Leadership as an emotional shock absorber

I know very few people who have started 2026 in an optimistic and cheerful place. I certainly haven't. I want that to change - to get back to facing things with a positive disposition and a sense of humour. It matters for me, but it matters more for those around me. Most people are more affected by the mood of others than they care to admit.

But first I have to acknowledge that wanting a more positive frame of mind does not make difficult things disappear. The world is unstable. More personally, I'm still having "fun" with health. Work is going through a difficult time of change. So that's the context - it's easy to be smiles and sunshine when everything is good. It isn't.

However these are the times when it's important to support everyone else, and one way to do that is to be a bulwark against negativity. Negative thinking is like a disease - it jumps between people until it burns out against those who resist it. Unlike a real disease, however, you can make a choice to be immune (or at least less susceptible). We do not always control what happens to us, but we do control our response to it.

At work this is particularly true. People need space to vent and they need peers and leadership to recognise reality. However, it is an often-forgotten duty of leaders to explain why things aren't as bad as they think, and show the positive route forward out of all this. This is true (especially true) even when things are, in fact, as bad (or actually worse) than they think.

There is a core leadership skill here - how do I tell this story in a positive way, while remaining authentic? The authenticity is vital else it's either a stream of mindless optimism or (worse) just "senior management spin". But there should be a rationale, and thus something constructive to say here. Why is this change being made? Why has that project been cancelled? If your starting assumption is that leadership is incompetent, then no explanation will ever satisfy you. However, in reality there is usually some logic. You may not like it or agree with it, but attempting to understand and communicate it is an essential part of leadership. This may be a bit "party line" for some, but ideally as a leader you've had a chance to speak into this situation before the decision is made. At that point, it's about how to make it work, not how to undermine the decision maker.

Obviously this is a too-broad statement. It assumes that all involved have the best intentions for the wider organisation at heart which is definitely not always true. However, in a healthy organisation this is usually the case, so it's important that we support change as best we can.

But good grief, this can be exhausting at times.

It is one thing to declare this "good leadership" - and I stand by that - but actually being that person can take a serious toll. You have to understand the detail of key changes across the org (not always easy!) then put yourself in the firing line from people who don't agree and don't want to like it. You need to be able to gently and compassionately listen to the concerns of people who are in a volatile state (upset, angry, afraid) and through conversation try to reassure and bring them round again and again. This might be in a group, which potentially has a "stand up to the mob" dynamic. Or it could be one to one, which can be even more draining if you're listening to one unhappy person after another.

For those stepping into this space, it can be the relentlessness that is actually what drives to breaking point. There aren't many senior leaders in an organisation, so the higher you rise the fewer people you can yourself talk to. If you're really trying to be a positive force, you're also attempting to support others, so potentially there is no release valve. When you're moving from one unhappy person to another, you are choosing to absorb negativity and emit something constructive. This is much harder than simply reflecting it back. It can become soul destroying getting knocked down and dragging yourself up again and again.

So what's the useful comment here? Well, it's important to recognise that this kind of engagement is an important part of leadership. It's also a different skillset, and like any other it needs developing. It is a reflex that can be honed much lower down the hierarchy than some. You may not be managing a budget, but you can certainly pay attention to what is going on around you and be a positive (or at least constructive) part of the dialogue. As individuals, we need to remember that support isn't just about reaching out to others - it's also in the microbehaviours. If we turn up to every meeting complaining, this is a drain on everyone around us. Our concerns may well be legitimate (so don't stop voicing them) but maybe bring along some good news and / or solutions. In fact, if our complaints are legit that is worse in this scenario as the boss really needs to listen.

We cannot control all the turbulence in the world around us, but we can control whether we amplify it. Choosing to be a steadying presence is not denial; it is discipline. In difficult seasons, discipline is leadership.

Learning to celebrate success deliberately

It is the start of a new year, and January has been a bit of an introspective month. I've been pondering my strengths and weaknesses as a leader. Something I find difficult (or at least doesn't come naturally) is celebrating success, especially collective success, and that matters as part of encouraging and building a team or community.

