Lightness - Stefan’s Week-notes 12/07/2026
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 | Lightness
1. What activities did I get up to this week?
This week felt full in the best possible way; a week of conversations, clarity, connection and helping people make meaningful progress.
A significant part of my week was spent conducting the first round of 360° interviews for a leader in a global organisation. These conversations are always a privilege. People speak with remarkable honesty when they know their contribution is being gathered with care and used in service of someone’s development rather than their judgement.
Together we explored the leader’s performance and impact, their leadership, how they work alongside peers and colleagues, and how consistently they bring the organisation’s values to life.
One of the things I value most about a well-designed 360 process is that it rarely uncovers individual themes alone. It also reveals the context in which people are trying to perform. Repeated frustrations, unclear processes, competing priorities, cultural norms and long-standing organisational habits often emerge just as clearly as feedback about the individual.
It reminded me once again that leadership isn’t simply about helping people perform better. It’s about creating better conditions in which people can succeed.
You can’t always fix something in the middle of the fire. Sometimes the priority is simply to lead through it. But once the immediate pressure has passed, the most strategic leaders ask a deceptively simple question:
What keeps repeatedly biting us in the bum?
The best organisations don’t just solve today’s problems. They systematically remove tomorrow’s.
I also spent a full day delivering a digital marketing session for a cohort now six weeks into their programme.
The heart of the day wasn’t really digital marketing. It was helping people answer four questions:
Who are you?
Why do you do what you do?
How do you do what you do?
And what is it you actually do?
Watching people gradually find the language to describe the value they create was a real highlight. It also reminded me that, long before coaching, my work in sales leadership was never really about selling. It was about helping people find clarity, confidence and belief in the value they brought to others.
Perhaps that’s been the thread all along.
The week also included a brilliant day at the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce Expo.
I came away energised by conversations across business, government, charities and social enterprise about community, inclusion, sustainability, employability and leadership.
My favourite moments, though, weren’t the planned conversations.
They were introducing people to one another.
“You two should have a chat.”
I’ve realised that connecting people has been a thread running through almost every chapter of my career. Whether leading teams in banking, building a community coffee house or coaching leaders today, I seem happiest when I’m helping good people find each other.
Outside work, Wednesday evening brought one of those rides that reminds you why you fell in love with cycling in the first place.
Darren, Jason and I headed out together, each of us finding our way back after our own setbacks. I’m nineteen years older than Jason and eleven years older than Darren, and there was a time when I would have measured the evening by average speed or whether I’d managed to hang on.
This week I measured something different.
Joy.
Watching two friends rediscover what they love brought me more satisfaction than any number on my bike computer.
The ride finished, as the best ones often do, with a fist bump, laughter and the quiet contentment that comes from sharing a simple evening with good friends.
2. What’s the central theme or thread that tied my week together?
The thread running through this week was learning to carry life more lightly whilst living with greater intent.
Again and again I noticed how much unnecessary weight we place upon ourselves.
Leaders carrying expectations formed long before they entered work.
Founders trying to be everything to everyone.
Business owners believing they must become someone else before they deserve to grow.
The reflection that stayed with me wasn’t, “What more do you need to become?”
It was:
“Can you fully recognise who you already are?”
So much leadership development focuses on becoming.
This week reminded me that growth also comes through awareness, acceptance and recognising our existing agency.
Perhaps meaningful progress is sometimes less about adding more, and more about carrying less.
3. What moments lit me up this week?
A conversation with an extraordinary practitioner working in psychology, systems and self compassion.
Listening to them describe the evidence behind self-compassion and compassionate systems was genuinely energising.
Although our disciplines are different, I was struck by how closely our thinking aligns.
Their research reinforced something I’ve increasingly come to believe.
Human flourishing is shaped not simply by individual effort, but by the conditions we create around people.
It also sits beautifully alongside my belief that stewardship begins with ourselves before extending into teams, organisations and the wider systems we inhabit.
4. What did I wrestle with this week?
I found myself wrestling with where my contribution belongs.
For a long time I’ve wondered whether I should dedicate myself to one sector.
Increasingly I think my contribution isn’t sector-specific.
It’s helping people, teams and organisations create the conditions in which meaningful progress becomes possible.
Three years after returning to coaching and advisory work, that clarity feels much more settled than it once did.
One comment particularly stayed with me.
Someone admitted they still weren’t entirely sure what I do.
