As 2025 comes to a close, I have been reflecting less on outputs and more on what the year demanded of me, personally and professionally.
This was not a year of tidy reinvention. It was a year of transition. One that involved testing assumptions, sitting with ambiguity, and staying with work that did not always move as quickly as I would have liked. It required judgment more than certainty.
Living the reality of transition
Stepping further into a portfolio career brings freedom, and it also brings exposure. There is less external structure, fewer ready-made signals, and much greater reliance on your own thinking. I have felt that directly this year.
Of course, this is a familiar experience that many senior leaders also face. Transition rarely announces itself dramatically. It tends to show up quietly, in moments where old responses feel less reliable, or where pressure reveals habits that once worked but now limit impact.
The pattern that kept repeating
Across coaching conversations, writing, and professional discussions this year, one pattern surfaced repeatedly.
Capable leaders do not usually struggle because they lack insight or intent. They struggle when change exposes ways of thinking and decision-making that no longer fit the role, scale, or context in which they are.
Different sectors. Different titles. Very similar dynamics.
Too often, those moments are treated as confidence issues, capability gaps, or personal shortcomings, rather than what they actually are. Signals that something deeper needs attention.
Why I stopped ignoring that gap
This is where 𝗥𝗼𝗼𝘁-𝘁𝗼-𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁® properly took shape.
Not as a theory, and not as an answer in search of a problem, but as a response to what I kept seeing fail. Leaders being offered more reflection, more labels, or more frameworks, when what they actually needed was a way to start with what was visibly not working and trace it back to what was driving it.
The model works from the outside in. From outcomes and recurring issues, back to the beliefs, assumptions, and patterns shaping decisions under pressure. That is how senior leaders experience problems in real life. Through results first, not abstractions.
Being clear about how I want to work
This year also clarified something else.
I am intentionally building a portfolio career that combines executive coaching with advisory and fractional leadership work. Staying close to real organisational complexity keeps my thinking sharp and my coaching credible. Distance from the work leaders are doing does not improve insight. Proximity to it does.
That mix is not a compromise. It is a choice.
Why this matters as we head into 2026
As organisations continue to change, the real risk for many leaders is not lack of effort or intent. It is carrying the same unexamined patterns into a new context and hoping they behave differently.
If you are heading into 2026 with the same tensions, frustrations, or sticking points you carried this year, that is usually worth paying attention to. Not urgently. But seriously.
Unexamined patterns rarely disappear. They usually wait for the next shift in context.
A word of thanks
Before closing, I want to acknowledge the support I have received this year. From people who challenged my thinking to those who offered quiet encouragement when progress felt slower than hoped, I am genuinely grateful.
This work is rarely done alone, and I have been reminded of that more than once.
Looking ahead
In 2026, my focus remains the same. Working with leaders at moments where roles, pressure, or expectations shift, and where familiar ways of operating no longer deliver what is needed.
If that is a situation you recognise, for yourself or for someone you support, I am always open to a conversation. Not a pitch. Simply space to think clearly, without performance, about what is really going on and what might need to change.
I wish you and those close to you a restorative holiday period and a considered start to the year ahead.
Best wishes
Craig
