Stewardship - Stefan’s Week-notes 14/12/202
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-notes – Stewardship, Responsibility, and Being You
This week’s notes reflect on stewardship, responsibility, and the ongoing practice of bringing more of myself into the work. Across coaching, transformation conversations, writing, and personal moments, a clear thread emerged: leadership isn’t about avoiding responsibility, but holding it with care, judgement, and humanity. Beneath the busyness, this was a week about recognising what happens when all parts of who we are are allowed into the room - and how much more alive the work becomes when we lead from there.
1. What activities did I get up to this week?
The week began with a supervision session with my coach, circling some important questions – who am I, and how do I bring more of me into the work while keeping responsibility in the right balance. A grounding place to start.
I set up a 360 conversation with a comms director and their line manager – exploring the story being built, how visible it is, and how deliberately it’s being shaped.
Then two days in London. Online coaching from a pod with a digital transformation director, focused on cadence – starting slow so we can go faster later. Alongside that, meetings with Public Digital, supporting people whose job is transformation to look at their own leadership and change needs. Having someone apply our own skills back to ourselves is a gift – I aim to be that gift, just as they are to the systems they help transform. The executive coaching I’ve done with them so far feels like a solid platform to build from.
I also met with a potential coachee who became a coachee – at a career crossroads, referred independently by two digital leaders. Always humbling. I’m excited to support a relatively new father balancing purpose, passion, career, and family.
Around all that, plenty of admin, my own reflective work reviewing transformation, stewardship, and coaching models, arranging a two-day hiking trip next week, and a lovely chat with Mum. Her first Christmas dinner out is planned this year.
“How much will it cost?” she asked.
“Don’t worry,” I said – knowing she will anyway.
2. What’s the central theme or thread that tied my week together?
Stewardship.
This week felt quietly pivotal. A piece I wrote – “In 2025 I thought a lot about stewardship” – was shared anonymously as part of Amy McNichols’ wonderful I Thought a Lot About series. What mattered wasn’t the publication, but the response.
So many people messaged to say, “This is you, isn’t it?”
That recognition landed deeply.
Huge thanks to Rosemary Evans for helping shape and edit the prose – thoughtful collaboration is stewardship in action.
What struck me most was how often the word stewardship surfaced unprompted – in meetings in London, in a client’s end-of-year update, and across multiple conversations. Different contexts, same language.
This week, others were using the word first.
That felt like a shift. A nudge to keep going – not that I wouldn’t, but we all need reinforcement sometimes.
If I had a second word, it would be digital. Not just technically, but culturally – the style of transformation I’ve always led. It’s quietly satisfying watching the next generation grapple with it, while I can breathe easy in the knowledge that the wisdom will come for them too.
3. What moments lit me up this week?
Returning to London – and meeting a dear friend who has always been there for me. The kind of friendship that doesn’t need effort, just presence.
I was also energised by meetings where my experience of leading transformation was as helpful as my coaching of it. Knowing conversations. Co-creating. Helping others navigate the politics of change. It was fun.
It reminded me that I’m pretty good at this – and that when I bring all my hats into the rm and allow myself to use them interchangeably, the work comes alive.
I was never good in a box.
And perhaps it’s time to let all the versions of me into the room and say – they work beautifully together.
4. What did I wrestle with this week?
The frustrated voice in my head.
There’s a lot of noise on LinkedIn – and I know I add to it too – but the same tired takes keep circulating. Especially around leadership, and a reluctance to acknowledge something uncomfortable but true: people still need those with positional responsibility to lead.
Leading people, place, and outcomes is hard. It carries weight. It asks for judgement, courage, and emotional labour. And in the move towards “flat” and “collaborative”, it feels like the pendulum has sometimes swung too far – responsibility becoming so diffuse that no one is really holding it.
That tension led me to comment on an HBR post this week. Not arguing for top-down control – that is outdated – but for stewardship. Leadership that holds responsibility rather than avoids it. That creates the conditions for collective sense-making and accountability.