It was helpful feedback.
I can articulate my purpose.
Now I need to articulate my offer with equal clarity.
5. What personal moments felt significant this week?
Turning fifty in six months has quietly become a marker in my thinking.
Not because it feels like an arrival.
Because it feels like the beginning of a new chapter.
This week also reminded me how much joy I’ve intentionally created in my own life.
The depth is still there.
Life will always have waves.
But I’m noticing more light dancing across the surface than I have for many years.
That feels worth celebrating.
6. Where did I see stewardship in practice this week?
I saw it in Alex’s vision for Citizen Hub.
What struck me wasn’t simply the ambition.
It was recognising that his role is changing from doing everything himself towards creating systems that allow others to thrive.
That feels like stewardship.
I also saw stewardship through my conversation about compassion.
It reinforced that stewardship begins internally.
The conditions we create within ourselves shape the conditions we create around others.
Whether we’re leading individuals, organisations or communities, stewardship is ultimately about creating the conditions in which life can flourish.
7. What image and song captures the feeling of this week?
A photograph taken from Bonchurch Beach.
The foreground blurred.
The present in focus.
The horizon gradually emerging.
For me it became a picture of past, present and future existing together.
Honouring what has been.
Seeing clearly what is.
Moving hopefully towards what might become.
The work I do individually and as a collective through Be The Waves.
And the song? 15 by Radiohead. Not because if the lyrics but rather because it connected a photo to a year in a wonderful conversation this week.
8. What did I notice beneath the surface this week?
Across different conversations I sensed a growing willingness for leaders to acknowledge that many of today’s challenges are systemic rather than organisational.
People are gathering.
They are talking honestly.
But many still leave asking:
“What next?”
Perhaps the missing step isn’t awareness.
It’s exploration.
The space between recognising a problem and deciding how we might respond together.
That feels like fertile ground for stewardship.
9. What am I carrying forward into next week?
A growing sense of momentum.
Next week includes work with Future of Greater Manchester and Leaders Plus exploring trust, motivation and performance.
Beyond those commitments, I feel increasingly drawn towards creating the first Be The Waves cross-sector forum.
A place where leaders from different worlds can explore shared challenges, shared responsibility and shared agency together.
That ambition feels both daunting and deeply exciting.
I often describe myself as “deluded enough to think I can” - because the scale of the challenges we face can feel overwhelming.
Yet perhaps it isn’t delusion at all.
Perhaps it is courage.
The willingness to follow something that matters, even when the full pathway is not yet visible.
10. What writing flowed from me this week?
Most of my writing energy went into continuing to develop what has become the fiftieth version of the book I’ve been carrying for years.
Whether it is ultimately called Meaningful Progress or Stewardship, the themes are finally beginning to settle.
Agency.
Forum
Stewardship
Human performance.
Systems.
Responsibility.
The conditions we create for people, places and the planet to flourish.
It feels close to the point where I need to stop refining it endlessly and start sharing it with the world - or at least an editor brave enough to read version fifty!
11. How do I want to sign off this week?
Someone said to me this week:
“You’re as deep as the sea.”
Perhaps they’re right.
I’ve swum some deep waters.
But what I’m noticing now is something equally important.
There is far more joy.
More friendship.
More laughter.
More purpose.
The depth hasn’t disappeared.
There is simply more light dancing across the surface.
I’ll happily drink to that.
And perhaps to an England World Cup victory too. It might not always look entirely convincing… but we’re still in it. 🙌
12. What thought or question do I want to leave myself (and others) with?
A question which made me smile.
Who am I to think I can’t?
So often we doubt ourselves in a moment or a setting, i like challenging myself with care.
And this question is more about inviting a deeper thought process - What makes me so certain that I know my own limits?
What gives me the confidence to believe I’ve already decided what I can and can’t contribute?
There’s something almost amusing about it.
In those moments of doubt, am I really saying I’m wise enough, clever enough or certain enough to know how my story will unfold?
Probably not.
Perhaps there’s a strange kind of ego hidden inside self-doubt - the belief that I somehow know, with certainty, what I’m capable of and what I’m not.
The truth is, I don’t.
So perhaps the invitation isn’t to become more confident.
Perhaps it’s simply to become a little less certain about my own doubts.
I’ll carry that into next week.
And perhaps you might too.
Until next week. 12
If something in this resonates - or you’re carrying something you want to think through:
Just reply…