The Excitable Soul

The Excitable Soul Help people feel enough! We support people to uncover, understand and unleash their sense of purpose!

One of the closest points I came to burnout followed one of the most successful moments of my career.At London 2012, I w...
09/09/2026

One of the closest points I came to burnout followed one of the most successful moments of my career.

At London 2012, I worked with three sports that went on to win Olympic gold.

The pride was immense. I felt deeply connected to the athletes, the teams and everything we had given to help create that moment.

And then came the deflation.

Physically and emotionally, I was almost empty and totally caught off guard.

I was there to serve the endeavours of others, was eager and deeply proud to play my small part, but didn't see how caught up in the experience I was. The emotional rollercoaster and commitment required to achieve what we set out to achieve.

High-performance environments become very good at asking:

What will it take to win?

We’re often less willing to ask:

What is winning taking from the person pursuing it?

I don’t think the answer is to become less ambitious.

It isn’t about lowering the standard or wanting the outcome less.

It’s about building the capacity to sustain what the standard asks of you.

Because performance cannot only be measured by the result.

It also has to include the condition of the person producing it.

So here’s the question I wish I had asked myself sooner:

Where are your results telling one story, while your capacity is telling another?

I used to dread this bit of the year.The slow shift out of summer and into a diary that suddenly feels very full. Septem...
08/09/2026

I used to dread this bit of the year.

The slow shift out of summer and into a diary that suddenly feels very full. September always seems to arrive all at once.

This year, I feel ready for it.

The summer break gave me something I hadn't realised I needed.

At the beginning of the school hols, 16 of us went to the Lakes. 8 adults and 8 kids. It was noisy and chaotic. We walked, we laughed, we shared the load and spent time together in a way everyday life rarely allows.

Then, for the final 10 days, we went to Croatia. Just my little team (wife and kids).

The pace was completely different. Deep, unhurried time together. Fully present with each other. My phone spent most of the trip out of reach, and the days unfolded without the usual pull of commitments and notifications.

Somewhere across the summer, I found my way back to what I care about. What I always care about. The reason I'm willing to give so much effort and energy to this work.

When life gets full, it's surprisingly easy to lose touch with that. You move from one commitment to the next, getting things done without stopping to ask what all of it is in service of.

This summer brought me back to it.

September is going to be a full month of delivering to our clients, but I feel a genuine sense of anticipation for what is to come and what might unfold along the way.

Meaning changes our experience of effort. When you understand what you're in service of, you meet the pace with more energy, more conviction and a greater willingness to give yourself to it.

So, before the pace picks up, here's a question worth sitting with:

Do you know why you're about to work as hard as you're about to work?

17/08/2026

Speak up more is one of the most common pieces of development feedback a leader gets.

Usually given kindly. Usually accurate. But nobody has ever spoken up more because a review told them to.

The same leader can look cautious for 2 years, then do the bravest thing the organisation has seen, because something finally mattered enough. Same person, same fear, different stakes.

The feedback names the act. It misses the fuel.

What was underneath the last brave thing you saw someone do?

14/08/2026

I’ve been sitting with this question since the end of our latest Meaningful Leadership programme...

how much of leadership is about deciding who we should be, and how much is about paying closer attention to who we already are?

When the way ahead is uncertain, perhaps we need fewer predictions and more space to listen.

Your organisation's values are probably the same as your competitor's.That isn't necessarily a problem.Many of us value ...
27/07/2026

Your organisation's values are probably the same as your competitor's.

That isn't necessarily a problem.
Many of us value similar things.

Research found that company values frequently cluster around just nine recurring categories. More than 80% of large companies publish an official set, with nearly 3/4 listing between 3-7.

But sharing the same value isn't the same as sharing its meaning.

Courage. Integrity. Respect. Collaboration.

These words become distinctive only when we understand what made them matter: the experiences that shaped them, the choices that tested them, the moments that gave them weight.

We call these meaning markers.

They help people understand what an organisation stands for, why it stands there, and what that should change when decisions become difficult.

Without meaning, values are easy to agree with and difficult to act on.

With meaning, they become something more useful: a compass for beliefs, behaviour and choices.

So perhaps the question isn't only:

"What do we value?"

It's also:

"What happened that made this matter to us?"

Values can be shared by many.

Belonging isn't created by sharing a company name. It's created by choosing to be part of something together.Every perso...
24/07/2026

Belonging isn't created by sharing a company name. It's created by choosing to be part of something together.

Every person who works with The Excitable Soul has a world beyond TES. Other clients, other projects, other places their time could go.