Humble leadership works when responsibility is owned, not dissolved.
Not power over – responsibility with.
Watch this space for more writing on this and transformation soon.
5. What personal moments felt significant this week?
Catching up with a dear friend.
The past six months since Dad passed have been tough. Professionally, I’ve found the energy to be “on”. Socially, I’ve been much more “off”. Quieter. More withdrawn.
It was good to talk about that honestly. Losing Dad meant losing an outward life force I hadn’t realised I relied on so much – someone who cheered me on without condition.
We all need cheerleaders.
And this week was about recognising I’d lost sight of that for myself – and that it’s ok to name it.
6. Where did I see stewardship in practice this week?
In a coaching session with a digital transformation director.
A conversation about significant change, onboarding a whole new function, and the real tension that comes with it. The desire to have impact, held alongside an honest awareness of people’s capacity, reactions, and the need to build trust.
The careful juggling of stewardship of self, stewardship of the organisation, and stewardship of the people within it – all in service of something bigger.
I loved that conversation.
When they said “thank you”, I knew it had landed deeply.
7. What metaphor or image captures the feeling of this week?
A mug with the words:
“I accidentally became important at work and it’s ruining my life.”
Not because that’s how I feel – but because I know how many leaders do. People who didn’t seek importance, but accepted responsibility for people, place, and planet.
When leaders are undervalued, under-resourced, and pushed to deliver change too fast, the gift of leadership can start to feel like a burden.
That’s the narrative I love helping people change.
Because leadership is a gift – and while challenging, it also offers moments of meaning, humour, and pride.
8. What did I notice beneath the surface this week?
More visible, than beneath the surface – a thought bobbing along.
As someone who actively advocates for female leadership, I’ve been thinking a lot about compassionate men who are struggling too. Not those who’ve abused privilege – but those who care, who advocate for others, who accept their own limitations, and who are still trying to find their place.
How do we bring diverse voices together so it feels like collaboration, not competition? Not a battle over who has been hurt most, but a shared effort to do better together.
The pendulum needed to swing.
But I find myself asking how we stop recreating the same dynamics we’re trying to move beyond.
9. What am I carrying forward into next week?
The question: how do we do this with more ease and more fun?
And by this, I mean living a purposeful life.
For me, the answer is with others. That realisation feels like the beginning of a metamorphosis next year, as Be The Waves continues to grow.
Fancy joining?
10. What writing flowed from me this week?
Not so much written this week – but published this week.
A piece on stewardship, shared as part of Amy McNichols’ I Thought a Lot About series. A piece I wrote in 2025, but which has quietly re-emerged through the messages it’s prompted.
“What touched me most were the questions – Did you write this?”
Including one from a coachee who simply said, “Now then… did you write this?”
When the work lands before the name does, it matters.
Stewardship.
I thought about it a lot in 2025.
And I think we should think about it even more in 2026.
11. What am I reading this week?
A fabulous blog post by Amahra Spence which included these words:
"Leaders are not omniscient architects of the future. They are dramaturgs, shaping the conditions under which something coherent and durable might emerge. The task, then, is not to script the world in advance, but to ensure the frame is strong enough to hold what arrives"
Spot on. For me that's about having the wisdom and experience to help a system steward itself and we've moved away from looking for that capability and celebrating it.
I love that she used the word stewardship; but most of all - I love the passion and the practical terms upon which she’s founded this piece of writing.
12. How do I want to sign off this week?
By saying that 2026 needs to be a big year for our planet.
I’m determined to make an even bigger splash in growing stewardship for a thriving planet – helping good people lead great things for people, place, and planet.
If you’re reading this and know people across the STEEPLE sectors who are trying to lead well – or lead better – and who might benefit from support, even if they can’t quite name what that support is yet, drop me a note.
As Helen Keller said:
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
12. What thought or question do I want to leave myself (and others) with?
Be you.
The rest will look after itself.
I’m Stefan.
Who are you? And are you being that person often enough.
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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