Recognition - Stefan’s Week-notes 06/06/2026
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 (The Past 2 Weeks)
The theme of this fortnight was recognition. Not reinvention, but the realisation that many of the things we think we're becoming have often been there all along. It was about helping others step into the next expression of themselves, whilst recognising the convergence of my own work around agency, stewardship, service, and meaningful progress. Perhaps most of all, it was about finding the courage to fully inhabit the space we're already capable of occupying.
1. What filled the fortnight?
The past two weeks have been full of conversations about identity, contribution, leadership, and growth.
I delivered a series of mentoring sessions through the Digital Boost programme, supporting entrepreneurs and business owners. Many of the conversations came back to three deceptively simple questions:
Who are you?
Why do you do what you do?
What is it you do?
Simple questions. Surprisingly difficult answers.
I also coached a leader in the digital transformation space, exploring organisational design, strategy, values, culture, and the relationship between above-the-line and below-the-line behaviours.
Alongside that, I facilitated a half-day group mentoring session, focused on turning conversations into opportunities, overcoming limiting beliefs around visibility, gathering testimonials, and building case studies. The response was incredibly positive.
One of my coaching conversations was with a coachee who has recently secured a significant global policy and sustainability role. Together we began shaping their first ninety days and discussing what meaningful success might look like over the first year.
Week two included facilitating the first Business Growth Pathway working group for the Isle of Wight Council. We brought together educators, advisers, financiers, business support organisations, and ecosystem partners to begin exploring how we might create a more coherent pathway of support for businesses across the Island. This felt like important community work. 99% of my work is, off island and it felt like this is my way to contribute.
I also worked with a business development lead from a global consultancy, exploring how they could approach their role with greater strategic intent.
Another coaching conversation focused on helping a highly experienced collaboration expert navigate the transition from subject matter expert, into becoming a recognised sector voice.
And I closed the fortnight with a coaching session for a senior digital transformation leader in the public sector, exploring stakeholder management, culture, leadership expectations, and one of the most important shifts of all: how to empower senior leaders rather than stepping into the fray and becoming one of them - whilst also giving stakeholders what they need and the ‘whole’ whats needed.
Away from work, there was precious time with Vera and Will.
Sea swims. Rock jumps. Coastal walks. Jigsaws. Laughter.
Moments that remind you that life is not simply something to optimise.
It’s something to experience.
And somewhere in amongst all of that, I enjoyed a wonderful bike ride and catch-up with Joe Staunton, my former cycling coach. A conversation about coaching, humanity, and transformation, reflecting on the fact that we’ve both coached one another over the past year and that however much experience we accumulate, we’re still walking many of the same paths as the people we support.
2. What’s the central theme or thread that tied the fortnight together?
Recognition.
Across almost every conversation, I found myself in was about helping people step into the next expression of themselves.
A founder in the making.
A sustainability leader stepping into a global role.
A collaboration expert moving towards becoming a sector voice.
Business owners clarifying who they are and what they stand for.
Leaders learning how to empower others rather than carrying everything themselves.
And, it’s wonderfully synchronous to say that, the same thing was happening for me.
For years I’ve described myself as a coach.
And coaching remains a huge part of what I do.
But these past few weeks have reminded me that coaching is often the expression of something broader.
I’ve spent the past twenty-five years leading, architecting, and supporting transformation across individuals, teams, organisations, and systems.
Some of the most valuable conversations I’ve had recently have required me to step beyond coaching and into mentoring, strategic thinking, facilitation, and partnership.
Not because coaching wasn’t enough.
But because the moment required something different.
As I sat with that, I realised the real theme of the fortnight wasn’t becoming something new.
It was recognising something that was already there.
Of who people are becoming.
And perhaps, in my own case, a recognition of who I’ve been all along.
3. What moments lit me up this fortnight?
Without question, the moment that lit me up most was facilitating the first Business Growth Pathway working group for the Isle of Wight Council.
What made it particularly meaningful was how it came about.
The original conversation wasn’t about me presenting a solution.
It began with a simple question from a stakeholder who knew my background and asked what I thought I could offer.
Instead of answering immediately, I flipped the question.
What do you need?
That opened up a much richer conversation about the future of business support on the Island, the realities facing local government, and how we might create a more coherent ecosystem of support for growth, productivity, and prosperity. And it’s how I’ve always preferred to work.
From there, I had the opportunity to step back and think systemically.
If we were designing this intentionally, what might it look like?
How would educational support, mentoring, coaching, finance, networks, business support providers, and wider stakeholders fit together?
With Chris’s sponsorship and collaboration, I brought a sketch of that thinking to the first working group.
What followed was incredibly energising.
People leaned in. Ideas flowed. Connections formed.
And there was a genuine sense of alignment around creating something bigger than any one organisation could deliver alone.
