Lion- Stefan’s Week-notes 03/05/2025.
Inspired by the weeknotes of friends and coachees including John Fitzgerald, Steve Messer and Nour Sidawi - I thought I'd give it a go.
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 of 6–12 May
Some weeks feel like building. Others feel like shaping. This one felt like both.
Structures are settling. Intentions are surfacing. And the balance between movement and meaning is starting to feel more like a rhythm than a stretch. Here’s what emerged, echoed, and stayed with me:
1. What Went Well
Secured a new programme of team coaching with a charity CEO and their leadership team, with plans to culminate in a facilitated board session at year’s end. It feels aligned - important work, well-timed. I’ve also opened the diary back up for ‘travel for work’ after a year of focusing on endurance racing. This is the test now: how fit can I stay while the work stretches its legs again?
You can read more about my team coaching here.
2. What Lit You Up
I’m in the very initial stages of scoping a 2 day “Ride With Purpose” retreat - balanced, real, co-owned. I’ll star more when I can but let’s say we aren’t just planning a ride and workshops; we’re creating a rhythm. It’s lighting me up to combine a love (cycling) with a deep personal passion (coaching). If we pull it off, it won’t just be a retreat—it will be a reflection of everything I care about: movement, meaning, and helping people lead with congruence. It feels like something that could ripple.
3. A Conversation I Can’t Stop Thinking About
A conversation with —a brilliant, big-hearted leader who recently made the leap to set up her own business - has stayed with me. She described the shift she’d made between two sessions: from being tangled in a chaotic mess to seeing her way through it with renewed clarity. But what moved me wasn’t the strategy—it was the expression that she’s never been able to be so open about what she feels and is facing into. Always hiding behind a veneer of ‘it’s ok’. She’s awesome and she concluded our session with “This has been amazing,”.
We have more sessions to work through but we’ve agreed because of where she is in her business lifecycle that we will act as thinking partners for one another. It’s a reminder that no matter how good we are at helping others, we all need places to be held.
4. Something That Shifted
Something’s crystallised this week: I’m no longer just offering a service - I’m building a body of work. A coaching arc that runs from Wave 1 to Wave 8. One-off sessions, workshops, retreats, events - all shaped by the same current. What connects them isn’t format, but intent: to create waves. To support good people to lead great things—fully empowered, confident, and on purpose. It feels like the shift from coaching practice to coaching movement.
I’ve still a little more thinking to do and iterations to make in that space - but I’m getting there and looking forward to sharing more with you. I think, like me, you sense it.
5. Something I’m Wrestling With
Am I the CEO of my own organisation - or the steward of an orbit that supports others to lead movements of their own? It’s a live question. I keep circling back to the tension between being at the centre and creating space.
I find myself holding the same questions I often offer to clients:
What’s yours to lead—and what’s yours to liberate?
What’s the minimum structure needed to unlock maximum flow?
Are you building a business, a platform, or a pattern?
I don’t need an answer yet. But I do need to keep asking.
The most important thing to me is that I help to drive the changes we need in this world.
6. The World at the Edges
There’s a shift I’m sensing - not loud, but undeniable. More leaders are naming their fragility. Not as weakness, but as truth. The old armour doesn’t fit anymore, and the systems around them are slow to catch up. At the same time, I’m hearing the quiet rise of boldness - leaders are asking better questions, not just faster ones. Choosing alignment over urgency.
It feels like we’re on the edge of a different kind of leadership - one rooted more in congruence than control and one which is slowly realising that direction and clarity is not control; it’s actually freeing.
People need clarity. Even it’s just to agree what we need to work on and do today; I think we’ve been in danger of forgetting that - thinking circular conversations are collaboration and being a facilitative leader.
It makes me mindful of this quote - “What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.” Haruki Murakami - when leaders open their hearts they often realise that they and their people are in need of clarity. Admitting you don’t know but that you’re confident you can build it together is leadership. Finding that clarity together is coaching.
7. Look at This
The sea again. Evening light. Still but not static. I captured it on a walk with Vera and Will - 20:02. It stopped me mid-scroll later that night, and I just sat with it.
