Helena Clayton Newsletter - View this email in your browser

Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the November 2025 Newsletter

October brought a third Spring to our garden - we've had new flowers on our foxgloves, viper bugloss, lavender and marigolds right up to the time I'm writing this, the first few days of November.  Inside, I'm quietly starting to take winter tonics and make soup and stew fruits. And I'm loving being able to draw the curtains as early as 5pm...

It's been a lovely month.  The Grayson Perry exhibition was a definite highlight, and time with Dom's grandkids too.  I’m now back in the pool and at Pilates, post op.  But wow, once you lose a lot of fitness and stamina, it ain’t half hard to get it back (well, at my age anyway).  Slow and steady will be the thing for a while yet. As the seasons turn, I’m getting back into some good TV and with many months of free Apple TV, it’s Slow Horses and the fabulous Ted Lasso all the way.    

This month, something of a theme of spaciousness.  Maybe no surprise as I'm heading into a time where work is quieter than it's been in ages, and winter is ahead. I'm planning to make the most of that... the opportunity to do hibernation in a way I've not been able to in previous years, and live a little more slowly for a while.  So here's:

- a new piece of 2025 research on spaciousness
- how just an hour of dedicated space can make such a difference
- the value of 'resting your way out of' something
- and a date for that new workshop I mentioned exploring endings & beginnings
- alongside a new Love Lab date for 2026
 

Thank you so much for being here.  And until December, I hope life offers you solace and joy in the middle and muddle of everything else. 

With love
Helena x


(pic: Charlotte Cornish)

For years, I've been popping up very ad hoc at the daily London Writers Salon 8am writing sessions.  And now, as work is quieter, I've finally taken out a paid membership.  That gives me access to many (many) writing spaces they offer through the week.  I only ever turn up for the 8am sessions but have managed 2-3 each week and that 50 min protected space to write ('you can do two things - you can write or you can do nothing') help me make great progress.  With what?  This month, it's been combinations of Morning Pages, and drafting the new Beginnings and Endings programme. Take a look and see if it might be for you?

(pic: Annie Soudain)

In about 2010, I had Chronic Fatigue and it stayed with me for about 18 months.   There was nothing I could do.  The only way to manage was to 'rest my way out of it'.  Tricky, since I didn't know how long it would last. And I wasn't known for my ability to rest!   I pulled right back on work and all physical activity.  I spent a lot of time in bed.  It did, in its own time, head off elsewhere and I slowly built back up.

In all the searching for how to manage it, there was something that really helped.  And when my husband in recent years developed an adrenal insufficiency, it was a good model to use then.  I saw it mentioned again recently in this edition of Kate Oliver's Radical Rest substack and thought I'd share it here.  

It's the Spoon Theory.  Many folks here with an invisible illness might know it.  But as Kate Oliver points out, it's good for us all as a tool to help us conserve energy and not over-extend ourselves. I'm finding it a helpful reminder as I get back to full strength post-op. 

 
(pic: Judith Bergerson)

For years, when journaling or in workshops or when thinking about what I need more of, the answers have always been the same: stillness, silence, space, solo time. These days I need them more than ever.  To slow down.  To Take a breath.  
 
But I find it pretty difficult to do.  I chose busy/doing way more often than the wise parts of me would like.

The enforced rest from the hysterectomy this summer, and then the reduction in work due to a client cancelling a big autumn/winter programme seems to have given me more of an opening though.  More space in which to practice keeping the space as space rather than filling it.
 
And then my good friend Tom mentioned that the latest work from Megan Reitz and John Higgins is exploring spaciousness.  Permission to Pause is a long read which already demands a form of spacious reading different from Instagram - but it’s worth it.  It’s good on explaining why spaciousness really matters in leadership.  And I think will be a good friend to me in helping me find more of my own spaciousness. 

For those of us who love the work of Oliver Burkeman, Cal Newport and Jenny Odell (me, me and also me) and who know the basics of Ian McGilchrist’s work but might not have read both his tomes (me) you’ll recognise a lot. 

It's good at getting home the point of how how vital is it to cultivate spaciousness as leaders because we can’t be strategic when responding to the fire hydrant of stuff coming at us all day,  and how, without space, we can only see and think narrowly.  If we can't see and think more expansively we can’t make wise choices.  And without wiser choices we can't change let alone transform.

And also:

- makes the distinction between distracted doing, performative doing and relevant doing

- offers a helpful taxonomy of conversations - Task, Learning, Meaning, Creative and Relational.  And the questions: what conversations do you mostly take part in? What type of conversation does your manager prioritise? What type of conversation would you like your manager to prioritise more?

- invites us to consider what situations, conditions or contexts enable you to access really expansive thinking?

- asks how those of us with privilege/power/agency should do what we can to make more space available to more people

- and you might want to read this report if only for the 10 Rules Of Ineffective Meetings 😊



 (pic: Sue Welfare)

'There is a bird and a stone in your body. Your job is not to kill the bird with the stone’.
Victoria Chang

 
In many ways, we’re living in times that encourage us to separate and disconnect. To push others away and to make them wrong, even silently. Harden our hearts. Fight. Cancel. Even privately.
 