What excited me most wasn’t the workshop itself.
It was the possibility.
The idea that, if nurtured well, this work could help shape the conditions for businesses to thrive on the Island over the next five, ten, or even fifteen years.
And, if I’m honest, it was also lovely to receive positive feedback on my facilitation again.
There is something deeply satisfying about helping a room full of highly capable people find common ground, shared purpose, and momentum. I love co-creating transformation, and this is what lit me up: taking what begins as a rough sketch - rubber, pencil, fragments of thinking - and helping a group turn it into something three-dimensional, shaped, shared, and real. That act of architecting something together has always lifted me.
Thank you to a fabulous group: Chris Brammal, Nicky Kildunne, Marnie Janaway, Georgia Iona Newman, Anthony Holt, Nisha Digpal, Joanne Jewer, Gavin McWhirter and Henry Nicholson
Here’s the Linkedin Post from Jayne Sime who had the foresite to grab a photo
4. What did I wrestle with this fortnight?
One of the most significant conversations of the fortnight happened in a forum I facilitate for leaders from different sectors.
The purpose is simple.
Bring thoughtful people together.
Create enough trust and space for them to talk honestly about what they’re facing.
Allow the group to help one another think through the challenges that matter.
What I sometimes forget is that I participate as well as facilitate.
This time, the conversation led me towards something I’ve felt for much of my life:
Injustice.
Not as an abstract concept.
But as something visible.
In people not being given opportunities they deserve.
In systems that make life harder than they need to.
In voices that go unheard.
In power that serves itself rather than the people it was intended to serve.
In potential that never gets the chance to flourish.
For years I’ve probably described the emotion attached to that as rage.
But what was fascinating was having a group of female leaders reflect something different back to me.
What they saw wasn’t rage.
They saw passion.
Passion for fairness.
Passion for people.
Passion for creating something better.
That landed deeply.
Because perhaps the real question is not whether I feel strongly about injustice.
I do.
The question is what I choose to do with that feeling.
How do I move beyond noticing injustice to helping address it?
How do I use coaching, facilitation, writing, speaking, and community building to create the conditions for something better?
I don’t yet have a neat answer.
But I am increasingly convinced that some of my life’s work sits at the intersection of stewardship and injustice.
Not simply helping good people lead great things.
Helping good people change the things that shouldn’t be this way in the first place.
Thank you to Faye McDonough for asking me to facklitate and to also say “join us in the sessions” too.
5. What personal moments felt significant this fortnight?
Of all the personal moments across the fortnight, the one that stands out most wasn’t particularly dramatic.
It was sitting down with a guitar.
Again and again.
I’ve been learning Watch Over You by Alter Bridge.
It’s a stunning song.
What made it significant wasn’t simply learning it.
It was allowing myself to spend time with somebody else’s music.
As a songwriter, I often find myself writing, creating, or thinking about songs through my own lens.
This was different.
This was about slowing down, sitting with a beautifully crafted piece of music, and learning it properly from beginning to end.
The acoustic arrangement uses a tuning that was new to me, which made the process even more enjoyable.
There was something wonderfully simple about it.
No objective.
No outcome.
No strategy.
Just playing.
Just singing.
Just appreciating the craft of another musician.
In a fortnight full of conversations about leadership, transformation, responsibility, and the future, it felt important to spend time reconnecting with a part of myself that existed long before any of those things.
Not achievement.
Reconnection.
6. Where did I see stewardship in practice this fortnight?
One moment stands out above all others.
During a coaching conversation, a client spoke openly and vulnerably about their concerns regarding the rise of the far right, both in the UK and more broadly across the world.
What struck me wasn’t the political dimension of the conversation.
It was the humanity.
There was no desire to dismiss, shame, or caricature people.
No attempt to reduce a complex issue into simple answers.
Instead, there was a genuine desire to hold compassion for everyone involved whilst also grappling with difficult questions about freedom of speech, social cohesion, belonging, responsibility, and the future we are collectively creating.
What I witnessed was stewardship in its truest sense.
Not certainty.
Not ideology.
Not taking sides.
But a willingness to hold complexity on behalf of something larger than yourself.
To ask:
How do we create spaces where people can be heard?
How do we provide agency without creating division?
How do we encourage dialogue without amplifying fear?
How do we steward a society that serves the many rather than the few?
The conversation reminded me that stewardship is rarely about having the answers.
More often, it is about having the courage to hold difficult questions with compassion, humility, and a commitment to the common good.
That stayed with me long after the session ended.
And is a reminder of why building forum ans holding forums is such an important part of Be The Waves future.
7. What metaphor or image captures the feeling of the fortnight?
The image that captures this fortnight isn’t a photograph from a ride, a view from the coast, or a workshop flipchart.
It’s a Post-it note.
A Post-it note I wrote in 2015 whilst leading in banking.
