When we first started working together, he was doing what a lot of capable, high-functioning adults do: keeping life moving on the outside while quietly running out of internal resources on the inside.

The cracks weren’t dramatic, just very real. His inbox was thousands of emails deep and growing. Simple admin tasks that once took five minutes were now being delayed for weeks. Communication with his PA had started to break down. Decision-making was harder, slower, and more draining than it should have been. Work felt reactive, and everything took effort. In his words, he was becoming the “grumpy old man” no one wanted to be around.

Alongside all of that was grief after the death of his son — layered, heavy, and unprocessed in a way that doesn’t look like grief from the outside. Not weeping or collapsing, but the quieter version: cognitive fog, low motivation, disrupted pacing, and a sense of being slightly out of phase with the rest of life. He described it as “messy in a way I’m not used to.” For someone who’d always been self-driven, dependable, and high capacity, that mismatch between identity and functioning was the thing he struggled with most. Not sadness or failure but friction.

He didn’t need a lecture in motivation or discipline. He needed coherence, direction, and a way to get through winter without burning out or disappearing under the weight of tasks, responsibilities, and unprocessed thinking.

Coaching gave him space to make sense of what had changed, why the usual strategies weren’t working anymore, and what he actually needed now. We slowed his thinking down, reframed the pressures, and rebuilt routines that supported rather than punished him. Bit by bit, agency returned — not through force, but through clarity.

Across the year, things shifted. The backlog went. Tasks were completed daily, not parked indefinitely. His inbox went from overwhelming to manageable. He rebuilt collaboration with his PA. He mentored junior doctors again, and enjoyed it. He re-engaged with research and key-notes. His appraisal was completed in good shape. And outside of work, he reconnected with the things that grounded him — cycling, gardening, putting life back in order one piece at a time.

In his words:

“Reframing the things that worried me has been a complete game changer. The goal was simply to get through winter in a sustainable way — and we did. Even when I was struggling, she stuck with me and worked at my pace. I’m honestly not certain how I would have got through the last year without her.”

This is what long-term developmental coaching often looks like: not blowing up your life and starting again, not a motivational sprint, and definitely not a productivity hack — just the slow return to coherence, capability, and direction, even alongside grief.