Hey Reader, When I began facilitating training, for the whole of the first year I wouldn't sleep at ALL the night before each workshop. And every single morning, I was physically sick before I walked in to the room. I have an anxiety disorder, so I put it down to that. But no matter how little sleep I got, or how little I believed in myself, every time the feedback was collected, it was always the same: 100% outstanding. Every. Single. Time. Delegates from all over the country, who didn't...
4 days ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, A few years ago I was asked to coach an introverted executive at a large international organisation. She'd been put forward by her line manager. The brief was straightforward: she lacked presence. Specifically, executive presence. This is the kind of feedback I see often, and it never comes with a definition. Instead, it leaves you trying to fix something nobody can describe. When I started working with her, I found something interesting: She was highly respected - by her team, by...
11 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Two years ago I was brought in to help deliver a pilot leadership programme workshop for a large organisation. They used DISC as the personality framework - the organisation was already familiar with it, so it made sense on paper. To bring the profiles to life across the day, they'd hired actors to role play each colour. The blue was rigid. Robotic. No warmth, no flexibility, no ability to read the room. Every trait that gets weaponised against people who think carefully and speak...
18 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Over the weekend I asked a question on Threads: The comments came in fast. People saying they felt seen, that this happens to them every single day. And the one that kept appearing most, in different words, was this: I don't want to seem rude. It's clear that most introverts have experienced staying in a situation longer than we wanted to because we can't find a natural end point. The Science Here's what's actually happening when you're standing there, nodding, willing a natural...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Three weeks ago, saying yes was easy. The invitation arrived, the date was comfortably far off, and you were at baseline - rested enough that the version of you doing the agreeing genuinely meant it. You wanted to go. Or, at the very least, you thought you'd be okay with it. There was no way of predicting that the week leading up to the event would deplete your energy. So now it's the day of, and the thought of going produces a physical response you can't quite explain to the...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Dave is in his fifties. For most of his life, the question he kept asking himself was: "What is wrong with me?" He'd managed it well enough that nobody around him could see the cost. The workarounds were practised - arriving early so he could leave before it got loud, rehearsing conversations in advance, processing the whole day on the drive home because that was the only quiet time on offer. But always feeling like the weird one, never quite enough. When he found my content, that...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, "Sorry, I just need a bit more time to think about that." If you've ever said a version of this - in a meeting, to a manager, to a partner waiting for an answer you weren't ready to give - you've done something that's costing you. You've framed the way your brain works as a fault that needs an apology. Repeat it often enough and it starts to feel true. Each apology is a small deposit in the belief that your thinking is an inconvenience; that instant response is the standard and...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Picture this: Your manager catches you in the corridor after the meeting: "I noticed you didn't say much in there. Everything alright? I want to make sure you feel able to contribute." Good intentions. Terrible timing. The honest answer needs you to explain how your brain handles information under real-time social pressure, and you've got about four seconds in a corridor to do it. So you say you're fine. Or that you were listening. Or you apologise. Your manager walks off thinking...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, By 3pm working in an open plan office, my body felt like it was made of concrete. The work itself wasn't the problem. It was the environment that was relentless - the movement in the periphery, the conversations bleeding in from two desks away, the person stopping by for a thirty second question. Flow broken. Gone. And then the slow, frustrating process of trying to rebuild it before the next interruption arrived. When I was working on a project at Google, this was a constant...
2 months ago • 1 min read