Experience - Stefan’s Week-notes 04/07/2026
Inspired by the weeknotes of friends and coachees including John Fitzgerald, Steve Messer and Nour Sidawi - I love doing these when I get time to ‘do it properly”. cementing thoughts, refining approaches and who knows , adding some value along the way.
Weeknotes | Experience
1. What filled my week?
This has been a really enjoyable week.
I started by finishing the slides and notes for my Future of Greater Manchester Leadership Plus session on trust, motivation and performance - later this month. It’s always satisfying when a set of ideas coheres into something that crescendos into a ‘ah ha’ moment. For me first and then for the group; layering the message is key.
I spent time with the CEO of a charity exploring organisational change and culture, thinking about how to create the conditions for a senior team to own and lead change together rather than simply receive it.
A virtual coffee with Kirstie Buck was one of those conversations that wandered naturally between the work we’re both building and a shared love of music.
A significant part of the week centred around the start of a new 360° coaching programme. We held a three-way conversation between a leader, their manager and me before the interviews begin. I came away encouraged. The preparatory coaching with the ‘manager’ had clearly paid off and the conversation was open, thoughtful and clear about roles, expectations and next steps. Follow-up conversations with both the manager and the leader reinforced that feeling.
I also coached a leader in a public sector consultancy around vulnerability, trust and performance. As so often, the conversation beneath the ‘issue’ which first presents itself turns out to be the one that mattered most.
The week finished with a trip to Portsmouth to meet an NHS leader. We spoke about leadership, stewardship, the Bread and Roses movement, meaningful progress, Be the Waves and renewal. It was one of those conversations that leaves you with more energy than when you arrived.
Outside work, I got out on the bike with Darren and Jason. We rode more than we talked this time, we started to discuss the ambition of finding the ideal balace between joy and performance over the coming months.
I long to get back to that blissful state of feeling like I can ride any hill; not fast - but completion.
2. What’s the thread running through it?
The thread running through this week was hope. Hope, and a growing sense that I might finally be understanding more fully how I can be of most creative service in the world.
Over the past few months I’ve been trying to articulate what Be the Waves is really here to do. This week it felt as though the picture became a little clearer; less about stewardship itself and more about helping people, place and planet renew.
Almost every conversation, whether it was about coaching, organisational change, leadership or stewardship, seemed to point in the same direction. My role isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to champion, support and challenge people who carry significant responsibility, and to create the forums where they can think well together.
I found myself returning repeatedly to the idea of meaningful progress - not progress for its own sake, but progress that improves the conditions for people, place and planet.
Alongside that sat another word that has been quietly growing in significance: renewal.
Perhaps that’s the deeper purpose of Be the Waves. To help build a network of leaders committed to renewing themselves, their organisations and the systems they’re part of, so together we become better stewards of the future we’re shaping.
Those ideas have never felt like separate thoughts but the journey this past year has been about finding the narrative that runs through all the parts of the story.
3. What lit me up?
What lit me up most this week was seeing meaningful progress happening in real time.
Across a number of coaching conversations, I felt I was helping people move forward - helping them think more clearly, strengthen relationships and have better conversations than they might otherwise have had. And as my network of coachees grows - this becomes about talking individual and collective agency into systemic transformation for good.
One moment that stood out was bringing a leader and their manager together before a 360° coaching programme. Seeing the quality of that conversation, and the trust and compassion they brought to it, reminded me that good preparation creates the conditions for good leadership.
The conversation about Bread and Roses stayed with me too. It wasn’t simply an interesting discussion; it reinforced a growing conviction that I want my work to contribute more deliberately to positive change in the world. As a father, and as someone who’s always been drawn to improving systems, that feels increasingly important.
Towards the end of the week, one of my clients, who had just secured a role in the NHS, sent me a message saying, “I couldn’t have done it without you.” It was a generous thing to hear.
