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Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the December 2025 Newsletter

A poem of John O'Donohue's invites us to stay low to the wall and wait for the bitter weather to pass.  Aside from one icy week - which I couldn't adjust to at all -  the weather hasn’t been so bitter but the sentiment feels about right.  I’m getting ready for winter.  Staying close to the wall and low to the ground.  I’m getting a tiny bit better at tuning in to the seasonal invitations these days.

Last week I finished all my heavy lifting for the year and can now work part time until I break for Christmas. I'm taking a big break, starting 15 December and not coming back to work until 12 Jan, including my regular 4 day solo retreat.  Walks, reading, films, catching up with friends, afternoon naps. You know the stuff. 

I think the enforced pause and the massive disruption that was my hysterectomy in the summer (I think you know it went well and no further treatment needed, right?) alongside the cancellation of a big client project gave me some space and the loving nudge to rethink things.  What work do I really want to do? If I want to work less, and a bit less hard, frankly, what do I need to say no to?  What work brings me some aliveness?  So also an opportunity to have a think about all of that. 

This month, I'm bringing you:

- lots to listen to with the launch of the Love in Coaching podcast series, as well as a wonderful podcast about spirituality in organisational life
- a much (much) anticipated excellent new model for teams 
- a couple of great resources by way of challenging the idea of 'resistance to change' . 
- three events I'm running over the coming few months
- and as ever, what I'm reading and what I've been up to work-wise.
 

And so this it it for this year.  Wishing you a lovely Christmas and New Year - and I'll see you once we're through the holidays.

With love
Helena x


(pic: Mostafa Sarabi)

I’m delighted to say that the podcast series, Love in Coaching is now live.  Recorded with the Association for Coaching, each of the six episodes are a conversation about love and its role in coaching and in organisational life more widely – and then an extra solo episode where I pull out some themes and reflect on the series.

We explore (among many other things):

• How people are coming to coaching wanting to explore themselves in more depth, and focus less on the performative nature of work
• How working with love requires contracting for working differently, and a consideration of ethics
• That men and women have very different relationships with love, and that men might need men-only spaces to do their deep work
• What coaching that is loving looks like in practice
• …and plenty more.

The link to the series is here so you can follow/subscribe. It's on Apple, Spotify etc too but you get all the resources if you go via the AC website.  The first two episodes with Marie Quigley and with Clare Norman are now ready.  New episodes released every Monday - next up Craig White, followed by Amy Elizabeth Fox, Aboodi Shabi and Ian Mitchell, and then a final solo episode just with me. 

And here's a recording of the LinkedIn Live introducing the series recorded last week.


(pic: Annie Ovenden)

Spirituality in coaching and organisations  ...

Looking back, I think my very first step towards the work I do with love was being introduced to the Map of Meaning.  The model has 'inspiration' at the core of the framework, but 20 years ago when it was first being developed it had 'spirituality'.  And I had such a strong allergic reaction to that word that I knew I had to get curious.  So I took myself off to Findhorn and the world shifted slightly on its axis.  I've written about where else I learned about love (and I should update that post) but Findhorn was the start. 

So like me, like others in the Love in Coaching series, Lee Chalmers also has an interest in spirituality and its place in our working world.  In this podcast, we talked about:

- whether organisations need to repurpose themselves away from a focus on money and profit if we’re to stand a chance of love taking root in them
- how ‘coming out’ in the corporate world about her psychotherapy training and interest in spirituality had surprising results
- how after years of working intellectually (she has 3 Masters degrees) Lee’s coming to understand how the work that is really needed is work of the heart.

You can listen here. 

Lee is an executive coach of many years and works with London Business School (where we first met) and other prestigious international organisations.  She’s also an entrepreneur with an uncanny knack of putting her finger on the pulse of what’s happening around her and what might be needed in the work.   As an example, do check out Elect Her, a wonderful organisation she set up to get more women into politics. 

And also her new Psychospiritual Network, just being convened over on LinkedIn, with a huge number of people signing up. Which surely tells us that more and more of us are ready to explore 'surely there must be more to life than this'. 


 (pic: sorry, forgot to make a note of the artist)

November’s Love Lab was a complete joy last week. 22 people all up for exploring their relationship with love.  We went both wide and deep, with some profound work.  November sold out quickly and so I’m running another one on 24 April.  If you like these Newsletters, I think you’d love it.  Take a look?  It would be wonderful to see you there. 

Then a short online workshop on 6 Feb exploring Endings And Beginnings in organisational life – but doing so through some very non-organisational lenses and models.  Details here. We’re coming at the subject ‘slantwise’ (as the poets say), at a tangent, to see what new insights that might give us for our organisational work, as well as endings and beginnings in our personal and wider lives, I suspect.  It's one of things I'll be working on over the winter break. 

