Why leadership development needs to make space for the whole person.
The more responsibility we take on at work, the more we are often expected to keep performing, whatever else is happening in our lives.
Buying a home. Getting married. Having children. Caring for ageing parents. Navigating health, relationships, loss or fertility.
Life doesn't pause when we step into a more senior role. And neither do the demands of leadership.
I've experienced this first-hand.
When life and leadership collide
I was 11 weeks pregnant with my first son when I became Managing Director. But the journey to get there had been far from straightforward. It had involved five rounds of IVF and a number of pregnancy losses.
At the time, I kept the miscarriages private. I worried that people might see trying for a baby as a sign that I was any less ambitious.
As I reflect back, it says a lot about the pressure we can put on ourselves to keep our personal and professional lives separate. We want to be seen as capable, committed and ready for the next challenge. We worry that acknowledging what is happening outside work might somehow undermine how we are perceived within it.
I loved my job. Work was, in many ways, my safe place. It gave me consistency and something to focus on beyond IVF cycles, waiting rooms and the uncertainty that came with treatment.
I was making decisions, carrying responsibility and continuing to do my job. But I was also navigating something deeply personal that few people knew about.
That didn't mean I was any less committed to my career. It didn't mean I was any less capable of leading. It meant I was human, going through something that demanded an enormous amount of me.
The person behind the title
We often talk about leadership as though it exists separately from the rest of our lives.
We focus on performance, capability, decision-making, resilience and the ability to bring others with us. We invest in developing leaders to take on more responsibility, navigate complexity and deliver results.
All of those things matter.
But we can overlook the person expected to deliver them.
What's happening outside work inevitably influences how we show up inside it. Our experiences affect our energy, our perspective, our priorities, the decisions we make and the way we relate to others.
Sometimes, life brings excitement and possibility. Sometimes, it brings uncertainty, change or challenges we would never have chosen.
Often, it brings several things at once.
A leader might be navigating a significant change at home while taking on a bigger role at work. They might be questioning what success means to them at this stage of their career. They might be caring for a parent, becoming a new parent, dealing with loss or simply realising that the way they have been working is no longer sustainable.
None of this automatically makes them less ambitious or less effective.
But it may change what they need, what they value and how they want to lead.
You cannot separate the person from the leader.
And if we want to support leaders to perform at their best, we need to make space for the whole person, not just the professional identity they bring into the room.
Ambition doesn't have to mean ignoring everything else
For a long time, many of us have learned to associate ambition with pushing through.
Working harder. Taking on more. Finding a way to deliver, regardless of what else is happening.
There is value in commitment, determination and stretching ourselves. But constantly expecting ourselves to perform as though nothing outside work affects us can come at a cost.
It can make it harder to recognise when our priorities have shifted, when our energy needs attention or when the way we are leading no longer feels aligned with who we are.
It can also make it difficult to ask ourselves important questions.
What matters to me now?
What does success look like at this stage of my life?
Where do I want to invest my energy?
What kind of leader do I want to be, and what do I need to make that possible?
These aren't questions that suggest a lack of ambition. They are questions that help us understand our ambition more clearly.
Needing space for the rest of your life doesn't mean you want less from your career.
Sometimes, creating that space is exactly what helps you lead with greater clarity, make more considered decisions and perform at your best.
Why this shapes how we coach at Alma Studio
My experience has fundamentally shaped my approach to coaching and the philosophy behind Alma Studio.
I believe leaders need space to step back from the noise of their day-to-day responsibilities and think about what is really going on, both professionally and personally.
Not because every personal challenge needs to be brought into the workplace, or because the answer is always to slow down or do less.
But because understanding ourselves helps us make better choices about how we lead.
Coaching creates space to explore the questions that can be difficult to find time for when we are caught up in the demands of work.
It allows leaders to reflect on what matters to them, recognise the patterns influencing their decisions, understand where their energy is going and consider how they want to move forward.
For some, that might mean navigating a new leadership role with greater confidence. For others, it might mean rethinking their priorities, finding a more sustainable way to work or reconnecting with a sense of purpose.
There isn't one answer, because there isn't one kind of leader or one set of circumstances.
The aim isn't to lower ambition or remove the challenges that come with leadership. It's to help leaders understand themselves more clearly so they can make intentional decisions, use their energy wisely and lead in a way that feels authentic to who they are.
This is what I mean when I talk about coaching the whole leader.
Leadership development should make space for the whole person
Our lives don't sit neatly outside our working hours. They are part of who we are, and who we are influences how we lead.
My own experience taught me that we can be deeply committed to our careers while navigating circumstances that make it difficult to give work everything we might want to give it.
It also taught me that we don't need to prove our ambition by pretending the rest of our lives don't exist.
At Alma Studio, I work with leaders and founders who want to step back, gain clarity and find a way forward that reflects both their professional ambitions and what matters to them beyond work.
Because leadership isn't just about what you deliver or the title you hold. It's also about how you make decisions, how you show up for others and whether the way you lead reflects the person you want to be.
Lead with intention. Lead with energy. Lead with soul.