The ambition of coaching is to empower those you work with to achieve change or transformation. And to ‘make yourself redundant’; as it is in leadership.
but its foll hardy to think that redundancy comes ahead of the change being made, before the lessons have been embedded and before the person says i can ‘repeat that’ alone.
The reality for many I work with is that they iften choose a larger ‘arena’ to ‘ply their trade’ and that means new 'growth’. I love walking alongsside as they do (footprints in the sand).
4. What challenged me?
Much of my wrestling this week happened internally.
As temperatures continue to rise and conversations about climate and the future become more urgent, I found myself thinking about my children and the world they’ll inherit. It raised familiar questions. What is my contribution? Where can I make the greatest difference? Who should I be learning from and working alongside?
I’ve often joked that I’m deluded enough to think I can help change the world. This week it feels less like delusion and more like a gentle responsibility. Not to deliver the change - but more to ‘ply my trade’ with and for those ‘tasked’ with leading our sectors.
One conversation stayed with me in particular. We talked about the importance of identifying the one area where your strengths and convictions come together - where you can make your greatest contribution. It’s something I spend a lot of time helping others discover, yet it’s often harder to see clearly or moreso choose, when it’s yourself.
The encouraging part is that I think I’m getting closer. Why? How - because I’m choosing to sit with the questions of what, why and how.
I’m beginning to see that it’s about bringing together one enduring set of values, one distinctive set of strengths and one arena where they can be put to their best use.
Perhaps that’s not a destination at all. Perhaps it’s something we keep refining as we grow.
5. What did I notice beneath the surface?
One thing I found myself noticing this week was a growing sense of discernment in conversations about AI.
For a while, it has felt as though the discussion has been dominated by what AI can do, or whether it’s coming at all. Increasingly, I’m hearing people ask a different question: How do we use it responsibly?
That feels like progress.
Every major technological shift has brought extraordinary opportunities alongside unintended consequences. The internet and social media have transformed the way we live, learn and connect, but they’ve also created challenges we couldn’t fully see at the time. Children growing up today are often comparing themselves with the most exceptional people on the planet every time they open their phones. Without strong guidance and healthy relationships, that’s an enormous burden to carry.
It reminded me that innovation and stewardship have to grow together.
Perhaps that’s the pattern I keep seeing - not just in technology, but in leadership more broadly. We often become captivated by what is possible before giving equal attention to what is responsible.
The real challenge isn’t whether we can create change.
It’s whether we can steward that change wisely.
6. Where did I see stewardship?
I saw stewardship most clearly in a conversation with the CEO of a charity.
What struck me wasn’t that they had all the answers. Quite the opposite.
They recognised that they only held part of the picture. Rather than feeling they needed to provide certainty, they were asking a different question: How do I bring my leadership team into this conversation in a way that helps us think well together and make meaningful progress?
That stayed with me all week; why? because responsible convening and effective forum are where stewardship most shows itself.
Leadership often feels like the responsibility to know. Stewardship is the responsibility to convene, so the best answers can emerge.
In many ways, that conversation reminded me that stewardship isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating the conditions for collective wisdom to emerge. It takes humility to acknowledge you don’t see the whole system, courage to invite others into the conversation, and patience to build direction together.
7. What am I carrying forward?
More than anything, I’m carrying forward a greater sense of conviction.
This week I’ve found myself reaching out more intentionally to people who are trying to steward positive change in the world. Those conversations have reminded me that the work I’ve been doing for many years has always been work beyond coaching individuals. Whether it be in banking, insurance, public sector or 3rd and no matter the ‘remit’ I’m given.
One of my recent clients has just taken on a global sustainability role. That achievement is theirs, but I’m proud of the part I’ve played in helping them build the confidence, capability, capacity and influence to step into it.
It’s reinforced something I’ve been feeling for a while.
The world needs more purposeful, compassionate people who are willing to convene others around important challenges and create the conditions for meaningful progress. If I can help even a few more leaders become those people, then that’s a contribution worth making.
I’m carrying that conviction into next week.