And still they choose to bring something of themselves here.

Which is what made our team day this month feel important.

We started with a message from one of clients, so the whole team could hear where all the preparation and the conversations and the individual contributions actually end up. It's easy to lose sight of that when your part of it is one piece of something bigger.

Then we talked about what each of us brings, and the culture we're creating together.

There were also pedalos. And ice creams. And a great deal of conversation about nothing whatsoever to do with work.

Because the depth of relationship this work requires isn't built through agendas and action points. It's built by being in one another's company with nothing to deliver.

The serious work of human connection can sometimes look gloriously unserious.

20/07/2026

Confidence isn’t a KPI.
Neither are clarity, emotional stability or a sense of worth.

But their consequences are:

Talent that stays. Difficult conversations happen. Bigger roles pursued. Complex work embraced. Leaders who can create certainty for others in the discomfort of the unknown.

Most leaders have no way of measuring what has changed within them.

This week, we closed 12 months of work with a Meaningful Leadership cohort. Two things they valued most stayed with me.

The first was protected time to work on themselves and to understand how who they are influences the way they lead.

Not another business problem to solve. Themselves.

The second was each other.

What a group creates when people see, hear and hold one another through challenging development work cannot be manufactured.

It creates a lasting bond. A place where leaders can stop performing, face what is true and find the courage to move into the unknown.

Meaningful Leadership begins with 3.5 days immersed together, followed by 12 months integrating the work into life and leadership.

It isn’t self-help. It's performance work at the level where performance begins.

One of our cohorts finished last week.We kicked off with 3.5 days in the Peak District, then 12 months of peer coaching ...
17/07/2026

One of our cohorts finished last week.

We kicked off with 3.5 days in the Peak District, then 12 months of peer coaching and mentoring together.

The transformations are colossal.

That final session is about looking back down the mountain and seeing the distance travelled, because you cannot see it while you are climbing.

So we ask them what has shifted. In their leadership, and in their lives.

The reason we do this work is that people unlock things in themselves they did not know were possible.

Their sense of self worth starts coming from a place they can actually control and influence. And their leadership impact follows. They are getting promoted, winning work, taking on projects they would have turned down a year ago, winning awards and thriving.

All sorts came out of that room. But 2 things came up again and again.

Gratitude for the space. For being given the opportunity to do work on themselves they would never have found a way to do otherwise.

And gratitude for each other. For the bond they had built, and how much it mattered.

Every new beginning coming from the end of another one. That is what this is.

The formal part is over. The community carries on. So do we.

A breakthrough and a change are not the same thing.Leadership development often behaves as though they are.A few days in...
09/07/2026

A breakthrough and a change are not the same thing.

Leadership development often behaves as though they are.

A few days in the right environment can genuinely move someone.

We see it all the time in our sessions.

A leader starts to notice what has been driving them.
What they have been avoiding.
Why the role has started to feel heavier than it used to.

They leave feeling clearer about who they are beneath the performance.

But that isn’t the outcome. It’s the opening.

Because then they go back.

Same diary.
Same pressure.
Same organisational habits waiting for them.

And that is where most leadership development quietly loses the thread.

The insight fades because it has nowhere to live.

That is why Meaningful Leadership was never built around a few powerful days away.

The immersion matters.

It opens something.

But the twelve months that follow are where the work becomes real.

The conversations they had been avoiding begin to happen. Decisions get cleaner. They stop outsourcing clarity to the role, the room, or the expectations around them.

One leader who'd been through the programme recently told me he no longer felt like he was performing leadership.

He was just leading.

That was always the work.

Not the high of the offsite.
Not the notebook full of insight that fades by Monday.

Who you are when you go back.

Because that is where change either embeds or disappears.

If you’re rethinking how you develop the leaders you can’t afford to lose, that’s the conversation worth having.

07/07/2026

As leaders we spend years learning to track what's missing.

The unresolved item. The thing not yet fixed. The gap between where we are and where we need to be.

That instinct gets the work done. But over time, it distorts how we see ourselves.

We get practised at noticing what still needs improving. And far less practised at noticing what we uniquely bring.

I'm talking about the real value only you CAN bring.

You are one of a kind. Your experiences, relationships, knowledge and skills exist in this combination in no one else, and underneath them all sits what is meaningful to YOU.

This shapes the unique contribution you make in the world. And if you can't see it, your sense of self-worth starts to feel conditional. Earned through what you achieve, never simply through who you are.

That's one of the first things we do inside Purpose Immersion.

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