Family - Stefan’s Week-notes 12/10/2025
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 - Family: Oceans Coming Together
Some weeks bring clarity through movement, others through return. This week was about both - coming home, in every sense of the word.
Family this week meant more than blood - it meant legacy, values, and the people we choose to walk alongside.
What’s the central theme or thread that tied my week together?
Family.
What moments lit me up this week?
A return to the Midlands to celebrate Mum’s 70th birthday - time with her, my brother, and my sister-in-law. There was laughter, warmth, and a quiet undertone of emotion. Dad would have been 80 this month too, so there was a sense of him being there in the spaces between us.
Mum still insists on feeding everyone twice what they can eat, and I still don’t say no.
In work, a different kind of family began to form - the early shape of a coaching team, with our first role already secured. And back home, a weekend sleepover for Will and his mate Harry, with Vera joining in - the flat alive with the sound of kids, stories, and late-night laughter.
What did I wrestle with this week?
Tension.
With some family members who live at arm’s length from Mum and me - relationships that ask for compromise I’m no longer willing to make. I’ve realised that sometimes the step you have to take is away, not toward, when the cost of closeness is the erosion of values.
And in work, the tension of letting coaches know they hadn’t secured a role they’d applied for as part of my work as founder of Be The Waves. Those conversations matter - honesty and care aren’t opposites, but holding both still takes its toll.
What personal moments felt significant this week?
Seeing Mum again, at 70, strong and steady. It reminded me of where I come from - and how much of who I am was formed long before I realised it.
In work, it was finding my words again through two separate provocations about the word stewardship.
‘To me, that sounds paternal and about holding the status quo, rather than building the future’ came one.
“I’m not sure on the word” came another ‘but I do see that we are talking similar principles’.
Both made me pause. I found myself interrogating the word more deeply - what it means, what sits beneath it. And until, at least, I have formed the first circle of stewards it will stay.
For me, stewardship is asking the questions that connect us back to the values we root ourselves in.
In one hand: people, place, and planet.
In the other: past, present, and future.
And in the heart: equity, care, courage, and contribution.
For me, stewardship is a blend of the light sides of the maternal and paternal and two other energies I’ll come to another time. It’s also about creating space, consistently, around the question - is this still serving us and our future? if so how, if not, how do we change that?
Beyond this, this week made me realise that as I speak the words out loud, I’m not defining something new in stewardship - I am tracing the map of what Mum and Dad had already modelled.
Late this week, Mum and I talked about work and what it means to steward:
Me: “Do you think they should rock the boat sometimes?”
Mum: “When workers haven’t got safety, there’s no safety in mind. Even if it rocks the boat they should step in.”
Her answer was simple and moral: yes - when people aren’t safe or cared for, step in. Stewardship, for her, means acting even when it’s unpopular.
I turned our fuller chat into a blog. You can read more here.
Where did I see stewardship in practice this week?
It wasn’t something I directly saw - more something I felt: a collective stirring. The conversations around reform, responsibility, and leadership feel louder. The undercurrent is shifting.
That sense also came through in a brilliant exchange between Amol Rajan, Beeban Kidron, and Jim Ang on the Radical podcast - which I later referenced in a conversation on civil service reform with Professor Barry Hooper. We explored the metaphor of the smartphone: the operating system and software versus the hardware of change. We ended with the words, “Maybe it’s not a factory reset we need, but a wiser way of governing - both the updates and the act of governing itself.”
I also saw stewardship in conversations and linkedin exchanges with Camilla Young, Jennifer Grant and Ben Whitaker - to name just three. Working in the now for a better tomorrow.
What metaphor or image captures the feeling of this week?
Oceans coming together.
Different tides, different temperatures, but all part of one whole - meeting, mixing, moving as one. It’s what family is too: distinct lives, shared waters.
What did I notice beneath the surface this week?
A gentle rising of provocation and challenge - not hostility, but energy. More voices speaking up, more opinions on civil service reform and on leadership that serves the many, not the few.
And in me, a call toward political reform - not as an abstract wish, but a stewardship question: how do we ensure the system itself still serves its people?
It stirred both pride and discomfort - the reminder that reform begins in the same messy space where family conversations do: between love, truth, and limits.
I’m mindful again of the words of Baroness Beeban Kidron, who said:
“Our job is to make sure the future is fit for our children, not just our children fit for the future.”
Those words land deeply. For me, stewardship is about ensuring our children remain capable of interrogating innovation and transformation - so that these forces serve people, place, and planet. It’s about shaping a future that is not just inherited, but consciously created; one that serves the next generation, not the other way around.
What am I carrying forward into next week?
A sense of direction - a clearer sense of where stewardship is needed, and how to help shape it.
I’m taking that clarity into next week’s planning session for Be the Waves - to ask where we, as a coaching family, can create safety that allows boldness to rise.
And maybe a renewed sense of family - at home, in work, and in the wider systems I care about.
How do you I to sign off this week?
With the reminder that unity and focus are never accidental. They’re built, maintained, and chosen - again and again.
“The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.” said Aneurin Bevan and family, in every sense, depends on that.
Like oceans meeting, family holds its shape through movement - not in spite of it.
And that for me, is the role of stewardship.
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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