Helena Clayton Newsletter - View this email in your browser

Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the September 2025 Newsletter

As we tip beyond the first official day of autumn, our two little damson trees, generally offering us a meagre harvest, have finally found their rhythm after about 10 years and are groaning with fruit as we ease our way into a new season.  

My recovery post op, after a few little glitches, has settled down well now and I've started some 1:1 Pilates classes to remind my body that it can move - and my first couple of walks back on the South Downs were such treats. 

There was also the second module of my 18 month long end of life doula training, this one focusing on pain and suffering at end of life, including the concept of total pain and not just physical pain, and also how imagery and creativity - can be used at end of life. It was tiring, sitting upright all day and not being able to head back to bed when I fancied, but also deeply restorative and with a wonderful group of people. 

 This month, here's:

- a wonderful set of development cards with multiple applications 
- a fascinating documentary series that shows the influence of Freud's work / psychology on consumerism, organisations, business and politics 
- the importance of supporting people who say what you can't or won't
 - a poem for now, plus some great books.

I'll be back in October when the world will have done a few more turns with its predictability and its surprises.  Hang on in there.

With love
Helena x


(pic: Rebecca Zwanzig)

I think you know I love a set of coaching/development cards and when they come jam packed with creativity, meaty content and good provocations - and are beautifully designed and presented to boot - then they're a great coaching tool, as well as working for groups and teams. 

These are noodles, and there are 52 of them, and they each come with some fabulous animations. They're from Max Gooding and you can buy them in the link below.  I used mine the other day to help me with ideas and structure for a piece of online management development, and I'm hoping to use them to create 'development nudges' in another client project.  

Max is offering a £50 discount for the first 25 people who buy the Level 1 cards - using the code HC50 - and the link to browse/buy is here.

(pic: Kyoko Arita)

For anyone interested in people - what shapes us and how we are shaped - whether in organisations or as citizens or consumers - this is a great watch.  

The Century of the Self (on iPlayer) is from Adam Curtis and shows how the psychology of Freud came to be used and perhaps misused by organisations and corporations, politicians and governments, to influence how we see ourselves, how and why we buy things and even the democratic process itself. 

Eye opening and informative, fascinating and at times outrageous.  

(pic: Oxana Lazari)

Personally I lack courage to speak out in public on things that really matter to me - if I feel I'm going to get criticised or judged for it. Or ignored. I'm cowardly when it comes to raising my voice publicly - even when I feel shame for not doing so.

One small thing I can do though, is amplify the voices of those who do speak up, speak out and use their words and voices and platforms to do the work that I could and should be trying to do.  Marina Hyde in the Guardian the other week said that it was pointless when celebrities use their platforms to try to create change - it's only governments that can do that.  I'm not sure I agree with that. 

Not that poet Tom Hirons would go along with being called a celebrity.  Nevertheless here's a wonderful listen (and watch) for you.  It's a recording of the book launch of Tom's new book of poetry, Molok (which you can buy here).  Tom is someone who uses his voice to amplify the voices of Palestinian poets, who are in turn amplifying the voices of their people. He is someone who's committed to 'using his gob for good', as he says, in service of so much that is otherwise unspoken. Have  a listen. You definitely don't need to be a poetry fan.  You just might be someone who cares deeply. 

You could also look at Laura Beckingham on LinkedIn, who is also defiantly and wonderfully vocal about the atrocities happening around us, despite the ways that the algorithm keeps her posts less than visible.

* Molok is Tom's version of Moloch - an Old Testament god who demanded excessive and destructive sacrifices.
 
(pic: Charlotte Agar)

I'm soon hosting a podcast series exploring 'love in coaching' for the Association for Coaching, recording in Sept/Oct and released in early November.  Guests are Craig White,  Aboodi Shabi, Amy Elizabeth Fox, Marie Quigley, Clare Norman and Ian Mitchell, so it'll be good.   

Just a nudge to see if there's anything you want us to explore in those conversations?   What are you curious about?  What would you like to ask us to reflect on and explore out loud?  Topics, questions, things you think never get discussed re love and coaching ...

Please send any and all ideas and suggestions, questions, curiosities and comments to me at helena@helenclayton.co.uk and we'll build them into our conversations.

(pic: Lara Cobden)

The Love Lab is filling fast - about 3 spaces still available, though. You can find out more here. 
 

AND

Acts of Love for Tough Times in August focused on joy and and delight, and when we get together on 8 October for the next one, we'll be looking at anger.  Anger's a tricky one as we're generally raised and conditioned to think of anger as harmful, destructive and to be closed down.

But what if we can see anger not only an act of love for these tough times, but a vital life force that we can't afford to lose connection with. A means of showing that something really matters and needs attending to.  That a boundary has been crossed or that we - or others - are being harmed.  What if it's data that we can't afford to tune out? What is it's a form of love?

Our anger matters, and it serves a purpose.  Poet and philosopher David Whyte says it's the deepest form of compassion and is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here.  And Californian expressive artist Chris Zydel says anger and rage are often denigrated and terribly misunderstood - but they are an essential part of our full experience of being fully alive, whole and complete human beings. 

You can book your place here. 

(pic: Fumio Fujita)

Fool

Look at your desk,
can't you see it's had enough
of your elbows, your heard, your heart - 

break it up and feed the fire
for the Fool is nothing

if not drawn to the bright spark
in all dying things

Then let the Fool in foolish dress
make awkward gestures of tenderness

Let us in this way
be entertained in all manner
of small mercies

Let us be grateful for them
and for the Fool who is nothing
if not good

for nothing is what we're good for
nothing might be what is called for. 



Greta Stoddart

(pic: Deb Bessman Funk) 

Bel Canto from Ann Patchett was a book I read more than 20 years ago but I couldn't remember any of it despite me always saying it was one of the best books I'd ever read - so I thought I'd re-read it.  It was indeed brilliant. Long Island Compromise from Taffy Brodesser-Akner was sharp, funny, clever and poignant.  Ronan Hession's Panenka was some of those things too, my third one of his books.  

Non fiction - Lucy Easthope's Come What May was great. She's a disaster recovery specialist (think Grenfell...) and there's heaps of good stuff in here for those of us living lives with ordinary-level disasters too.  And the first third of Is a River Alive? from Robert Macfarlane (we read books in chunks for one of the book groups I'm in) was excellent. 
 

I'd planned on taking August off this year but with that unexpected hysterectomy in July, I worked part time instead.  Stopping work at 2pm each day to rest might have given me a taste for putting in more boundaries though, and is definitely making me consider how I do more of that in the year ahead. 

It's always lovely to know that as I finish one cohort of a programme, there's another one waiting in the wings to begin.  And so it was this month, with the last session for Cohort 2 of Leading from Love for a client - and at the same time sending out emails to welcome the folks in Cohort 3 starting in September.

Two new projects in the planning, both of them a continuation of work with clients I've been working with for 3-4 years.  That always feels good. 

And with a colleague, drafted a proposal at very short notice for an organisation that we didn't win. I'm ok with that - it was a long shot - and I also know that nothing is ever wasted. But did seem to fit the growing pattern of a client wanting something very (very) urgently.

(pic: my friend Renza's beetroot)
 

Please do forward this Newsletter on, if you know others who might appreciate it.  Otherwise, do let me have any feedback or reactions -  I love hearing from you.  You know where I am on LinkedIn, or connect via Email. Or call me of course. 

Helena x

helena@helenaclayton.co.uk
07771 358 881

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