It hits me around the same time every year. The school bags come home for the last time, the kids are buzzing, everyone around me seems to be posting sun-drenched photos and talking about barbecues and beach days — and somewhere underneath all of that, there's this low hum of quiet panic. How am I going to manage this?

My Dad died unexpectedly a few weeks ago. My second parent. I grieved my mum in my early 20s, and now 22 years later my Dad. I’ve worked with clients and workplaces over the years, supporting the personal nature of grief, and supporting the systems which facilitate employees in their grief. This renewal of my grief has gotten me further thinking.

As we move towards summer, there’s often a swift uplift. Energy lifts. Diaries fill. Social plans increase. Work doesn’t slow down - if anything, it speeds up to meet deadlines before holidays begin.

Is this for you or someone you know? I am currently recruiting and carrying out selection interviews for the Coach Institute of Ireland’s next programme, beginning October 2026. This is a programme I have completed myself, and have taught on for many years. It’s AMAZING!

In literally every organisation I talk to, they tell me that they have too many meetings, no control over their own diaries, and no time to “get the work done”. Many begin talking about productivity as though it is their primary problem at work, but I don’t see it that way. Rather I see it as being a work design issue.

From discussions with my clients recently, I’ve noticed that there is something quietly fracturing in the world of work. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But steadily, persistently, and almost invisibly. People are not walking out en masse. They are not always burning out in obvious ways. My clients and I call it… “reassessing.” And at the centre of it all is something most organisations have not named, let alone addressed: The psychological contract is broken.

Many organisations believe they have a productivity issue. In reality, they have an attention issue. I call it the “Culture of Constant Interruption.” Meeting overload - Instant messaging expectations - Back to back calls - Multitasking as a badge of honour. These practices erode cognitive depth. When teams cannot focus, quality drops. Creativity narrows. Strategic thinking becomes reactive. And relationally, people stop feeling heard.

Your attention is your Leadership Currency. I hear a lot of talk about time management, but in my experience attention is the real currency. Time is fixed. Attention is chosen. Where your attention goes, your energy follows. And where your energy goes, connection and productivity either strengthens or weakens.

Our nervous systems were not designed for the volume of information we now absorb each day. They evolved for immediate environments, face-to-face connection and short bursts of stress. Not for 24-hour news cycles, constant alerts, global crises and an expectation of continuous availability.

Hope can feel fragile right now. For many of my clients, including those in leadership roles, it is not optimism that is missing but energy. When the world feels unstable, unjust or overwhelming, motivation for change can quietly drain away. Why try, when so much feels beyond our influence is a common question I am being asked.

We spend a lot of time talking about saying yes to opportunities, growth and possibility. In leadership and organisational cultures especially, yes is often rewarded. Availability, responsiveness and stretch are framed as markers of commitment and competence. Much less time is spent honouring the quiet intelligence of a clear no.

January often arrives carrying a heavy backpack of expectations. New year, new you, big goals, radical change. It is no wonder that many of us feel quietly overwhelmed before the month has properly begun.

For many people, December arrives with a mixture of anticipation and dread. The lights go up, the music starts, and suddenly the calendar fills itself. Between end of year deadlines, school events, family gatherings and the general pressure to be festive, it can feel as though the month is running us rather than the other way around.

There is a moment in every piece of work when we realise we have sunk too far into the weeds. It creeps up slowly. One minute we are dealing with useful detail, and the next we are knee deep in activity, noise and distraction. Our attention narrows, our thinking tightens, and the only thing that seems to matter is the next task in front of us. The trouble is that the work that truly matters - the work of change, influence and impact - rarely lives at that level.

A phrase has lingered in the leadership lexicon these past couple of years: quiet quitting. It captured a generational weariness, a sense of doing only what is required because the wider system had stopped caring. For many, it was a form of self-protection – a way to reclaim energy, boundaries, and dignity in workplaces that had become all output and little oxygen.

A few weeks ago, I found myself listening to a senior leader describe how her organisation was “embracing AI” to “free up human capacity.” When I asked what that human capacity would be used for, she paused, smiled tightly, and said, “To do more.”

Every so often, I pause and ask myself: what is the kind of world I dream about? Not the world we have, with all its complexity, urgency, and noise, but the one I quietly hold as possible. It’s a natural antidote practice I accidentally began many years ago, that has acted as a positive counter-balance when life feels overwhelming and dark.

I am so excited to finally share, that after a solid year of reading and writing and discussions and a successful application, I have just embarked on the next stage of my professional journey: a PhD at Trinity Business School. My research focuses on the psychology of leadership in mission-led scaling firms.

I have recently joined Substack, creating a space for conversation and reflection on the themes that matter most to my work and to me personally - leadership, wellbeing, scaling organisations with purpose, and the intersection of science and soul.

In leadership, it is tempting to borrow the scripts handed to us: what growth should look like, which “wellbeing” initiatives to adopt, what version of sustainability is deemed acceptable. These scripts are neat, familiar, and safe. But they are rarely transformative.