Every high-achieving leader has a to-do list that doesn’t end — it just refills. And the only response most of us were ever handed for that is push harder. Grip tighter. Muscle through. In this episode, Rachel talks to Ellen Coomber, co-founder of the Softness Revolution, about why that instinct — the one we were trained into from exams onward — stops working, and what she does instead. Ellen has a genetics degree from Cambridge; she is not someone who arrived at this by avoiding rigour. She arrived at it because pushing harder had genuinely stopped working, and she had to find something else. This conversation is about that something else: working with less effort, not more, and learning to tell the difference between an instinct worth trusting and fear wearing an instinct’s clothes. Getting that distinction wrong is how we end up saying yes to the thing that breaks us, and it will affect the next decision too, and the one after that.
We cover:
- Why “work harder” is the only tool most high achievers were ever handed for pressure — and where that training actually started
- The Softness Revolution: what “soft” means when it isn’t the opposite of capable
- What solo-sailing a 40-foot boat taught Ellen about the difference between soft and weak
- What horses know about force that most leadership training never mentions
- How to tell your actual instinct apart from fear when they feel identical
- Why more effort is not always the effective option, and what to do with the effort you’re not using
This episode is for you if…
…you’re looking at a to-do list that never actually shrinks, and your automatic response is to push harder, focus more, try again — even though that’s the exact same plan you had last week, and the week before. If some part of you already suspects that working harder isn’t the answer but you don’t yet have a working alternative, or a language for it, this one’s for you.