I think this stems from my own approach to celebration. I'm a planner, and I'm usually quite good at predicting how things are going to turn out. If something goes as planned, it feels adequate but not remarkable. If it doesn't, then it isn't something to celebrate at all. As I get more experienced (nearly wrote "older" there) fewer things surprise me, so the world separates into "adequate" and "disappointing".

However, I have worked with managers who take the "if I don't complain, you're doing it right" approach and I find it very unsettling at best. I don't want to be that person to others. Over the years I have trained myself to be more liberal with praise - making sure I call people out when they are doing decent work, not just exceptional work. These days, I think I'm ok at individual praise and being supportive. I'm much worse at wider, structured praise such as celebrating the success of a release or a project.

This is not because I don't value either the delivery or the individuals involved. I am fiercely proud of the people who work for and around me, and have often gone to bat to defend them if I hear anything different. And I certainly don't have a problem giving credit appropriately - I have an almost visceral hatred of even half-appearing to take credit for the work of others, even when I actually led it. My problem is that when one big thing completes, I'm already thinking about the next problem or considering what went wrong.

So in summary, I can praise a person (although like many I do find it uncomfortable) but find broader praise for a delivery more unnatural and difficult to remember.

This is clearly not a good thing for team morale!

I'm going to link this to being autistic - or at least how autism shows up for me. As I said above, I have this internal flatness and while I try very hard to keep it inside where it can't hurt anyone, unfortunately my real self does come out from time to time. It is important I recognise this, and think of ways to put it right. Plus, I get a blog post out of it.

I've got a variety of tricks for remembering to do praise and celebrations ... which does make me feel like an android remembering they need to blink and smile to stop the humans feeling uncomfortable. Notes in the diary / todo list work really well ("say well done here"). It sounds crude, but if you're used to organising yourself by a checklist why not add expected emotional reactions?

For individuals, I joked above about training myself but this is genuinely what I did. I made praising people a deliberate and considered act, which means for me I track praise / criticism in a conversation and try to balance the scales properly. I've also had to overcome my natural uncomfortable feelings about doing this - again with deliberate practice. However, by dispassionately thinking about conversations in this way, I think I'm doing ok at the 1-1 level and also have managed to gain some useful skills in keeping the tone of the conversation where I want it (eg not being too nice if I'm correcting someone, or vice versa). All of this takes deliberate effort. Tracking conversations, balancing praise and correction, and consciously managing how I show up for others is work.

Being neurodiverse is exhausting at times.

Groups I do find harder. I can say the words, but if it needs to go further into an actual celebration I am lost. I have had a lot of success with the classic (and genuinely good) leadership approach of surrounding myself with people more skilled than myself. In this context, that means people who are more naturally effusive than me. These fine folk either directly remind me, or (more often) just twitch at the right time which makes me react quickly and speak up. Like I say, it's not that I don't want to celebrate and praise, it just doesn't occur to me.

This post has been about my own thought process, but at the end of this ramble there are some solid tips. Make lists, take deliberate action and if all else fails outsource it. Good leadership isn't about feeling the right things, rather it is about doing the right things consistently. Even when they don't come naturally.

The year that was, 2025

We end this year on an unusual note. I am not dragging myself to the end, gasping for breath and desperate for a rest. This has actually been a ... good year?! Gosh. I also feel like I've achieved quite a bit, although much of that comes under "learning how to make candles". My list of "things" is long enough I'm going to break down it down into some categories, and we'll see that this year has been much more than Ghost of Tsushima and Space Marine 2.

Creative

• 12 posts on this blog (13 including this one) - eleventh consecutive year of a post per month, third year of posting them on LinkedIn
• Honed my candle making skills by making a thousand candles, and set up an Instagram account (plus put the pictures on Flickr)
• Made a wax train for a dinner party
• Made a notebook
• Made a puzzle box
• Made more Lego - Artemis Space Launch System, DaVinci's Flying Machine and a Super Star Destroyer
• Made more bread - much better this time
• Made a few different photo decorated items - notecards and postcards
• Fixed the roof gutter - certainly an experience...
• Wrote a supplement for Humblewood and some other D&D - still haven't run anything...
• Another year of the Year in Pictures - eleventh year and we're up to 47 photographers
• More email setup (sigh)
• Set up video streaming in the house
• 384 Github contributions - up again from last year
• Yet more Instagramming
• More photos on my Flickr stream
• And used AI to create a distressing number of pictures of anthropomorphised sausages

