgerald, Steve Messer and Nour Sidawi - I thought I'd give it a go.
Weeknotes: 19–26 July 2025
“It is not length of life, but depth of life.” – Emerson
Some weeks arrive like a tide-change, gentle but undeniable. This one felt like that - steady, surprising, full of grounded joy.
Coaching in the capital, holding space for real shifts, sharing honest conversations about life and loss, purpose and place. And through it all, a quiet sense of “this is it” - a week of living, leading, and listening. Properly.
Lately I’ve been noticing how often I live in the future or retell the past. But this week was different. It was an invitation to stand still, to ask: who am I, here and now?
What went well this week
As I was on my way home, from London, to the Isle of Wight after a brilliant day facilitating a strategy and transformation session with a sector-leading not-for-profit and I smiled.
In so many ways, they are already modelling what inclusive culture and belonging can look like - not just as aspiration, but as operating rhythm. And yet - they had asked for more. For challenge and for edge.
We got there: real dialogue, honesty, bravery in the room. We surfaced some things that needed surfacing and laid a foundation for the next few months.
The playback sessions in September will matter. So will the 2:2s with the CEO next month. But this week, we began.
I also snuck in a bit of sightseeing too. Soul food.
What struck me most was this: creating space for people to be more of themselves - more open, more human, more ambitious together - is a form of leadership I’ve come to trust. That’s the liberation I bring.
I also loved a coaching session with a global director who sits at a life and career crossroads; sometimes we see it as a step change, and sometimes it’s a metamorphosis.
This one ‘just’ needs an evolution - not in their environment so much; more in themselves and how they react to and influence their environment. So often the way.
Otherwise you carry the baggage where’ve you go.
What lit me up
When the not for profit CEO said: “That’s the best session we’ve ever had as a team.”
For me, that’s not just praise - it’s permission. To keep going. To go deeper. To trust what I bring. And to believe in the compounding value of well-held conversations.
In addition to this; someone reaching out to say they want to work with me to decide where they take their life next. That lights me up. Not because of what it says about me - but what it says about them. That they’re brave enough to ask. That they want to “…live deliberately” as Thoreau put it. A word I speak to many leaders about.
I don’t take lightly when people trust me with their next chapter. Coaching isn’t just support - it’s sacred terrain.
It also reminded me that the real gift isn’t helping people be “better” - it’s helping them come home to themselves, and take that self with them wherever they go.
The chat I can’t stop thinking about
A conversation with my mum. About my dad’s interment. About memory. About joy. About choosing your own way, not just what’s expected.
We spoke about words and headstones and about love and laughter and freedom. It reminded me how much of legacy is not the thing we leave behind, but what we give permission for others to do next.
There’s a kind of quiet defiance in choosing what’s right for you - especially when it comes to rituals, grief, or healing. Mum taught left something with me this week: presence doesn’t always follow the rulebook. Sometimes it follows the heart.
What shifted
London.
For so long, my memories of it were bound up in pressure: tough meetings, scrutiny, performance. But this week felt different. London - as a place - softened. I enjoyed it. I saw it with new eyes.
I facilitated. I walked. I took photos. I slowed down. Invite me back - I’m ready to love it again, on new terms.
Reclaiming a place you once performed in is powerful. It’s less about nostalgia, more about redemption. I didn’t prove anything this time. I just showed up - and that was enough.
What I’m wrestling with
A simple question from my coach: “Who are you (today)?”
Not past-you. Not future-you. Just now.
It floored me.
I know what I’ve done. I know what I want to create. But who am I, here and now? I think I’m a liberator. I help people breathe easier in rooms they didn’t think were built for them. I offer belief, rhythm, and a bit of edge. And I don’t always give myself credit for that.
It’s that “above the line / below the line” work I so often speak about - and forget to apply to myself.
I’m not here to play a role anymore. I’m here to be real. Today. With what I know, what I feel, and who I’m becoming.
What do I see at the edges
More and more leaders and managers are struggling - not because they lack clarity or purpose, but because they’re unsupported.
The (para) phrase I keep hearing is, “I feel exposed.” That’s where I come in - not to shield people from challenge, but to help them carry it differently. To help them shelter from the shite, yes, but also to stand straighter. Bolder.