And then my monthly Acts of Love for Tough Times workshops, always free.  The next one is 16 December and the focus is on love-as-rest.  I’ve also added dates for January and February.


(pic: Lucille Clerc)

3 years ago,  Robert Digings introduced me to the idea while that teams (for sure) need to be high performing, more importantly they needed to be highly relational.  I've been using that phrase with the teams I work with ever since - while waiting for Robert to fully develop his model so I could use it with my clients

So it's with great pleasure I can tell you it's here.  In 2026, there'll be some practitioner training (which I'll definitely be signing up for) and more resources. But in the meantime, you can find a lot more about it on the Highly Relational website.  And also via the Highly Relational podcast where in this episode Anni Townend and Robert bring The Highly Relational Team framework to life.  For example:

How a team develops 'aliveness in action'
Why kinship matters and how it can be developed
How connection trumps communication
The ways that adventure is at the heart of relational team life ...

The framework has a richness and imagination, and a depth and a breadth that most teams models don't quite reach.  It's modern, very much a framework for these tricky times we're navigating in organisational life.

Thank you Robert, for all it's taken to create this.  


(pic: Mersuka Dopazo)

Last month, with a colleague, I was working with a group of senior leaders who are trying to effect change in themselves and the way they work as a team, as well as in the organisation more widely.  They’re struggling a bit.  And for good reason.  Understandable given the context they're working in.  

So we spent a day introducing them to their Immunity to Change, from Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey.  It’s always a useful model, right?  Allowing us to see what we're actually doing instead of what we say we want to be doing.  Revealing our deeper assumptions about what we want or need.  Showing us how we get in our own way.

This group definitely saw more clearly - and with understanding and compassion - why they might be a bit stuck.  Personally and collectively. 

The model generally goes down well - it's great for developing insight.  But I think this was the first time I’ve used it after working with a group for a year and I really noticed how much that year together meant they could be super honest with each other, and risk greater vulnerability about what might be getting in their own way.  That made a difference. 
 
A simple description is here, and the standard text/book is here.

ITC was also good because their CEO had started to use the phrase 'resistant to change' about them. And I don't love that phrase, for a host of reasons. But if you're interested in exploring the idea of resistance then I came across this the other day which I liked. The Resistance Line from Lewis Deep Democracy, outlined here in a LI post from Joshua Stehr.

(pic: Galena Pavlenko)

Den

For the pelt, harvest bushels
of dead bracken
quickened with poppy blood.

Coax forked lightning
onto a barbed wire fence to forge the teeth.
The incisors are quartz, the claws flint.

The tail is a copper beech hedge
backcombed by west winds
and tipped with snow.

The reflection of Sirius
balanced in two puddles of fresh rain
will serve as the eyes.

For the tongue,
bury raw meat for a month 
until the maggots dance.

Then, from daylight's cauldron
pour everything earthwards
flooding the chambers and lairs
and seal the kiln
with the door of night.
Into a wet morning,

out of ash and filth a fox emerges
dripping with flames,
setting the mind on fire.


Simon Armitage



(pic: Rebecca Vincent) 

A skinny list this month.

I wasn’t sure I loved Lincoln in the Bardo from George Saunders but at the same time I sort of think I did.  Lost Children Archive, randomly gifted to me by a neighbour, was also something that had to be taken slowly. And then wanting something easy to read, Waterstone's 2-for-1 gave me Wild Dark Shore from Charlotte McConaghy which was just what I needed.

In Book Group we did a book of poems for the first time – Dwell, from poet Laureate Simon Armitage.  I wasn't looking forward to it - poems about animals written for the Lost Gardens of Heligan sounded too much like a twee gift shop book.  But – and I do so love it when I am utterly wrong - they were wonderful and I kept going back to them and finding more and more there.   

The final month of heavy lifting before a quieter period, in which there was: 

 - Birmingham for some Senior team development in this, er.... interesting room.  We made ourselevs a little nest in the corner and did some very good work together. 
 - the final 2 sessions of a Leading from Love leadership programme with a global charity
 - the launch event of a senior women’s leadership programme in Defence starting later this month, my third cohort of the programme and it feels like a great group of participants
 - Module 1 of a management programme with a small London charity 
 - and of course, The Love Lab, run in St Ethelburga's, a tiny church bang in the middle of the City.  It felt good to be doing heart-work there deep in the home of extractive capitalism!



(pic: yes, sometimes we have to work with what we get ...!)
 

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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