Fitness

• Lost over 2st in weight, and 4" around the waist
• A year of getting back into Tai Chi - training around the Roman Baths
• Another year of exercise with a fabulous personal trainer and deep tissue therapist
• Another year of Saturday Pain and we made a workout shirt
• Lots more cooking, centred around health and protein

Social

• Lots (and lots) of keeping touch with people
• MBS trip to Power Up in London
• Maths reunion - twice!
• Hosted quarterly dinner parties - a fancy name for games and food
• Escaped another couple of escape rooms with the Bath crew

Work adjacent

• Became a Fellow of the British Computer Society
• Became a STEM Ambassador
• Another year on the Data for London Advisory Board
• Began the process of joining the WCIT
• Brought back Show & Tell
• Two sessions mock-interviewing University of Bath postdocs
• Lots of mentoring and coaching
• Spent a lot of time learning about AI

ADHD and Autism

• Diagnosed with ADHD and Autism
• Helped set up ADHD Pathfinding group

Resolution count - 5/10. Same as last year.

Ok, so this year it seems I've worked out how to get lots done - even if those things weren't really the things on my list. How did I manage to finally master work / life balance? Unfortunately, I had to not have a job for about a year - and during that time I still managed to do work (unpaid). It took having a gap year for me to work a roughly sensible amount. So ... success? Eugh. At least it was a good year.

Well, mostly a good year. I've lost friends this year and others have been quite seriously ill. I suppose I'm reaching that point in my life, but it is still very sad.

I have few reflections about the year. I am genuinely pleased to see how much I've done this year. Ok, I haven't been working for most of it but even so I've made a load of different things using a wide range of skills, and really learned a lot about candles. I started writing this annual review about ten years ago because I felt all I did was work and passively consume media. I made myself list the things I created that year, and it was a pleasingly long list back then. Since that post, I've been deliberately doing more and it has been nice to see my list develop over the years. Am I creative? No. But I am learning a load of different skills and thinking across problems in different ways.

While I haven't been employed for most of the year, I have still grown professionally. I started the year decidedly burnt out, and seriously considering leaving Tech altogether. I have recovered from that, come up with half an idea of the kind of professional I want to be and taken some significant steps in the right direction. I'm particularly pleased with the work I did as a STEM Ambassador, and becoming a Fellow nudged me back to Tech at exactly the right time. Since then I have also become a consultant, and I'm exploring a new facet of my industry and learning some new uses for my skills and experience.

I've also hit my fitness goals for the first time ... ever? That has made me very happy, and as well as feeling much better in myself I can head into 2026 feeling like the next set of goals are actually achievable, rather than another pipe dream. Maybe this year I'll be able to start buying new clothes?

And while we're on health, I have also been diagnosed with ADHD and Autism which has been very important both to this year and setting me up for managing my mental health going forward. I feel this is a very important foundation for solving the eternal "I've got no energy" problem I've written about every year for who knows how long.

So, let's look forward. I approach 2026 feeling much better about the year than I have in a while. I have reset my work / life in quite a dramatic way - in 2026 I need to keep building, ensure I keep working towards the professional identity I want, and (very important) ensure I maintain my peace as I do.

Over the last few years, I've written about rediscovering my wonder for life in the coming year but this year I feel I might actually be in a good place to do it.

To 2026, then. Let's see what happens.

My favourite time of the year

I'm sitting writing this at my favourite time of the year. The gap between Christmas and New Year, when much of the world just stops. The crazy time leading into Christmas is finished, stuff is bought, wrapped and sent and Christmas day is done. And in this gap, before whatever happens at New Year we can all take a breath, reflect and digest the pile of food we've eaten.

It is more than a holiday - it is an absence of expectations. I have been fortunate to work in places which mostly or entirely shut down over the Christmas period so unlike a week's leave, I don't have to worry about everyone else generating work while I'm away. The days are short, and the weather is cold and wet so I don't feel I should be outside or productive.

