Wellbeing Is Not a Perk
For anyone who has to decide what to cut this year.
The exit interview blind spot
A familiar scene plays out in leadership teams every year - a capable, committed colleague hands in their notice, and senior managers are blindsided.
At the exit interview, the feedback is uncomfortable. The departing team member speaks about chronic exhaustion, feeling unheard, and burning out under an unmanageable workload. The leadership team may be completely baffled. From where they sit, they worked hard to protect staff support and keep them in jobs despite difficult funding cycles. They point to the lunchtime mindfulness sessions, the employee assistance helpline, and the subsidised health and fitness memberships. They invested money and good intentions into those benefits, yet their best people are still walking out of the door.
This disconnect happens because nobody joined the dots between working conditions, structural pressures, and actual human wellbeing. Leaders often assume that providing these tools fulfills their duty of care. But when staff are routinely carrying the emotional weight of frontline work, absorbing vicarious trauma, or operating in under-resourced services, a class or an app doesn’t balance the ledger.
Your body knows before you do - using body wisdom to support difficult conversations
For anyone with a conversation they have been putting off.
The Conversation That Went Wrong
Recently, I found myself hooked into a political argument at the pub. Someone expressed views I found distressing, and almost immediately, my awareness went out of the window. The sudden feeling of being unsafe had me holding my breath and feeling spaced out, before moving straight into fight preparation.
I have spent years in embodiment practice, working consciously with physical sensations and body awareness. I teach people how to re-regulate their autonomic nervous system, the network that manages our involuntary stress and survival responses, so they can communicate from a grounded place. Yet here I was, reacting with emotional impulsivity and waiting impatiently to speak, stuck in hyperarousal.
ADHD and masking: what it actually costs
For anyone diagnosed later in life, and still working out what it changes.
Someone on a training course once told me that I’d never be taken seriously if I continued to move my hands like that when I talk. For the rest of the course, I grudgingly sat on them or kept them as still as I could.
I've thought a lot about that comment in the years since being diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve reflected on what was actually being asked of me. It wasn't that I should communicate more clearly - I don’t think anyone was struggling to follow me because I talk with my hands. What was being asked was that I ‘tone it down’, so that the people watching would feel more comfortable.
Masking, or taking up less space in order to fit in or be 'taken seriously', is more about others' comfort than the needs of the person wearing the mask.
The fizzy bottle: how safe does it feel to lift the lid on ‘fizzy’ emotions and sticky subjects?
For leaders sitting on something their team hasn't said out loud yet.
Bottling up emotions and unsayable words can risk a build up of stress that leads to explosive conflicts, burnout, health problems and more. I’m interested in how we can take the same approach we would use with a shaken up fizzy bottle – unscrewing the lid slowly, carefully, and a little at a time.
‘Nothing about us without us’ – addressing tokenism, conflict and exploitative practice in work with experts by experience
For anyone commissioning or running work with experts by experience.
I recently heard a young adult involved in service design describe what it felt like to be brought into consultation meetings with senior leaders: she called it being asked to ‘put on the show’.
She was referring to the familiar request to share personal stories on demand: talk about the impact of the hardship she had faced, recount private struggles to a room of professionals, or provide emotional resonance for decision-makers.
Involving the people closest to a social issue in designing, delivering, and evaluating services – often described as ‘co-production’ (collaborating as equals with service users) or working with ‘experts by experience’ (people whose authority comes from having lived through the challenge) – is now fairly standard across social services, public bodies, and charities. When done well, it shifts institutional power and leads to services that make a real difference.
And yet, after twenty years in participatory work, I see the same systemic pitfalls recurring. Co-production fails in five predictable ways - here they are, with counter measures you can actually implement.
Essential Skills for Socially Conscious Leadership - Using the Seven Cs Model to Drive Change
For leaders, managers, and organisations moving beyond command-and-control without burning out their teams.
The flaw in technical promotion
In many parts of the working world, there has been a noticeable shift away from top-down, command-and-control management towards more collaborative, socially conscious leadership. Yet for some decision-makers, this evolution is still viewed with suspicion – dismissed as a soft, optional extra or a recipe for decision paralysis.
In practice, leadership development still tends to follow a flawed promotional pattern: an individual demonstrates excellence in a specialist operational or technical role, and is subsequently promoted into management on the strength of that expertise, with little preparation for the relational demands of leading human beings.
Embodied, Courageous Communication
For anyone who has frozen during a difficult conversation or felt their body lock up when trying to speak.
Reading the warning at the base of the skull
Most of us develop protective habits against feeling unsafe long before we realise we are doing so.
In somatic practice, this is often described as body armour: holding chronic tension in the musculature as a physical shield against distress, long after the immediate threat has passed. When I began working with a practitioner to support my recovery, learning to track these sensations was eye-opening. By paying attention to what my body was doing when I felt exposed, I began to see the connection between physical sensation, emotion, and action.
I learned, for instance, that whenever I feel vulnerable or anticipate conflict, the muscles at the base of my skull tend to shudder or vibrate. It is not a subtle cue. It has shown up during tense meetings, difficult personal conversations, and job interviews.
The Psychology of Voice
For anyone whose voice shakes when it matters, or who swallows what they really need to say.
When I talk about the psychology of voice, people often hope or expect to learn tactics for being heard, understood, and taken seriously, based on studies that show which pitch, accent, body language, or tone audiences best respond to. There can be real value in considering how we come across when we communicate, yet I don't offer tips and tricks that promise to endow you with an artificial air of authority, confidence, or persuasiveness. My passion lies in wholehearted, authentic communication. As a practitioner, I explore how our thoughts, emotions, and physical states shape how we express ourselves, and specialise in communication, trauma recovery, relationships, and a body-focused approach to wellbeing.
The interface between inside and outside
When I think of voice, I think about being heard, speaking out against things we find unacceptable, advocating for ourselves or others, performing or presenting in front of an audience, and the physical mechanics of speaking or singing.