Helena Clayton Newsletter - View this email in your browser

Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the October 2026 Newsletter

I'm writing this in northern Spain.  We've just left the wild and stunning Atlantic coast of Galicia - a chunk of it walking some of the Camino Dos Faros with great food and beaches and swims - and about to head to Bilbao for our final handful of days.
 

It's been fab.  Now we have week of rain ahead. But no matter.  Because when you have a regular supply of tortilla, still runny in the middle, you'll hear no complaints from me. 

Clearing the client decks to head away for three weeks felt like I was working to the sort of hard stop that implies I'm never coming back. It was a busy time with work suddenly cranked full up.  But I did also finalise my end of life Doula website, which I'm pleased with.  Although why did I feel compelled to deep clean the fridge just hours before heading to the ferry?!  

This Newsletter has some hopeful bites in it:

- a reminder of a joyous and inspiring podcast
- a new workshop exploring the concept of 'organisational suffering' through a non-organisational lens
- how stopping might be lifesaving
- ways to get stuff done, in connection and community
- and what might be beyond The Work That Reconnects.

November will be with us soon enough. I hope you find much sustenance between now and then.

With love
Helena x

(pic: Jessica Daigle)

Extraordinary, obviously.  But somewhat unrelatable. That's the main reason I don't talk about Gandhi or Mandela in a leadership programme.  But I'd be tempted to start offering an episode or two from the BBC podcast Cafe Hope as part of the pre work for a programme.  Examples of leadership from Stockton, London, Leeds and beyond.  Yes, we might still feel these people are better / too different / more altruistic than us, and that we couldn't do what they have done.  But have a listen to a few episodes. I can recommend this one, to start with - Scrubbing Up For Sobriety. 14 mins of wonderfulness. 

(pic: Huguette Caland)

My next Substack post is up now. 

Sparked by the recent Endings and Beginnings workshop, it's about stopping.  In particular when we're the one making the stop.  A form of ending, for sure, but one with perhaps more agency on our side ... and a post that takes what David Whyte has to say about stopping as my starting point.  And then finding that Martin Shaw, Anais Nin, Mary Oliver and William Bridges also add their voices in realising sometimes it's no longer a choice to keep on doing things as they are and that it's not the end of it but the ending of it that's the hard part.


(pic: Josie Britton)

I was coaching someone, online.  As part of their check-in, they said how swamped they were. Breathless, ricocheting between one fire and another fire.  If only they could find some time for thinking time, they said.  So I said 'how about you use this coaching session for just that - you take this next hour to do some of the more strategic thinking and prep you don't otherwise have room for, and I'll silently be supporting you from over here'. So that's what we did.  I came off mute from time to time to check this was working for them.  And they scoped out a briefing paper for a big communication that was coming up. An unusual way to spend a coaching session.  But I think way more useful than any more active engagement with me. 

I sometimes use the 8am-9am Writers Hour slot from the London Writers' Salon for something similar.  Having 100 or so other people online working alongside me, 'for 50 uninterrupted minutes' really is a wonderful thing. And a productive thing. 

Telling this story to a colleague, she told me about Mindful CoWorking, and googling them also took me to FocusMate and BuckleTime.  And then I asked Claude who gave me heaps more - so plenty of these virtual coworking spaces available if it sounds like it might be your thing. 


(pic: Rachael Durkan)

For anyone interested in the work of creating a coaching culture, you might like this one day conference the Association for Coaching is running on 19 November.  I'm doing the final keynote and am just starting to think about what I want to say, which is why it's on my mind to share it here.  Let me know if you decide to go - would be lovely to meet you in person. 


(pic: Rocki Swiderski)

I imagine you already know of the wonderful work that the eco-philosopher and activist Joanna Macy led, with others, called The Work That Reconnects.  

It's a 4-part framework, each with its set of practices drawing on systems theory, Buddhism, and deep ecology. It's designed to help people process grief, fear, and despair about the state of the world - ecological destruction, injustice, climate change - and transform that pain into meaningful, sustained action.

Now, for those of you who know that work, there's a place to go beyond that. To build on it, and explore it for these very immediate times. To update it, even. 

Gwyneth Jones has created an online gathering/programme offering 'a deep dive into realignment, resilience, and reconnection for those left feeling numb, hopeless or lost as they stare into an unknown future... and what it means to stay whole and grounded these days'.  It's called What Next? which also tells you it's practical. 

Sadly I can't make the dates otherwise I'd join. Gwyneth is excellent.  But all the details you need are here. 


(pic: Yanfang Inlow)

So the workshop on Endings and Beginnings earlier this month went really well, and I'll be setting up another one for the New Year (and I haven't forgotten The Love Lab).  In the meantime, you might like the look of this new online workshop running on 4 December.  

