Being You - Stefan’s Week-notes 21/12/202
Inspired by the weeknotes of friends and coachees including John Fitzgerald, Steve Messer and Nour Sidawi - I thought I'd give it a go.
Week-notes – Being You
This week’s notes reflect on stewardship, responsibility, and the lived practice of being more fully myself in the work and in life. Across coaching conversations, leadership transitions, writing, friendship, grief, and time outdoors, a consistent truth kept surfacing: leadership isn’t about sidestepping responsibility, but about holding it with care, judgement, and humanity.
Beneath the movement and busyness, this was a week about what happens when we stop performing and let all parts of who we are into the room. About breathing out as ourselves, and noticing how much more grounded, alive, and meaningful the work becomes when we lead from there.
1. What activities did I get up to this week?
This week I held a mentoring session with a wonderful woman from the Digital Boost programme - a conversation about being herself and having the confidence to bring that fully to the table.
I began coaching a fabulous female leader in Brussels as she steps towards a director role - exploring how to position herself by knowing who she is, what motivates her, and understanding the gap between who she thinks they need and who she already is.
There were coaching sessions with a digital collaboration leader, a charity CEO, and another leader one month into a new role - recalibrating what’s needed now and how to get what they need from their boss, rather than carrying everything alone.
I also had a catch-up around a consultancy’s people strategy - one of the bigger narrative threads of the week — and a follow-up coaching session with the applicant for the director role.
And then two days hiking and camping on the Isle of Wight with my best mate Jason - sleeping out in 40mph winds under a weather warning. We knew what we were doing. Challenging ourselves and our kit in places where adversity sharpens what you already know.
To paraphrase James Clear - “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Sometimes the system is you - tested, trusted, and known.
What linked it all?
Being you.
2. What’s the central theme or thread that tied my week together?
Being you.
Breathing out as yourself - honestly, without performance.
And breathing in from the world what gives you life and light.
As Brene Brown writes:
“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.”
This week felt like a lived version of that - less friction, more truth.
3. What moments lit me up this week?
The walk with Jason - boots on, weather honest, nothing to prove. Time and conversation unfolding at the pace it needed to.
Collecting the kids too. Those moments that look ordinary until you slow down enough to feel their weight.
And then a message from a coachee as we closed down for Christmas:
“It’s been an absolute joy working with you this year - everything I hoped for and then some (with a dash of rock and roll). So many thoughtful questions and those long, delicious pauses… you held the space beautifully.”
That landed deeply.
It reminded me of Nancy Kline:
“The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first - and the thinking we do depends on how we are treated while we are thinking.”
The pauses matter.
4. What did I wrestle with this week?
The loss of my Dad.
He would have loved the walk with Jason. He would have had so much to say about this year - the work, the choices, the shape it’s taken.
Thinking about that leaves a lump in my throat.
They say that grief is the deepest form of love and this wasn’t a wrestle to solve.
It was one to feel - and to carry with tenderness.
5. What personal moments felt significant this week?
Seeing the kids. I needed that more than I realised.
And recognising I need to make more time for friendship - for going out, for being with people without an agenda. I often rest by withdrawing, but rest doesn’t always mean retreat.
The opposite of burnout isn’t rest - it’s connection and this week reminded me that nourishment comes in many forms.
6. Where did I see stewardship in practice this week?
In the work of Amy McNichols through her blog series I Thought About That A Lot.
The care, the pacing, the permission it gives people to speak honestly about what has shaped them — that is stewardship of voice and meaning.
Leadership is not about power - it’s about creating the conditions for people to bring their gifts and that’s what this series does.
It’s touched me deeply and it was an honour to contribute.
7. What metaphor or image captures the feeling of this week?
Who are you? And are you being that person often enough.
Toy soldiers, lined up on a windowsill after a charity shop amble with Vera, lined up in the window of a coffee shop.
Why this image stayed with me: we need people willing to stand up.
Not aggressively. Not performatively.
Just present. Aligned. Ready.
As Margaret Mead famously said:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”
Be the waves, anyone?
8. What did I notice beneath the surface this week?
The need for Christmas this year.
People feel more jubilant again. More human. Even on LinkedIn - softer reflections, gratitude, humour, honesty.
We need more of this - not just once a year.
As Charles Dickens wrote:
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
That feels like the deeper invitation.
9. What am I carrying forward into next week?
The thought of connection.
Returning to Wolverhampton.
Seeing Mum.
Time with family and dear friends.
The only way to make time for what matters is to stop trying to make time for everything and that’s about less agenda; more presence.
10. What writing flowed from me this week?
This week I wrote a piece on the UK Civil Service. I haven’t published it fully yet - but I will.
It’s called The Twelve Contributions I’d Make to the Civil Service, and it comes from working alongside people who care deeply about public service and are often asked to carry tensions that are rarely named.
At its heart is this: we need a clearer, shared understanding of what the civil service is actually for in practice. Short political cycles drive short-term thinking that the civil service is expected to absorb, and that tension shapes almost everything.
In most large organisations, a new chief executive doesn’t rewrite the strategy every few years - they align to a longer direction and interpret it through leadership.
The same principle should apply here.
As Margaret Heffernan says:
“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”
Writing this felt like contribution, not critique.
11. How do I want to sign off this week?
By saying thank you.
Thank you to everyone who has connected, recommended, and chosen to work with me this year.
As my son Willoughby said, “You’re coaching some of the most amazing people you’ve ever coached, aren’t you?”
And I had to say yes.
Helping wonderful organisations - through coaching, transformation work, and being a catalyst for change - is what I love to do. And this year, I’ve done even more of it.
Watch out for my end-of-year review.
I can’t wait to share it.
12. What thought or question do I want to leave myself (and others) with?
How do I be more while doing less?
I want to have a bigger impact.
The finding of the work tires me out - the work itself never does.
Greg McKeown said that “If you don’t prioritise your life, someone else will.”
So what would change if doing less of the searching allowed more of the right work to find me?
And what if being more myself is the most scalable thing I can offer?
I guess in 2026, we will find out.
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For now; thank you
I am…
An executive coach and the CEO of Be The Waves, growing stewardship for a thriving planet.
I helping good people lead great things; in other words - I empower Stewardship
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