In short, it is the one time of the year I can sit back and do nothing and not feel guilty about it.

In many ways, this feels to me similar to how my brain works. Most of the time everything is gogogo - I can jump to something else, but not stop entirely. But just occasionally I find some actual peace and the noise and the pressure (real or imaginary) just stop for a while. For once, this is less about my own inability to rest (and I am very bad at resting) and more about the world granting a socially-sanctioned pause - that is, giving permission to just stop.

This is clearly a ponder to end the year. I think we underestimate how much of our stress comes from ambient expectations, not workload - and how rare it is to be allowed to truly stop. When it happens, it feels great.

Happy new year everyone.

Can anyone be coached?

"You know, Tom. Not everyone can be coached."

This was said to me some time ago when I was discussing my experiences coaching / mentoring people and how some had moved forward, but others had not. It has been playing on my mind since.

It is rare anyone who knows me would describe me as an optimist. However, in this one area I think I am overly positive - possibly to the point of naivety. I generally believe that with some effort, most people can pick up most things. Sure, there are specific skills which might be problematic (I suspect that I would never be a halfway decent footballer, regardless of effort) but in the main, I think people can learn how to lead teams, write strategy, write code, and so on. But is this true?

I am a great believer in the power of mentoring. I spend a lot of my own time doing this, both in work and outside, and I am pleased to have seen people grow in their career, confidence, skills and so on. In fact, a year ago I wrote a post talking about how important it is and challenging others to do more. I stand by that.

But mentoring takes time, time is finite, and I certainly can see that some engagements have been more effective than others. When the diary is full, I certainly want to be prioritising my own time effectively and consider whether the effort spent on an individual is well invested or would be better spent elsewhere. Mentoring / coaching is a partnership - all the help in the world is worthless if the mentee is not willing to take that advice and run with it in order to grow.

This is the important question: is the coaching relationship ready, and does it justify the time? Especially important if, like me, you mostly do mentoring for free through org schemes or recommendations. Plus, of course, recognising that this is always a point-in-time assessment - people can become ready over time (or stop being).

A "ready" coaching relationship can come in many forms, but I think there are some common elements.

Honesty and trust, possibly into discomfort

Psychological safety is the most important element. Coaching should go deep. It should be a space safe enough to be open and vulnerable, and discuss things that may not come up with colleagues. It also means being able to discuss half-formed ideas - not everything needs to be thought through before airing it.

This trust and safety is important for the next part. The point of coaching is to enable growth, so the person being coached needs to challenge their own assumptions and sometimes consider direct challenge from the coach. This can be quite uncomfortable, so the environment needs to support riding that out as gently as possible.

Clear understanding of purpose

Conversations can be far more directed if we know why we're meeting. Do you want to discuss situations that have come up in your current role? Do you want to progress, and are we talking about what that might mean? The specific reason doesn't matter, but having a common understanding is essential.

Commitment

This is fairly obvious - coaching is a time commitment for both parties, and both need to respect this, including the admin burden for setting it up. If it is not a paid engagement (ie the coach is offering their time for free), I prefer the coached person to take the lead. As well as handling the admin, it also signals enthusiasm and desire to continue.

This also extends to preparing for a session. The coach will be reviewing notes and considering next steps. The recipient should be thinking about what they want to discuss and coming ready with some conversation in mind. I've seen some coaches use pre-session questions to prompt thinking. This seems like a good way to create focus for the session.

Evidence of change leading to them not needing you

I don't feel this last point is as important as the others - or rather it is considerably more nebulous. Successful coaching should have some kind of result, but the nature of that result is certainly not set in stone. Similarly, while in general the coached person should be growing to no longer need the coaching that is not universally true depending on the engagement.

The purpose of coaching is progress, but progress can mean different things - maybe insight, acceptance, or practical change. The key is that the engagement is generating some kind of value.

So, can anyone be coached?

So, back to the exam question. Can anyone be coached? I still think the answer is yes, but with careful consideration of the effort required.

