The Beautiful Leader

Issue 1, January 2026

Please don’t be bowled over…

2025 was a bit of a blur.

It was ‘pacey’ to say the least. Some of you may have had a similar experience.

I planned to introduce a periodic newsletter for 2026, and in my mind, would work through the Beautiful Leadership framework in order…but life conspires and inspires sometimes. And so it is, with this inaugural newsletter. I do not expect to write such vulnerable and personal newsletters in the future, but I am convinced it is important I do this time.

If it helps one person, then that’s a good thing.

My very best, Dawn

Framework in Focus

Beautiful Leadership is a proprietary, memorable framework, from which we can focus our energy and attention on those qualities and practices which help secure our foundation for attractive leadership and provide scaffolding to build our impact through what we practise.

For this Newsletter, you will notice the following are in focus:

Life conspires and inspires at times

Whether you are 51 like me, or in your 20s starting out and working out your approach, pushing hard in your 30s, or feeling the burn and capacity stretch in your 40s, this newsletter is for you. It is accompanied by my very best wishes for a healthy and fulfilled 2026.

Surrey, England 17th December, 1am – I wake up, figuratively and literally.

Excruciating abdominal and lower chest pain, radiating to my right shoulder, fever and chills. No position abates it and it just worsens. A tightness I can’t explain. Uncontrollable vomiting. Something is most definitely wrong. This is not a sprained muscle or indigestion. I know I need specialist help.

999 – and with it, relief I am in the system and help is on the way.

In between vomiting, breathlessness and shaking in the ambulance, and after the ECG has ruled out a heart attack (it got real, very quickly), the paramedic says “I think it’s your gallbladder – you are in trouble. Off we go.”

Trying to feel I have some control of the unfolding situation (I didn’t), I ask the paramedic questions like…What is the gallbladder? What does it do? Where is it exactly? How do you get gallstones?

Something I had no real knowledge of was about to disrupt Christmas, New Year and cause concern to my husband and my family, along with those of my friends and clients with awareness – cancelled meetings because Dawn got rushed to hospital. It rocked them too.

You see, we all have fragility – let’s not kid ourselves. I do, and you do as well. It would cause me to stop, completely. Something had taken me out. I never thought that could happen to me…and as it has…it could happen to you.

Set-up is Everything

Each new year, I see many messages for the new year about pause, balance, prioritising self, better practices in lifestyle management and the like. I’ll be honest, a bit of me would be irritated, thinking they were being unrealistic or fragile or self-absorbed.

I was wrong.

I have had a rather abrupt wake-up call. How we manage (or mismanage) pressure and sustained stress is so important. Let’s be clear; pressure and stress will come – it’s part of life, but our set-up and response to it could be life-saving.

It took me 29 years of being a professional and this moment to realise my operating model is a contributor to why I ended up in emergency for 48 hours and through to Christmas on a general surgery ward, hooked up to drips, constant morphine, antibiotics, fluids, tests, scans, X-rays and daily bloods. The NHS surgical team, strained by a coinciding junior doctors strike and Christmas period skeleton staffing, decided to try and get me out of the immediate danger of gallbladder rupture and pancreatitis, by getting the infections, inflammation, jaundice and deranged liver symptoms under some control, and to give me time to be ready and safer for urgent surgery.

My family knew how serious this was – I didn’t, I think through adrenaline and a sense of wanting to protect everyone. You see, I protect and help others…period. In life and in business. The reverse scenario was not something I had ever considered.

NICE UK states: ‘Most people with gallstone disease [the presence of gallstones] are asymptomatic and remain asymptomatic. However, each year about 2-4% of people with previously asymptomatic gallstones develop symptoms or complications.’

This is my point…I had no idea that over several years, my system has been forming gallstones. They should not be there – they are imposters. My recent scans and imagery had me speechless about these trespassers.

I was asymptomatic until my operating model tipped me over the edge. Never one to do things by halves, I have had the majority of the serious complications.

Back home and doing everything I can to avoid another attack (which they said would be worse and is typical in 70% of cases – sobering) and to be ready for urgent surgery mid-month. I am sure all will go well. I will be back on track in a few more weeks’ time. For now, it is light work only from next week.

How we define the problem matters

In this limbo-land of counting the sleeps, preparing and I will admit, some anxious waiting, I have done some deep thinking, more so recently now the confusion and brain fog has lessened. That thinking will continue, with a plan.

You see, once the gallbladder is removed, the problem goes away…or does it?

That depends on how I define the problem…

MY operating model IS part of the problem – it has been a contributor to where I ended up – to deny this would be folly.

So we are what we choose

As a dear friend said ‘the choice is stark’:

A. Have it out, get over surgery and go back to how everything was before, or
B. Use it as an opportunity (with challenge) to reboot my operating model with a much-needed upgrade.

Option B is the intelligent response.

My professional life has been unrelenting, incredibly empowering and rewarding, exhausting and exhilarating. I love my work, care deeply for my clients, leaders, their teams and the difference I get to make. Business is personal for me. I am very fortunate that my work is my calling. Impact is important to me. Yet, unbridled purpose can be problematic.