It’s what Heifetz would call adaptive leadership - leading through challenge, not around it. Holding the heat of the system long enough for change to take root.
We need more “I’ve got your back” leadership. Not paternalistic, not heroic - but steady. Present. Human.
But in order to have someone else’s back (fully), you really need to have your own and even at DG level - I am seeing fragility and uncertainty - hidden behind bluster and ego.
Drop the ‘ego’ and listen to the ego; the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.
When you learn to listen to it, work with it and be authentic through it - thats when you truly lead.
What did I notice or take in
A single tall building in a city of smaller ones - standing firm, with boundaries around it.
It struck me: the leaders I admire most are like that. Not tall in stature, but in presence. Rooted in clarity. Boundaried, not closed. The kind of leaders who know what they’re for - and what they’re not for. Who know their lane, and run it with love.
The boundary isn’t a wall - it’s a stance. And that’s what gives the work its depth.
Many think they know what they stand for, but often they only know what they believe - what you stand for is what you will and wont tolerate.
For me, it’s what will press my hot button - the one where sparks fly and that is unfairness and the lack of parity in start, middle and end.
That I’ll stand up for, alongside anyone who stands by me.
What do you stand for? (not just believe in).
A word I’m carrying
Beauty.
Even in hard rooms. Even in policy sessions and culture resets.
Beauty in the moment someone dares to say the hard thing.
Beauty in a hand on the back of the chair, or a smile from a peer when you speak up.
Beauty in the ferry ride home, sunset across the Solent, tired legs and full heart.
The world doesn’t need more noise. It needs more noticing. More stillness. More moments of quiet awe, right where we are. And then, after a purposeful pause - it needs the beauty of action.
What a race horse run (not race) and its beauty.
See a bord soar - thats beauty.
See a leader and their team act together, behind one single purpose and in unison - thats beauty.
See a person stand for what they believe - thats beauty.
We need new definition, it’s not just art or a statue - which evokes movement. It is movement.
The question I’m living into
Who am I?
And how do I do more of what matters - not for more people, necessarily, but with more integrity. Less topping, more liberating. Less proving, more being. As Parker Palmer says: “Let your life speak.”
This week, I heard mine whisper back. “you are a liberator’.
Excited to explore that more.
What I’m grateful for
My kids. Always.
They remind me what really matters - and what doesn’t. They make me laugh. They pull me back to the present. They hold me accountable - not in words, but in who they are.
They’re a mirror. And a compass and they show me north (work), South (Sustenance), East (Rest) and West (Play).
This weekend - it’s about play.
Where I’m rooted
By the sea. On the Isle of Wight.
Rooted in the choice to be here - not to escape, but to build. To create rhythm and restoration. To offer something meaningful from a place of calm defiance - defiant of busyness, of status, of superficiality.
This place roots me in being alive. It’s my own kind of sacred geography - where the outside matches the inside.
What do you see? - of and in me - 10 years into life on this beautiful island.
I’d love to know.
Genuinely. Let me know.
What I’m reading
Ned Boulting’s The Accidental Tour-ist. Part memoir, part love letter to cycling, part peek behind the Tour de France curtain.
The anecdotes - especially the fold-up bike commutes with David Millar - made me laugh. But they also whispered something deeper: that great performance doesn’t always look how we expect it to. Sometimes it folds up. Sometimes it rides in the rain. Sometimes, it ‘just’ shows up. Not, turns up.
Because showing up is conscious action; turning up - in my book - is passive.
Thoroughly recommend the book.
Next week? Redesigning work by Lynda Gratton.
Closing
“The meaning of life is to live it — to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
This week, I think I tasted it again.
Not just the sweet bits - but the real ones. The complex, layered, beautiful ones.
The words of the CEO “we made a great double act” - we did and I miss that.
Here’s to living.
Here’s to leading.
Here’s to being - and becoming.
And…
…if this resonated - with your week, your leadership, or your search for meaning - drop me a line. I’m here for those who want to live and lead more fully. Always.
Because we need more good people leading great things.
See you on the road.
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For now; thank you
I am…
An executive coach who specialises in helping good people lead great things.
Good people care about others, our planet and beauty. Great things are changes for the betterment of society and all that lives within an around it.
It sounds big and fun - it is.
I'm also an endurance racing cyclist and a go. getter.
You can read more about me and what I do; how I work here