We know that doesn’t serve us. None of us. Not anyone. Including ourselves.
 
In organisational life, and beyond.
 
We know it can take intentional practice to stay in connection. Even with those we know and love. And for sure, to open ourselves up to make welcoming connections with strangers. To say nothing of how we might soften our hearts towards people who we think do wrong in the world.
 
It takes intentional practice.
 
Vital practice.
 
The Love Lab in April offers a space for that. For us to:
 
- experiment with expanding and softening our hearts
- connect, and remind ourselves how important (and how easy and yet difficult) it is to keep seeing the human being in front of us
- see what might be possible if there was more softness, openness and love in the room – with people we have likely only just met
- stay super close to our humanity and remember how to create those islands of sanity we so sorely need in our workplaces and wider lives
- find ways to keep those beautiful birds alive.
 
Playful, grounded in research and practice, thought provoking and loving.

This will be the fifth time I’ve run this event and it’s always powerful, and just a bit magical.   The Love Lab in November sold out fast and so I’m adding this new April date. 
 
(It will be smaller than the the Nov 2025 workshop which has sold out quickly, so please do book if you're thinking you'd like to come - and please do share with anyone you might think would like the look of it)

(pic: Ellen Merchant)

So a new workshop in 2026 - exploring endings and beginnings in your clients and client systems, in organisational life and beyond.  

I've been wanting to run this for a while - prompted by the end-of-life doula training I've been doing and seeing how much I'm learning about death and dying that can be helpful and useful in organisational work.  So once I add in learning and application from shadow work, regenerative nature practices, systemic constellations and more ... it felt like I could offer something useful.

And Friday 6 Feb is a good time to look at these themes.  We'll be betwixt-and-between.  We'll be a few days past Imbolc, traditionally the first day of Spring - but it will probably feel for most of us in the northern hemisphere that we're still in Winter.  So something of a balance point between the pruning back of the old season and the new growth of the coming one.  

The session will give space to explore and think about:  

• your own relationship with ending and also beginnings, and how that shows up in your practice
• what's ending and what's beginning in our close lives and in our wider lives - and the extent to which we can consider a ‘small’ ending or beginning without putting it in its biggest global/mythic context
• what makes for a good ending and a good beginning - and how we might know when things are beginning or ending
• what models and frameworks support us in this move between old and new
• ‘In the beginning …’ and the importance of the stories we tell about our origin and about what’s emerging
• the emotional life of transitions and in the ways that we ebb and flow
• portals and thresholds: how we mark endings and beginnings and the role and importance of ritual in our working lives.

There's more detail HERE along with a link to book - hope to see you there. 


(pic: Julie McDowell) 

Joanna Macy talked about the importance of honouring the pain of the world. Of bearing witness. 

And at a time when we have so many ways and means of turning away, how might it be an act of love to take even a few moments in the company of other people who feel the same? And then to explore together what forms of love might be medicine for these tough times we're walking together.

The next session on 20 November will focus on hope - including optimism, dreaming and longing - and will feature the work of Rob Hopkins and Jane Goodall, as well as the words of poet Salena Godden.

The one on 16 December is also open for booking.


(pic: Richard Ballinger)
 

Like You

Like you, I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears. 

I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don't end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life, 
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone. 



Roque Dalton (tr: Jack Hirschman)

(pic: Rebecca Vincent) 

Ben Markovits’s The Rest Of Our Lives from the Booker shortlist was an intriguing read that I think I enjoyed.  'Sort-of-enjoyed' also for Maurice and Maralyn from Sophie Elmhirst.  Shy Creatures from Clare Chambers - didn't like it as much as I thought I would.  A rare run of books I didn't love, and then it shifted. Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter started slow but became gripping.  Finally The Good Doctor from Damon Galgut - excellent. 

And poetry from the wonderful Salena Godden - it's not often I read a book of poetry from end to end but Pessimism Is For Lightweights was one of those times. 

Many Exec teams want (need?) to move closer to their Senior Leadership Teams and vice versa. I've been doing a lot of that work recently and this month saw me in Chester Town Hall for a day (in this extraordinary room!) to explore some of the vital elements of working well together. 

Starting with some creative work where we explored the ways that nature and social systems came together  eg two rivers coming together, players from regional teams coming together to form a national side, winemaking and tree grafting ...

Then we looked at:

- role clarity: what's ours, what's yours - and what's shared that we need to work closely on.  This one is often right at the heart of 'confluence' work where a lack of clarity almost always creates problems down the line
- what will be the pinch points in that 'messy middle' and how might we need to prepare for those
- what do I need to say to you that, if I don't find a way to express, will bite us in the bum as we start to work more closely together
- what I appreciate about what you do and how you do it,  and what impact you doing it has on me.

Good work, done with a wonderful colleague and with group that was really ready to do the  work.


(pic: Chester Town Hall)
 

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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