If you are running a scholarship fund, you can support anyone. However, some people are more in need than others, and some will make better use of the opportunity than others. There are finite resources, so a value judgement has to be made. This is the same with coaching - your time is finite and the decision to expend that resource should be treated with similar care.

Maybe the first element of coaching is inward-looking to recognise the value of one's own time.

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I do realise I've used "coach" and "mentor" somewhat interchangeably in this post, and this is incorrect. In my experience, a blend of the two approaches helps both to encourage self-reflection and provide some direct answers.

Windows 11 has happened

Warning, this post is very self-indulgent and includes callbacks to a post on this blog from over nine years ago. Normal service will resume soon.

Sigh, I suppose it's time.

After nearly 10 years of Windows 10 on my desktop machine, I finally got the ominous message - "support for this operating system is about to be discontinued, click the button to upgrade or forever live in regret and pain as the worms consume your data". Or words to that effect at least.

Still, at least this time it gave me the choice.

Windows runs on the old Star Trek movie quality register - you only really want every other one - so I was expecting some kind of The Final Frontier experience. I've been putting off the update for as long as possible, but I really can't run an operating system that isn't getting security updates so with fear in my heart and after lighting my incense burner and offering placation to the Omnissiah I hit go. The trumpets sounded, the ground was rent asunder and it arrived.

It's fine.

So let's start with the Good.

The Good

Modern Windows has become an advertising and data gathering vector, but I was pleased to see that Windows 11 did actually retain my privacy settings. I was expecting it to reset everything to "on" and then have to spend hours crawling through menus to find and undo the damage, but no. It remembered where I was and the only work was finding and disabling a handful of new options - honestly I was very surprised here, and in a pleasant way.

In fact, in general the various menus have been tidied up. I found navigating them much more intuitive than Win10, and could generally find whatever I was looking for without having to ask Google. Another nice step forward.

Another nice thing - most of my setup just kept working. This should be obvious and Just Work, but even so it was a nice experience. Particularly worth noting, my printer is still working. This device is an HP1010 - an ancient laser from 2001, which just keeps on going. I realised recently it's quite possibly the oldest bit of technology I own and aside from paper I've done nothing to keep it alive through its lifecycle. Drivers have been difficult since Win7, so I was slightly worried this would be the end but no! The Emperor protects!

So this is all mostly "I was pleasantly surprised it didn't get worse" but there is one big step forward. Someone at Microsoft dusted off the sourcecode for Notepad and actually made some changes and my goodness - it's a huge step forward. Notepad now has tabs. You can open more than one pad without it trying to close the old one. Most importantly it saves the buffer when you quit, so it works like an actual scratchpad!

I appreciate this is all utterly standard for a text editor, and anyone on Linux or OSX will be rolling their eyes, but for Windows users this is a revolution. I use Notepad quite a bit, and now it has features!

The Bad

Not everything is shiny, although the gripes here are not horrendous.

Microsoft has played with the UI, of course, and some changes are ... questionable. Why are the taskbar functions now in the middle, instead of the bottom left? Easily fixed, with a toggle, but ... why? And why are there yet more widgets on the taskbar, loading data continuously to tell me things I don't want to know? Another thing to kill.

Then there is the Start menu. I disabled all the "live tile" rubbish in Win10 so I don't know if it's gone in Win11 or they kept my settings. But instead, there is a massive "recommended" section which is just another way to advertise things (disabled now) and a whole bunch of new pinned shortcuts, instead of just keeping my old shortcuts. Those are in a subfolder, so I had a "fun" time dragging and dropping everything back to where it should be, and purging the new rubbish.

What cannot be fixed though is the "shutdown" button which is now a million miles away from the Start button. So instead of Start / Shutdown at the end of the day, it's Start ... hunt ... where? oh there ... Shutdown. A small thing, but these little things are what makes a UI nice or irritating. This is annoying.

Oh and yet more rubbish on the lock screen. I don't want a widget on this page - please stop. Easy to turn off though and the new default picture is very pretty.

The other problem is for some reason it has decided the soundcard on my motherboard is a USB device. This doesn't impact usage, but it does mean it has a stupid name which makes it hard to find. Will this come back to bite me? We shall see...

