The part I don't put on LinkedIn
The longway round.
Twelve years, three companies, one very unglamorous burnout — and the reason I take this work personally.
The morning I handed in my noticeLondon, 2018The part I don't put on LinkedIn
I was the personeveryone leaned on.Nobody asked who I leant on.
For four years I was the chief operating officer of a company that everyone told me was going to be enormous. They were right. I was very good at the job.
I was also waking at four in the morning with my heart going like a bird's, sitting in the car park for eleven minutes before I could walk in, and telling my husband I was fine in a voice that neither of us believed. I did that for eighteen months. Then one Tuesday I couldn't get out of the car at all.
Nobody at that company knew. That is the sentence I keep coming back to — not that it happened, but that not one person knew. I was surrounded by clever, kind people, and I had made myself completely unreachable.
The opposite of burnoutisn't rest. It's being known.
Why I do this
So I trained to bethe person I needed.
I didn't set out to become a coach. I set out to understand what had happened to me, which took two years, a very patient therapist and an MSc I mostly did out of spite.
What I found was almost boring in its simplicity: the leaders who don't come apart are not tougher. They just have somewhere to put the truth. One room, one hour, one person who isn't invested in their competence.
That's the whole offer. I'm not going to fix you — you're not broken, you're just very alone in a job that punishes you for saying so. I'm going to be the room.
Where the course got writtenCamdenHow I work
Three things I promisebefore we begin.
I don't do frameworks
You've read the books. What you haven't had is one hour a fortnight with somebody who has no stake in your answer.
The work is private
No LinkedIn posts about your breakthrough. No case study without your name on the approval. What's said in the room stays there.
I will tell you the truth
Kindly, and usually slowly. But I'd rather lose the client than agree with something I think is going to hurt you.
The long way round
How I got here.
Joined a twelve-person startup as employee nine. Learned to build things and hide feelings at roughly the same rate.
Promoted to COO. Best year of my career on paper. Worst year of my life underneath it.
Walked out on a Tuesday. Told everyone it was a sabbatical. It was not a sabbatical.
Trained at the Academy of Executive Coaching. Started with three clients, all of them friends who felt sorry for me.
Gave the TEDx talk. Sixty thousand people watched a woman admit she'd fallen apart. The inbox has been full ever since.
Three hundred leaders later, still doing the same job: asking the question nobody else will.
Off the clock
The rest of it, honestly.
Reading, SundayHome
Walking it offLondon
The corner tableCamdenCredentials, since you asked
If any of that landed
Then let's havethe conversation.
Thirty minutes, no pitch. You tell me what's heavy right now and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.