Shared Values
All good work between two people rests on shared ground.
Degrees and designations matter. So do titles, mandates, and the cities we work in. But underneath all of that, the work I do lives on quieter foundations: what we believe people are for, how we treat those who carry heavy responsibility, and whether we think a good life is only for the lucky and well-connected or for anyone willing to grow into it. We are not here to chase some theoretical “full potential.” We are here to make this actual life more honest and more humane, one small adjustment at a time.
If these values already feel familiar, we are probably standing on the same piece of ground.
Known, Not Just Valued
I am a Christian by birth and ongoing choice. The line in Psalm 139 that says we are made “fearfully and wonderfully” has shaped how I see people for decades. It keeps me from treating a human being as an income stream, a resource unit, or a risk bucket. It reminds me that every person who walks into a meeting has a soul, a history, a body that can only take so much, and a future that is not fully in their hands. At heart, this practice exists for people who are over-credentialed, under-seen, and ready to be understood by at least one person who speaks their language and treats them as a whole person, not just a producer.
Most of my work, though, has been with people whose paths and beliefs are very different from mine: Muslim risk managers, Hindu engineers, Sikh actuaries, Jewish portfolio managers, Buddhist lawyers, agnostic quants, secular executives, and people who carry anger, hurt, or indifference toward any idea of God. I have taught and advised in countries where I was very much the outsider, and where pushing my faith into the foreground would have been a kind of disrespect to the hospitality being extended to me.
So I don’t. I don’t preach, and I don’t recruit. What I bring into the room is something quieter: a steady sense that our decisions answer to more than quarterly results and professional pride, and that our work has moral weight whether or not we ever use religious language. If faith is part of your life, it is welcome. If you walked away from faith, were harmed by it, or never had any interest in it at all, you are equally welcome. The shared value is simply this: life is more than salary, assets, and status; being known is more than being “valued”; and the choices we make in offices and boardrooms echo in places that spreadsheets will never measure.
Depth before display
You have spent years learning how things actually work. You know the mechanics beneath the numbers, not just the headline result. You have walked the long path through libraries, late nights, red ink, rework, and the slow earning of trust. The world around you often rewards a different currency: polish, speed, a confident performance that tells a simple story and keeps the room comfortable.
A core value here is that depth comes before display. Not because visibility is bad or ambition is suspect, but because leadership built on a thin performance is brittle. I am not interested in helping anyone become a more convincing mask. I am interested in how you think, what you notice, where your judgment has been forged, and how that might shape the way you speak and act in rooms that are used to being charmed rather than challenged. We tend and prune from the roots, not from the leaves.
You will not be asked to perform for me. You will be asked to think.
Intensity as a form of care
Many of the people I work with have been called “intense” for as long as they can remember. Sometimes it is said with admiration. More often it is delivered as a tidy criticism: too much, too serious, too deep, too focused. Underneath that label I almost always find the same thing: you care. You care about doing the work properly, about unseen risks, about the people who will live with the consequences long after the meeting adjourns. You care enough that you cannot simply shrug and say, “Not my problem.”
In most organisations, that level of intensity is quietly exploited and socially punished. You are the one who notices the flaw, picks up the dropped ball, takes the weekend call, and lies awake wondering what everyone else has missed. You are also the one being told to “tone it down” in the same breath as being handed more responsibility.
Here, intensity is not a defect to be medicated away or a “development point” to be neutralised. It is a form of attention and conscience. Our work is to honour it, give it language, and direct it so it does not destroy your health or harden your heart. You do not have to dim your light with me. I am wired much the same way and have spent years learning where intensity brings life and where it burns the field.
We are not meant to do this alone
There is a persistent romance in finance and leadership: the lone climber and the lone wolf. The mythic figure on the ridge who did it all themselves, never needed anyone, and never doubted. It is a strange fantasy in a world that actually runs on teams, counterparties, base camps, sherpas, support staff, and entire systems of cooperation. Even the wolf’s howl is not a hymn to self-sufficiency. It is a call to others.
Another value here is simple: we do not do this alone. None of us. The stories we tell about solitary achievement ignore the teachers, the colleagues, the assist from a sponsor, the grace of timing, and the near-misses that were quietly saved by someone else’s intervention. They also feed a private shame: if you need support, you must not be strong enough.
By the time people reach me, they are often the person everyone else leans on. They are the fixer, the steady one, the backstop. Asking for help feels like treason against their own image. In this practice, needing another mind is not a failure; it is common sense. You bring your intelligence, your experience, your agency. I bring mine, and I stand outside your internal politics and your family story. We look together at the life you are actually living. We prune and tend the tree together, not alone in the dark.