The Ugly

What else? The redesigned task bar, including the fonts, is kinda ugly. I don't think it's just different, I think it's a step backwards for legibility. But this is something I'll adjust to. Same as some of the new icons, which are just a bit over-designed in places (the Notepad one is not nice).

So that's about it. Win11 is mostly fine and nothing has exploded. It is a huge step forward for Notepad and some small steps backward for the start menu. I haven't run it long enough to comment on stability yet, but we are four years since original release so I'd hope this is ok by now. As long as it doesn't eat all my data or start advertising to me I think we can get on.

Right, enough self-indulgent peeking behind the curtain. I'll write about tech leadership or ADHD again next time and follow this up in about 10 years for Windows 12...

ADHD Pathfinding and me

As ADHD Awareness Month approaches, I wanted to post something about ADHD Pathfinding. Here in England, access to ADHD assessment and long-term support is tricky and inconsistent at best. This is somewhat inevitable - the modern understanding of ADHD is evolving rapidly and the system was put in place to support something very different from the current position. However, this is still leaving millions of people (especially adults) undiagnosed and unable to access care or support[1], and costing the UK economy an estimated £17 billion per year[2] in lost productivity and wider social costs.

That is a huge number to throw about and, while the shock factor is significant, the actual cost is in the human implications. ADHD drives impulsive behaviour which can result in educational failure, long-term unemployment, crime, substance misuse, suicide, mental and physical illness (directly quoted from the ADHD Taskforce report). These behaviours ruin lives and break communities and with the right support, care and treatment much of this is preventable.

As I said above, the system is not designed to support the modern reality of ADHD. Assessment through the NHS can take years, and in some areas access to any kind of assessment for adults was nearly denied entirely to create capacity for children. Some commentators dismiss ADHD as a fad, and "everyone seems to have ADHD these days" but the research suggests it is actually chronically under-diagnosed. The current "trend" reflects people asking more questions because of growing awareness.

There are ways to move through the medical system, using Right to Choose schemes or indeed going private, but these require an unreasonable amount of knowledge of the NHS processes and mechanics to navigate. Add in that there is no specific requirement for GPs to have training in ADHD and you have an impenetrable system that can demand far too much of the patient. There is also a financial barrier to assessment and care - the private route is simply not open to many (if not most) people.

Under the hood, there are many, many problems. For just one example, ADHD medication is classified as a Schedule 2 restricted substance requiring monthly prescriptions (and thus time) from senior clinicians. However, ADHD is not classified as a chronic condition which means this administration burden does not come with any funding for the GP's office. Unlike heart medication, which also requires ongoing admin but GP practices are funded for the effort.

This is where ADHD Pathfinding comes in. We have come together to focus on the system, the context it was built in, and how it may change to be more effective in the modern world. We aim to raise awareness of these challenges and ultimately help bring ADHD into the NHS strategy where currently there is no mention of any kind of neurodiversity. The group was founded by Himal Mandalia, and at its core are people who have been in various forms of public service - so people who have experience getting things done in the highly bureaucratic government environment. We are also people who understand the challenges of the system. While I'm not going to rewrite our operating values here, I will highlight that we are looking to improve the system, not criticise the people working within it.

And yes, I said "we". I have been involved since the early days, lurking behind the scenes and helping formulate strategy. This is personal for me - this year, I have been diagnosed with both autism (not surprised) and ADHD (much more surprising). I can honestly say that if I hadn't had support from friends (especially Himal) I would not have got to the end of the ADHD process. I am very privileged to have knowledgeable friends, a pretty strong layman's knowledge of medicine, lots of experience navigating bureaucracy, and resources to help me do all this and I still would have given up. This is not right.

I'm going to write a post about my personal experiences coming to terms with this change in the near future, but for now I'll say I am very keen to help others walk an easier path.

If you're interested in ADHD or the system of assessment and care, please do reach out to us. We're building a community of people invested in this. We can build a system that supports everyone, but it is going to take effort and persistence to put it on the political map.

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[1] According to ADHD UK
[2] ADHD Taskforce report part 1