Earlier in the week, I’d shared the image and a poem on LinkedIn and the wonderful James Cook responded: “What a beautiful calm scene, the night sea holds a vast presence, stirring and unseen, resonant and attractive.” I’m finding that he has a wonderful way with words.
Here’s a few words from the poem I wrote to accompany the image:
“…the sea softens into silence…
The tide asks nothing now.
The sky holds the last light gently.
You are here,
and that is enough”
Happy Saturday folks.
8. Word I’m Carrying - Lion
Lion.
It means courage to me. In my first senior leadership team, my boss used to call me “cub.” It was affectionate, maybe even aspirational. And somewhere inside, I held a quiet image: one day, I’ll be the lion. When I think of myself that way now, I feel bold - not arrogant, not dominant, but present. Protective. Purposeful.
As George R. R Martin said “A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinion of sheep.” but I would add - ‘he’ should concern himself with the opinion of a lioness. For the lion would be nowhere without them.
We need more recognition of the place of women and compassionate men in this world; we can all be lions.
This week I said to a female friend and leader “you are a lion” - she smiled, she felt it, it spoke to her. Maybe we need more people to feel that way too.
What if we could all spend one day as a lion; here’s a song that speaks to that for me.
9. The Question That’s Asking Me
Who are you at your best?
Not your busiest. Not your most productive or polished. But your truest.
It’s been echoing this week—not just for me, but in conversations with leaders who are tired of performing strength and are ready to embody it.
Because if more of us lived from our core - values-aligned, truth-speaking, not ruled by id or superego and the attempts of our ego to sort ‘it’- this planet would already be thriving.
This question isn’t about energy. It’s about integrity.
And maybe that’s enough.
10. What I’m Grateful For
I’m grateful for great friends, my clients, and my past.
Not as a throwaway line - but as a truth. Without them, I am nothing.
Friendship holds me. Clients challenge and inspire me. And my past - however messy, brilliant, or painful - has shaped the soil I now grow from.
Psychologist Dan McAdams describes this as narrative identity - the weaving of past, present, and future into a coherent story that gives life meaning. Gratitude, then, isn’t just an emotion. It’s a form of authorship.
And I’m thankful to be the kind of man who still keeps choosing to live fully.
11. Where I’m Rooted (A stream)
I am rooted in integrity and imagination.
I live at the edge of what is and what could be—where cadence matters more than chaos, and presence matters more than performance.
I am rooted in rhythm - waves, arcs, rides, and real conversations.
In helping good people lead great things—not by pushing, but by holding, challenging, and believing.
I am shaped by the past but not defined by it. Grounded in relationships, reflection, and the quiet belief that leadership is sacred work.
As I once wrote: “The tide asks nothing now. The sky holds the last light gently. You are here, and that is enough.”
That’s where I’m rooted - in the enoughness of being true.
12. What Am I Reading?
I’m currently reading The Plant-Based Cyclist by Nigel Mitchell which I was told about by the fabulous Dr Claire Day and who has an amazing podcast called “In a Nutshell” with Dr Daisy Lund.
As someone who’s 99% plant-based, this isn’t about joining a trend - it’s about aligning with what feels right for me, the planet, and my performance.
As an athlete, it supports recovery and energy. As a 48-year-old man, it supports clarity, heart health, and longevity. It’s not about restriction—it’s about informed choice.
Rich Roll says it beautifully:
“By eating nothing but plants close to their natural state, I lost weight quickly and responsibly. My skin cleared up. My mental acuity sharpened. My sleep improved and my mood elevated.”
And more than that:
“Embracing a plant-based lifestyle didn’t just repair my health. It was the key that unlocked my heart and allowed me to discover, embrace, and unleash a better and more authentic version of myself on the world.”
A “better and more authentic version of myself” - I’ll take that (and party)
Last Words
This week was full - not just with work, but with meaning. I’m building, but I’m also pausing. Listening. Holding. And somehow, in the middle of all that, I’m remembering that who I already am might be exactly what’s needed.
Remember; a thriving planet is worth it and we all need you.
Stefan
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For now; thank you
I am…
An executive coach who specialises in helping good people lead great things.
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