You are already “enough” to begin
If you work in elite systems long enough, you breathe in a message: you are never quite enough. Not qualified enough, not strategic enough, not commercial enough, not influential enough. You can always add one more credential, one more course, one more stretch assignment to try to close the gap between who you are and some imagined future version of you that will finally be allowed to rest.
Another shared value here is that we start from “good enough.” Not as resignation, but as the only honest place to stand. You are good enough now to deserve rest, to set a boundary, to pursue a role that fits you better, to stop apologising for existing, to ask why your life feels misaligned. We can improve skills, change circumstances, and make better choices, but we are not trying to sculpt a flawless future self to finally earn your place. We are tending the person who already exists, here and now.
Perfectionism is unachievable and uninteresting. Integrity, courage and suitability are not.
Not accepting every verdict you’ve been handed
By mid-career, most people have been given a story about who they are. Sometimes it arrives as “feedback.” Sometimes it is a throwaway remark from someone senior that lodges like a splinter and never quite works its way out.
“You’re solid, but not leadership material.”
“You’re too intense for clients.”
“You’re technical, not strategic.”
“You overthink everything.”
“You should be grateful. People like you are lucky to be here at all.”
A core value of this practice is the refusal to treat those sentences as holy writ. Some of them may describe genuine tendencies. Many are projections, laziness, or ways of keeping a hierarchy tidy.
Self-awareness here does not mean swallowing every label you have been given. It means examining, slowly and honestly, what is real and what is noise. We look at how you actually behave when you are not under the spotlight. We look at which traits kept you safe but now keep you small. We look at which supposed flaws are simply the shadow side of your strengths. We look at whose voices still echo in your head long after they have ceased to deserve that power.
Quietly, over time, you begin to see yourself more as you are and less as others have needed you to be. That is the beginning of different choices.
Thinking is not enough
You did not get where you are by being careless. You think, analyse, stress-test, and scenario-plan by instinct. The danger, as you know, is that thinking becomes its own trap. It is possible to spend years circling the same questions with ever greater sophistication and never move a single inch.
Another shared value: thought exists to serve action. Not reckless leaps. Not self-help slogans about “crushing” comfort zones. Simply the belief that once you see something more clearly, it deserves a response in the real world.
In practice, our conversations do not end with “That’s interesting.” They end with small, concrete moves: an honest word with a mentee, a boundary with a boss, a changed slide so it finally sounds like you, a serious look at a role you have quietly wanted for years, or a decision to stop chasing something that was never yours. Progress here is deliberately modest and cumulative. It is often measured in millimetres rather than headlines, and that is the point. Patient, repeatable changes beat dramatic declarations you cannot sustain.
Time, frailty, and the courage to hope for better days
Very few people come to this practice in their first years of work. Most are mid-career or later. They have watched colleagues burn out, relationships fracture, bodies protest, and parents age. They have buried at least one dream, sometimes more. They know in their bones that life is short and unplannable.
The temptation is either denial (“I’ll just keep going; something will break my way”) or resignation (“This is it; I missed my window”). I do not share either view. A value we share here is that better days can still lie ahead, not as a sentimental slogan, but as a working assumption that can be tested. You are allowed to ask more of your work than “tolerable.” You are allowed to want a life that is not built entirely around surviving the next round of restructuring. You are allowed to believe that your best contribution may still be ahead of you, even if the world keeps telling you your main achievement is surviving this long.
We plan with open eyes: bodies age, markets break, institutions change. We are not sketching a grand, heroic future version of you; we are deciding what the next kind, sane step looks like from where you actually stand. Small, well-chosen changes can alter the quality of the years you have left in ways that are anything but small.
Suitability at the centre
Underneath all of this sits one word that keeps returning: suitability.
You and I both know what it is to make choices because they are available, prestigious or familiar, rather than because they are a good fit. We also know the cost of staying too long in roles, firms, cities or relationships that slowly erode what is best in us. Professional cultures will happily applaud you for enduring mis-fit for decades, then write a pleasant farewell note when you finally leave.
This practice is built on the idea that intensity, conscience, introversion and high intelligence are not universal currencies. They flourish in some environments and wither in others. The work we do together is, in large part, about learning where you can thrive without acting, and what needs to be pruned away so that the rest of your life can grow.
We are not chasing perfection or some abstract “maximum potential.” We are tending suitability: for you, for the people you lead, and for the vocation you are slowly growing into. From the outside, the changes may look quiet and unremarkable. On the inside, they can feel like finally breathing.
If these values resonate – depth before display, intensity as a gift, the refusal to do all of this alone, a respect for something larger than the balance sheet, a scepticism about other people’s verdicts, a bias for thoughtful action, an honest view of time, and suitability at the centre – then we are already standing on shared ground.
From there, we can begin the quiet work.