NEW - 'ORGANISATIONAL SUFFERING - AND HEALING', free, online, 4 December

When we think of 'suffering' we tend to think of individuals.  But what if we could hold the notion of organisational suffering?  How might that help us create the working cultures we want and need, and provide the sort of places that support people and places/spaces through significant change and upheaval? 

Gemma Lloyd is a palliative care practitioner who is also a leadership coach and works with organisations. She's been thinking a lot about the links between how we end well in death, and how we might do endings well in organisations.  So in this session, Gemma will introduce us to the concept of 'total pain', a way of recognising that suffering at the end of life is rarely just physical pain.  Gemma has adapted this lens, used for decades in the hospice movement, and given it an organisational perspective.  So in this session we'll be looking at the idea of 'organisational suffering'. 

This is new thinking from a deeply experienced practitioner. I'll be alongside Gemma, co-hosting, and I'm really looking forward to it. 

All details here. 

 BOOK GROUP - FRANCIS WELLER'S THE WILD EDGE OF SORROW, free, online, 19 Oct

(almost full now)

Every so often I'm running a sort of Book Group, taking a non organisational book and seeing what it can help us with on our organisational work. The session I ran on William Bridges' Managing Transitions went well so I thought I'd do another.  I'm playing with taking a book that's not about organisations to see what it can offer those of us working in organisations.  The Wild Edge of Sorrow is about grief - because where there is change there is also loss and where there is loss, usually grief.  But in organisational life, that doesn't really get named or given room. And also rituals. 

It's an excellent book.  And you don't have to have read it to come along - I'll be introducing some of the core material as part of the session. 

Details and booking here. 

 

ACTS OF LOVE FOR TOUGH TIMES, free, online, 29 Oct

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 one is Thursday 29 October 0800-1000 GMT and we'll be looking at how appreciation and acknowledgement can help us through these discombobulating times.



(pic: Natalia Zanchevskaia)

The Grove

Planted here as we are, see how we want
to bow and sway with the motion of earth
in sky.  Feel how desire vibrates within us
as our branches fan out, promise emtanglements,
rarely touch. Here, our sweet rustlings.  If only
we could know how twisted up our roots
are, we might make shelter together - cooler
places, verdant spaces, more sustaining air. 
But we are strange trees, reluctant in this
forest - we oak and ash, we pine - 
the same the same, not different.  All of us
reach toward star and cloud, all of us want
our share of light, just enough rainfall. 
 

Michael Kleber-Diggs

(pic: Jo Barry) 

Before I left for Spain, I finished Martin Shaw's latest, Liturgies of the Wild, I loved it, not least because he's such an engaging writer.  And White Moss, a translation of a Russian novel - struggled a bit but not wanting to give up, because a friend passed it on to me.  Actually, it was very very lovely and I'm glad I stuck with it. 

And then dipping into my portable holiday library, I started with The Women, from Kirstin Hannah, pretty certain it would be a good holiday read.  It was. Super interesting about the experience of women in the Vietnam war, and rare to read about a woman's experience of living with PTSD.  I learned things.  And telling Dom about it, he said I might like this podcast episode from David Dimbleby's The Hidden Hands podcast about the experience of that war. He says it's a brilliant episode.  By which he means it makes for hard listening. I'll take a listen once I'm back home.

From there into Mother Mary Comes To Me, from Arundhati Roy. What a stunning read - took it slow from the start, wanted to eke it out.  So, so good - likely up there as one of the best books I've read.  Followed by Patrick Ryan's Buckeye because the wonderful bookseller in Waterstone's told me I had to buy it and I always do what she tells me. Great read.  Then John Lanchester's The Wall - a bit of a shocking read as speculative fiction because, as Margaret Atwood would have likely said, it's based on what's already here. 

And in the dark between waking and it getting light at 8am listening to The Wild Edge of Sorrow, as prep for the Book Group when I'm back. 

(pic: my travel library for three weeks in Spain)
 

Ran my first full-fat Endings and Beginnings workshop in London with a group of wonderful people - more to come there. A date for Jan or Feb will be in the next Newsletter. 

The day before had been some client work - an Alumni group bringing together 3 cohorts of senior women from a long-running leadership programme.  We described the day as an 'island of sanity' and it really did feel like that, in the middle of the muddle of their working lives. 

Finished a big RFQ, ready for the presentation, and turned down participating in another.  I'm serious about not taking on any more big competitive Tenders. 

And delighted to start working with a new client, joining them as their individual and team supervisor in the next phase of their work.  Scoping the role and building relationships until December - starting in slow time - a deeply welcome contrast to most new projects. 
 

(pic: the lovely St Ethelburga's at the Endings & Beginnings workshop)
 

 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. 

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