8. What shaped my thinking this week?
a) Reading of the week
Sean Conway shared a post that opened with a simple line:
“Confidence is loud. Experience is calm.”
It stayed with me all week.
I had the privilege of coaching Sean a couple of years ago, so it was a genuine pleasure to see him articulate something that resonates so deeply with my own experience.
As I reflected on my coaching conversations this week, I was reminded that one of the greatest gifts we can offer people isn’t simply more confidence. It’s helping them recognise and trust the experience they’ve already earned.
Confidence comes and goes. Experience remains.
It’s always been a key part of my work; to help people notice the foundations they’ve already built, so that they recognise the agency they have and the confident and self belief they have ‘every right’ to already be carrying. And even more so, when uncertainty arrives they have something solid to stand on.
Reading Sean’s post also reminded me to draw more consciously on my own experience. I noticed myself bringing a greater sense of calm into conversations this week, trusting what twenty - five years of leadership, transformation and coaching has taught me. Not just to ask questions that pull on, until then invisible threads, for the coachee - but also to create the opening to help more people - by being to speak, first, from what I see and know.
That felt like progress too.
b) Writing of the week
The piece of my own writing that stayed with me most this week was a simple observation:
"Culture is what happens when you're not looking because of what you did when people were watching."
The more I reflected on it, the more I realised it wasn't just about culture. It was about stewardship.
I saw it lived out in my conversation with the charity CEO. They weren't trying to control every answer or direct every outcome. They were creating a culture where people could think together, ask better questions and act in service of something bigger than themselves.
That's the kind of culture I believe we need more of.
One where leaders convene rather than command. Where curiosity sits alongside courage. Where people feel trusted to contribute. And where what happens when nobody is watching reflects what was modelled when everybody was.
Perhaps that's what stewardship looks like when it becomes culture.
The words of my brilliant brand activist friend Sara Truckel stayed with me too:
"I think real culture is about not caring whether people are watching or not. It's doing the right thing for the people who matter to you all the time."
I agree. We should do the right thing whether anyone is watching or not.
Stewardship also reminds me that not everyone has had the same examples, encouragement or courage to know what "the right thing" is or how to act on it. Leadership isn't just expecting people to do better; it's helping people become the kind of people who can.
And perhaps stewardship asks us one more question: who are "the people who matter"?
If the answer keeps growing, then perhaps that's what real stewardship is. Expanding our circle of care until we find it harder to walk past someone else's pain than to respond to it.
c) Song of the week
When Your Mind’s Made Up - Glen Hansard
FromDon’t Settle Vol. 2: Transmissions West
I’ve found myself returning to this song throughout the week.
I’ve always loved Glen Hansard’s writing, but this version seemed to arrive at exactly the right time.
There’s a quiet determination to it. It doesn’t feel loud or triumphant. It feels like someone gradually finding their footing and committing to the path ahead.
That felt familiar this week.
As Be the Waves continues to take shape, and as my thinking around stewardship, meaningful progress and renewal becomes clearer, this became the soundtrack to the week.
d) Image of the week
This quiet street at the end of an evening walk.
It reminded me that not every path needs to be rushed.
Much of this week has been about clarity rather than speed. Conversations that took their time. Ideas that have been slowly emerging over many months. A growing confidence that I don’t need to force what’s coming next.
Sometimes the best thinking happens when you stop trying to think and simply walk.
This image reminds me to keep doing that.
9. How do I want to sign off?
This week has reminded me that the work isn’t about becoming someone else.
It isn’t even about the scale of the impact I hope to have.
It’s about recognising who I already am, valuing what I’ve already been doing for many years, and bringing that into even sharper focus.
Perhaps that’s what renewal looks like.
Not becoming somebody new.
Remembering who you’ve been all along and asking who can I be in service of, such that we might all serve people, place and planet more and walk into renewal.
Question to carry into next week:
Where can I bring even greater focus to the contribution only I can make?
Until next week
If something in this resonates - or you’re carrying something you want to think through:
Just reply…