On it are the words:
"Make the cause great enough that they would come to work even if they didn’t need to."
I came across it again recently and it still grabs me.
It reminds me that many of the things I’ve been developing over the past few years were already present, albeit in simpler forms.
The language was different.
The models didn’t exist in their current format and my stewardship work hadn’t fully emerged.
But the underlying question was already there:
How do we create something meaningful enough that people want to contribute to it?
Perhaps that’s why this image stayed with me.
Not because it represents where I’m going.
But because it reminds me how long I’ve been walking in that direction.
Sometimes what looks like a new idea is simply an old truth finding a clearer voice.
8. What sat beneath the surface this fortnight?
Beneath almost every conversation sat a growing sense of convergence.
Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time developing ideas, frameworks, questions, and ways of working.
At times it has felt hard to bring verbalise them coherently; which isnt an issue when I coach because they inform questions rather than models and chapters from books to share.
Coaching, Leadership, Transformation, Forum, Stewardship, Systems, Business growth and Cross-sector collaboration.
What sat beneath the surface this fortnight was the growing recognition that I’m getting closer to bringing them together under ‘one roof’ - in the the same current.
Today, I find myself describing Be The Waves through a simple equation:
Agency + Forum + Stewardship + Service = Meaningful Progress
Agency gives people the capacity to act.
Forum creates the space to think, challenge, and learn together.
Stewardship encourages us to consider what we leave behind.
Service asks us to apply our gifts beyond ourselves.
Together, they create the conditions for meaningful progress.
What has become clearer to me over the past fortnight is the distinction between Be The Waves and my role within it.
Be The Waves is ultimately about creating those conditions collectively across sectors, communities, organisations, and systems.
My own work sits alongside that.
Helping individuals, teams, and organisations develop the capacity to contribute to it.
In some ways, I’ve been trying to work out where I fit within the thing I am building.
This fortnight felt like an important step towards that answer.
Not a final answer.
But a clearer one.
9. What am I carrying forward into the next fortnight?
Three things.
The first is becoming more comfortable describing myself as more than a coach.
Coaching remains a huge part of my work and something I care deeply about. But the past few weeks have reminded me that many of the challenges I help people navigate draw on twenty-five years of leading, designing, and supporting transformation.
Increasingly, I find myself stepping into the role of mentor, thinking partner, facilitator, and transformation architect.
Not as a reinvention.
But as a fuller expression of what I bring.
The second is continuing to shape Be The Waves as a collective movement.
The more I explore agency, forum, stewardship, service, and meaningful progress, the more I can see how they fit together and where Be The Waves can create value across organisations, sectors, and communities.
The third is creating more forums where people can carry responsibility together.
Again and again, I am reminded that some of the most important challenges we face cannot be solved in isolation.
That feels like work worth doing.
10. What writing flowed from me this fortnight?
Much of my writing over the past fortnight has circled around a single question:
What future are we trying to create?
The strongest example of that is a piece I’ve been working on about AI and stewardship, which isn’t published yet but feels increasingly important.
What interests me is that most conversations about AI begin with productivity.
How much faster can we work?
How much can we automate?
How much time can we save?
Those are important questions.
But they feel incomplete.
The questions I keep returning to are:
How do we use AI not only to amplify our intelligence, but also our humanity?
How do we use it to support people, place, and planet?
How do we ensure that technological progress is accompanied by wisdom, responsibility, and stewardship?
Different topics on the surface.
But all connected by the same underlying curiosity:
How do we create a better future, and what responsibility do we each have in shaping it?
11. How do I want to sign off this fortnight?
By recognising that so many people are trying really hard with this life.
Over the past two weeks I’ve spoken with leaders, entrepreneurs, coaches, public servants, and people carrying significant responsibilities.
Different contexts.
Different challenges.
Different aspirations.
Yet beneath them all sat something remarkably similar.
People trying to do good work.
People trying to do right by others.
People trying to build something worthwhile.
It reminded me how important it is that we allow ourselves time to pause.
Time for deep thinking.
Time to reflect on what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and whether we’re doing it in the most appropriate way for people, place, and planet.
Because in the absence of that thinking space, even our best intentions can become transactional.
And some of the most important things in life deserve more than that.
And that was why I had so much joy in helping a transformation lead think about the big rocks that need to go into their diary each quarter, month, week and day. Starting with 2 days per quarter with their leadership team. Why? because the quality of your output is directly connected to the quality of your thinking.
12. A thought or question, to leave myself (and others) with?
When are you going to fully step into yourself and recognise the space you can take up, rather than feeling bad for doing so?
Over the past fortnight I’ve spent a lot of time helping other people do exactly that.
Perhaps it’s time I fully stepped into that question again; myself.
If something in this resonates - or you’re carrying something you want to think through:
Just reply…