Energy - Stefan’s Week-notes 26/10/2025
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 - Energy
This week has been one of energy - its ebb and flow shifting between depth and light, between loss and renewal.
Energy felt like the quiet thread running through everything: the conversations that restored it, the boundaries that protected it, the small moments that reminded me where it truly comes from.
It wasn’t about doing more - although I did fit ny first full week of endurance training in, for the first time in a while - but noticing what sustains. What gives. What steadies.
The more I pay attention, the more I see that energy isn’t something we have - it’s something we steward.
What activities did I get up to this week?
Coaching sessions with transformation and strategy directors, CEOs, and an estate agent. A half-day group mentoring session with founders. Meetings on new Be The Waves work, cycling indoors (rain stopped open air play this week), strength and core training, woodland walks, and a few new work proposals taking shape.
What moments lit me up this week?
Coaching including a session with a female transformation leader in the Civil Service reminded me how powerful the simplest questions can be: Am I clear on my role? Are those around me?
The truth that the answer could still be no - even for someone seasoned and accomplished - was a moment of humility and possibility.
A half-day with a group of founders and small business owners brought fresh waves of curiosity. We explored purpose, resilience, and how to turn “likes” into something lasting. And there was half-term joy by the sea with Willoughby and Vera - waves tracking against the shore, laughter catching the light.
A week which reminded me of this quote by the Pulitzer prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” Written about the activist, artist, and human rights advocate Paul Robeson whom I first heard about from the Manic Street Preachers and their song “Let Robeson Sing”
What did I wrestle with this week?
Inner doubt and external acceptance. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that tension - but it’s a good one. It reminds you to lean back into purpose, to remember why you care.
And it was Dad’s birthday - seven months since we lost him. That ache returns in unexpected ways, still teaching, still softening.
What have I been reading?
This week, I’ve been re-reading The Self-Stewardship Diagnostic following some fabulous feedback. A moment to pause before the year ends - and start the next one with purpose. It fills me with pride that this didn’t exist four weeks ago - yet it’s the culmination of years of thinking.
There are team, organisation, sector, and planet versions to follow too - each exploring how we sustain energy, focus, and purpose at every level.
If you’d like a copy for yourself or your team, drop me a note with the subject Self Stewardship Diagnostic at stefan@stefanpowell.co.uk and i’ll send you a copy.
Because high-performing teams start with happy, healthy, purposeful people.
What personal moments felt significant this week?
Loved ones unwell and out of reach. Time on the bike, strength and core work grounding me again. Watching the kids trace the tide lines, sunlight breaking in shards across the surface. It sent me in search of a quote by Maya Angelou for those who were struggling: “Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.”
Where did I see stewardship in practice this week?
From a CEO I’ve been working with - tough calls between work, family and self. They’re ensuring their organisation stays fit for purpose, confronting weaknesses that have long been masked by strengths. Modern leadership is asking more of people - but those same strengths are often the key to finding the support they need from their board. Stewardship, here, means standing in truth with courage and care.
What metaphor or image captures the feeling of this week?
A column breaking the view to the sea; which prompted a photo on Freshwater bay which reminded me of boardrooms, town halls, and strategy days. Moments where what’s immediately in front of you - a problem, a person, a pressure - obscures the bigger picture. A visual metaphor for the role of coaching in helping those i coach see round, through over the obstacle; by changing perspective and where you ‘stand’.
What did I notice beneath the surface this week?
Emotions rippled through me thinking of Dad - tears, smiles, quiet words to his photo. That gentle conversation between worlds continues. As Anne Lamott said “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken… but this is also the good news. The person lives forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up”. Dad certainly does.
What am I carrying forward into next week?
Energy for coaching on burnout and balance within a digital transformation organisation this coming week which is a first piece of work for the Be The Waves coaches for a digital transformation organisation with more diverse topics on the horizon.
What have I written this week?
Pieces are beginning to continue to flow again including a new blog here at stefanpowell.co.uk - The Ten Facets of Stewardship and a new blog at Be The Waves on the stewardship of former Manchester United manager and legacy leaver Alex Ferguson. This week also saw me send off a piece on Stewardship and my journey to choosing the growth of “…stewardship for a thriving planet” to the editors of an upcoming book. Each carries the same current: how we lead, love, and live with stewardship.
How do I want to sign off this week?
With love for those following stewardship and nuance at Be The Waves - and for a father who grew me from an acorn into an oak. he didn’t say these words, but I know he’d have approved of the words “You are not built to shrink down to less, but to rise up to more” from Oprah Winfrey. Which remind me of the act of stewardship, to rise up and to empower others to rise up to; balancing people, place and planet - whilst serving the organisation for whom they work and lead.
An Image That Stuck
I love this picture of Vera, which I featured in my instagram today (Sunday 26/10/2025).
Why?
Because even though Willoughby has finished, Vera is still going.
Only a few months ago, she would’ve quit - “It’s not fair. He always wins.”
But now she knows winning isn’t about beating him. It’s about beating herself.
And today, she did.
While she ran, Will and I cheered: “You can do this, Vera - keep going!”
Teamwork makes the dream work.
But it’s even better when the internal cheerleader is joined by the external ones too.
How’s your inner cheerleader doing?
How do I want to sign off this week?
What kind of energy are you choosing to rise with - and what, or who, are you rising for?
Because rise we do - every day, in one direction or another. Some mornings, we rise through sheer grit; others, through quiet purpose. Some days it’s for the people who believe in us; others, for the person we’re still becoming.
Energy is a choice - and so is what we rise into.
This week, I’ve been sitting with the difference between reactive energy and intentional energy. The first is survival; a jolt of “just get through it.” The second is stewardship - grounded, deliberate, attuned to what truly matters.
Rising well doesn’t always mean rising higher. Sometimes it’s slower. Softer. More honest. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to rise lighter - to leave behind the weight that isn’t ours to carry.
For me, this week was that kind of rising. Less fight, more flow. Less noise, more notice.
Because how we rise shapes everything that follows.
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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