Helena Clayton Newsletter - View this email in your browser

Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the August 2026 Newsletter

So the world really does burn, and we can't decide if we're having a great summer or a catastrophic summer.  Both, obviously. But as someone wise said, we don't know what's going to happen - so let's live beautifully regardless. 

Or at least let's try to.  For me, while there was looking the tough stuff in the eyes, there was also theatre, a night of wild camping, walking with Refugee Tales, a weekend away in (lovely!) Hythe, many sea swims with more fish & chips than is decent, the first session of a new poetry course and booking a long holiday in Spain in September. Oh, and not going to see The Odyssey. 

I'll see you in September and I hope you get opportunities to live even a bit beautifully between now and then.

With love
Helena x

(pic: Sakoto Inada)

For those of you working in civil society organisations - charities, CICs and not for profits - I hope you know that The Decelerator exists.  It's there to support you with endings of all sorts.  At a time of funding issues, rising needs in your communities, difficulties getting volunteers and increased pressure on leaders and more, this is a Hotline for you to talk things through with someone who can support you and help with practical steps. 
 

It offers 'a free, confidential space to anyone anticipating, planning for or delivering organisations endings with a trained Deceleration Navigator - whether for one conversation or ongoing support'. 

And their Impact Statement for 2025 is a really useful and helpful read, no matter what sector you're in.  

(pic: Ruyijie)

When someone's intelligence and critical thinking and humour all come together it's a thing of joy.

Thank you Tim Minchin, for Storm. 


(pic: Mbugua Kimani)

I sometimes read from John O'Donohue's To Bless The Space Between Us as part of a workshop.  The piece For A New Beginning put in an appearance at the online gathering I ran recently looking at William Bridges' work on transitions.

But there are other people who have the grace and expansion to be able to bestow blessings.  Here's Glen Hansard, who died last week, with his blessing for us, Winning Streak. 


(pic: Kerstin Lundberg-Stenman)

The birds in my local park now hear me asking in Spanish for directions to the restaurant Bolivar and telling someone that no, I only have 200 pesos but I have more in the hotel.  I've started to learn Spanish for a September holiday via 30 mins daily with Pimsleur.  It's a listen-and-repeat approach to learning, slowly building and done best as a daily habit. Like a couch-to-5k for language learning

And now there's a similar approach to reading.  I know, bear with me. 

In a bygone age, I might have asked participants on a leadership programme to read a book, something way too big of an ask these days.  We're hearing that students pitch up to University never having read a whole book and struggling with the attention to read them once they're there.  And most of us recognise our fragmented attention span these days, when reading something long form.

So take a look at this article from Naomi Alderman about her couch-to-5k approach to (re)building a reading habit, slowly extending our capacity to read for longer and (re)build a life sustaining reading habit.   We can't wait for the tech giants to help us with getting off our phones, but we can start to do what we can for ourselves.

And it's not just for our personal reading pleasure.  Alderman quotes someone who argues that 'when we’re not reading, we’re increasingly unable to follow complex arguments and find the problems with them. We tend to be more swayed by cartoonish figures with simple slogans we can repeat. We will believe gossip and treat it seriously rather than thinking through the intellectual ideas behind politics or business'.  So pick up that book, peeps - it matters :-)

Meanwhile, back to my pesos ...


(pic: Mary Lovelace O'Neal)

One of the things about change is that it generally comes with a good sized barrel of emotions. Sloshing around in there will likely be delight, joy, relief, anticipation and excitement.  And also in there is probably grief, loss, anger, despair and regret.

The emotional life of change is rarely given room in organisations.  And very rarely grief.  It's considered taboo and, a bit like I found in my research exploring love in organisations, grief is considered to be a personal and private thing, not for the public domain of work.

So given that the no-charge pop-up session I ran on William Bridges' book on Managing Transitions went so well the other week (keep an eye out on LI - I'll run another one soon) how about I repeat that idea and we take a look at someone's take on grief and see how it might help us understand and perhaps work with the grief that exists in organisations?