That ‘operating model’ saw me always on, all in, poor boundaries and deep commitment and intensity where perspective is lost at times. Everything got absorbed inwards. Even though in recent years, I have been better with balance and not taking business to heart, the dye was cast – gallstones are accumulative.

My future is less sponge 🧽 and more duck 🦆 or teflon-coated pan 🍳.

A blessing in disguise

So, 17th December was a blessing. There is a bigger picture to each of our stories. We learn from storytelling and sharing. That blessing is what I feel I should share with you, to help or encourage you. It may not be a gallbladder and jaundice crisis, but there could be something else within you, that needs your attention.

Two lessons learnt

Out of the blue…..really?

This DID NOT come from nowhere…now I have the complete picture and am better educated, there were tell-tale signs in the months leading up.

Waking up most nights between 1-3am, more heartburn and indigestion than usual, unexplained itchiness all over, irritating brain fog, fatigue, sweats, sore right shoulder and neck, intermittent dull pain under my right rib cage.

I explained these away to a busy year, menopause, perhaps I need a new pillow or mattress, need to do some more exercise and shed some weight.

Lesson 1: Pay close attention to what your body is communicating. It is your best friend.

MVP or Optimised – Select your Operating Model

Minimal Viable Product (MVP) or Optimised? In wrestling with looking after myself at the expense of being there for others, I have had a MVP approach to myself. I have addressed it over the years and I am better than I was (honestly I am), but the past 12 months of busyness and sustained pressure (both self-induced and not) showed me very bluntly that my MVP Operating Model no longer serves my needs or objectives.

Our chosen operating model (in business, leadership, professional consulting) affects everything. It is made up of many modules:

• Our ability to be present and pay attention to ourselves and others who care about us and see and raise concerns
• The power of doing absolutely nothing
• The relationships we prioritise
• When and how we rest
• How we fuel our body – nutrition, when, and why we eat
• How we breathe and move
• A bigger picture, call it our spiritual dimension
• When, and why we eat
• The hygiene of our sleep
• How our digestive system performs
• Owning and protecting our ‘NO’ and our boundaries
• Maintaining perspective
• Putting yourself first for self-care. My old Pastor once said, ‘self-care is not selfish’ – I get it now.
• What we F.E.A.R (False Evidence Appearing Real) can bite us. I always feared that putting myself first or dialing down my intensity and availability would result in clients walking away, fewer opportunities or that I would be judged as not committed/less than.

Lesson 2: Look at your Operating Model, listen to those who have your back and decide which modules need an upgrade.

Don’t be driven by fear…as a friend Karen always wisely says, ‘adopt an ‘even if’ approach’. If people have unreasonable or unrealistic expectations, they are not your people.

Over the past few weeks, I have been touched by clients and leaders who have seen me as the person, not the resource, deal or deliverable. They honestly care about me without expectation. That has been a revelation.

I am humbled and grateful.

So…don’t be bowled over.

My New Year prayer for you all is that there is not a bowling ball hurtling towards you that knocks you down; and that you look at your own life and operating model so that, like at the bowling alley, the pin setting machine can lift the pins to safety, and reset you for the next game.

No well-wishes needed.

That’s not the point of this post. My Christian faith points to a bigger picture and that challenge is a blessing and through it, we can serve others. That’s what leadership is all about.

So please, just share as an act of kindness to those in your family, work-group or network. Consider ONE thing you could do differently, more or less of, to oil or upgrade your operating model or paying attention to your body messaging…and crucially select someone to help keep you accountable.

Beautiful Leadership live and in person

When I wrote Beautiful Leadership – your Personal Framework for Authentic Impact, which was published September 2025, I included the following in Chapter: S is for Space and Setting Boundaries….

“Right now, I know I am imbalanced, because of the work of writing Beautiful Leadership. It has been excruciating and intense work and taking up much of my personal time for nine months. But I am okay with this as it is such an important pursuit for me; one which I feel called to do. Once it is published my commitment is to reset myself”

As it turns out, never has a truer word been written!

Happy New Year to you all. See you soon, fighting fit.

Go well.
Dawn

P.S.

Here is some useful information about Gallbladder Disease (aka Gallstones).

According to Spire Healthcare, Gallstones are more common once you are over 40, with women around 3 times more likely to have gallstones than men.  Ladies: not everything is a menopausal symptom.

For those under 40, I encourage you not to ignore the message of this newsletter…remember, these things are dormant, until they aren’t, and they are cumulative.

There are other risk factors (weight, sedentary lifestyle, ethnic background), readily obtainable from online sources:  https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/gallstones/background-information/risk-factors/

How poorly managed stress or pressure doesn’t help:

• Stress hormones releases cortisol and adrenaline, activating the fight-or-flight response, which slows digestion and bile release. This can cause bile concentration and stagnation and with it, stone creation.
• Chronic stress can alter bile composition, increasing cholesterol, which is a major risk factor for gallstones that can block ducts and cause infection and inflammation.
• When bile stays in the gallbladder longer, it can become more concentrated, increasing the risk of gallstone formation (cholesterol or bilirubin stones).