Francis Weller's Wild Edge of Sorrow will be our doorway.  And the 90 min session will be on Monday 19 October 1530 - 1700.  You can reserve your place here. A free event - no charge for this. 

You'll hear about Weller's the five gateways to grief and how connecting with our grief helps us connect to our joy and love as well as to other people.  You'll also get some other references along the way from other related grief sources I work with. And we'll keep coming back to how this helps us do endings well in organisations. 
 

If you've read the book and want to discuss it with others, come.  If you've never read it but would love to learn about what he says, come.  And if you have time to read the book ahead of the session, do that - the more people who bring their take on it, the richer the exploration. 

(Pic: Mary Pym)

ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS 18 Sept, in London

Final call for this workshop.  A chance to consider how we can make endings good ones by drawing on what palliative care and the role of an end of life doula can teach us, how we might work with ritual to create movement and release stuckness, recognise the complexity of emotions during endings, and remind ourselves that most of the lessons we need to learn to do endings well in organisations come from nature. 

Details and booking here.  And there are 50% price tickets for anyone who feels that the full price is a bit out of their reach at the moment. 

ACTS OF LOVE FOR TOUGH TIMES online, free

The next Acts of Love for Tough Times workshop explores how a loving response is the only sane response to these challenging times we're in.  The next ones are Thursday 20 August, 4-6pm BST and then Sept 15 0800-1000 BST. 

There's always a great group of people - many regulars with a steady stream of new people too - and I'm certain you'll find a heartful space for reflection and connection. 

(and by next month, I'll have a 2027 date for The Love Lab)

How to Build an Owl

1.     Decide you must.

2.     Develop deep respect
        for feather, bone, claw.

3.     Place your trembling thumb
        where the heart will be:
        for one hundred hours watch
        so you will know
        where to put the first feather.

4.     Stay awake forever.
        When the bird takes shape
        gently pry open its beak
        and whisper into it: mouse.

5.     Let it go.

Kathleen Lynch

(pic: Merab Abramishvili) 

Finally (finally!) finished, The Subtle Knife, the third in the His Dark Materials, which good but could have done with being at least a third shorter - it just went on and on.  The Women's Prize for Fiction winner, The Correspondent, from Virginia Evans, busted my assumptions that it would be twee and sentimental - I loved it.  Sarah Parry's Death of an Ordinary Man was a powerful and deeply loving non fiction read about the death of her father-in-law. 

And I'm working my way through Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost.  I do love how she thinks on the page even though I don't always understand what she says. I'm reading this with an online book group - we read a book in chunks which I like. 
 

A London day to support a client and their team 'gather round' to mark a moment of transition for them as an organisation. The day gave space to consider 'who do we want to be' as well as look back to the past and honour its gifts, and decide what they want to leave there and what they want to take with them. 

An interesting conversation with a long-shot potential client about what they might do re some leadership development for very senior people.  It's always good to be able to say, very clearly, things like ... make it elective; use no PowerPoint at all (or as little as you can possibly manage); as a non-negotiable, find a venue with heaps of natural light and lots of outdoor space; build in poetry, music and time outdoors; make it dialogue and conversation based;  don't use psychometrics but use other less diagnostic approaches for people to know themselves and each other; cross pollinate with other functions; building 'looking outside the organisation' ... 

A heap of project management to set up some new work. And a new RFQ arrived which is really testing my decision to do things differently and stop doing some kinds of work.  Do I bid for this, or not?  Still undecided.  

(pic: MJ Scandin)
 

 If you enjoy this Newsletter, please do consider spreading the word and sharing it with others who might appreciate it.

Helena x

helena@helenaclayton.co.uk
07771 358 881

And 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. 

Join me on social media

Copyright © 2026 Helena Clayton Consulting Ltd, All rights reserved.
Your are receiving this email as a subscriber to Helena Clayton Consulting

Our mailing address is:

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.