Pivots & Plot Twists

Tamsyn Allington
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The podcast where I invite a group of inspiring change makers and leaders from different industries and walks-of-life to discuss the topic of being brave, navigate change and what to do when life throws a plot twist or two.

  1. 3d ago

    Ep 74: You're Not Stuck, You're Just Sitting on the Fence

    This is the final episode of our Chapters of Change season, and I'm using it to pull together the thread that's run through the whole season: power, and what we do with the choices we actually have. I started this podcast in 2023 looking for a space to share stories of change and connect with people who'd lived through something similar. But the world has moved faster than any of us expected, and change doesn't feel like a single event anymore. It feels constant, unpredictable and relentless. This season we've talked about change we didn't see coming, the loss of identity that follows when the thing we built our sense of self around disappears, change that gets thrust on us without consent, and change that happens because someone misused their power. The theme of power kept showing up more than I expected it to, and it's what I want to leave you with as we close the season. Here's the truth I keep coming back to: most of us have more choice than we give ourselves credit for. We're just very good at sitting on the fence, describing the change we want in enormous detail, and much less good at actually doing the one small thing that moves us toward it. What you're looking for is probably on the other side of a decision you haven't yet made. So I've given you something practical to take with you. Four steps: name the decision you're avoiding, out loud. Give it a specific date. Take the smallest possible action within 48 hours. And stop waiting to feel ready, because that feeling is probably never coming. We'll be taking a break from the podcast in September and back with a new season in October. Thank you for being part of this community and for showing up for these conversations all season. Key Themes Power, and the choices we don't realise we haveFence-sitting versus decidingThe Latin root of "decision" — to cut offA practical four-step framework: name it, date it, act on it, stop waiting to feel readyReflecting on the Chapters of Change season as a wholeCommunity and honest conversation as the throughline of the podcast Standout Quote "On the other side of a decision you haven't yet made is probably the exact change, the exact truth, or the exact goal you've been telling me and probably other people that you are looking to make." Hashtags #PivotsAndPlotTwists #ChaptersOfChange #LeadWell #Leadership #Decisions #PersonalGrowth #WorkplaceCulture

  2. Aug 11

    Ep 73: Who's Carrying the Weight? A Hard Look at Power, Culture and Leadership

    This week I'm doing something a little different. I'm showing up angry, and I'm not pretending otherwise. Not raging at individuals or companies, but frustrated by the systems businesses build around the people inside them. Systems that reward speed and presenteeism over quality. Systems that reward hierarchy over humanity. Systems that let people self-protect and avoid hard conversations while calling it leadership. I share three real examples that on the surface look completely different, a senior woman sidelined during maternity leave, the quiet person who holds an organisation together without ever getting credit, and the person who finally earns a seat at the table only to find no one gave them the tools to succeed there. Different stories, same pattern. It always comes back to power, who has it, and what they do with it when no one's watching. I ask myself the uncomfortable question I think a lot of us are asking right now: what if change isn't actually deliverable? And I sit with that honestly before landing somewhere I still believe in. Leadership isn't complicated. Strip away the frameworks and the jargon and it comes down to three things: clarity, capacity and culture. And culture isn't the poster in reception. It's the last decision you made as a leader when nobody was checking on you. Key Themes The abuse and misuse of power in organisational cultureHow culture erodes gradually through small, ordinary decisions rather than one dramatic momentThe "unseen glue" people who hold businesses together without recognitionBeing handed a seat at the table without the support to use itClarity, capacity and culture as the real foundations of leadershipRefusing to let someone else's behaviour become your identity Let's connect: Email me at hello@tamsyn.co

  3. Aug 4

    Ep 72: Grounded or Stuck? The Test I Use to Know If I've Outgrown Something

    This week's chapter is a solo one, and it starts on a beach in West Cornwall, the place I grew up. Standing there on the 30th anniversary of my dad's passing, I realised something had shifted. Cornwall no longer felt like home. Not because I love it any less, but because my sense of home has moved somewhere else entirely. In this episode I explore what a place makes possible for us, and when it quietly starts to hold us back. I talk about my dad, the kind of leader and person he was, and how his particular brand of load bearing kindness shaped the way I lead today, plus an honest reflection on trying to build belonging through job titles earlier in my career (and a midlife gardening confession along the way). Key themes The difference between being grounded and being stuck, and why they can look identical from the outsideWhy you cannot outsource your sense of identity to a job title or a workplaceKindness as a load bearing leadership trait, not a soft or performative oneBuilding a portable sense of home that lives within you rather than in a placeA simple end-of-day test for noticing whether a workplace is expanding you or shrinking youSmall, ordinary joys as a form of expansion, not just big dramatic reinvention Standout quote "The distinction I keep returning to is the difference between being grounded and being stuck. A place that truly grounds you is still growing you. A place where you're stuck stopped growing you some time ago, you just haven't updated your paperwork about it yet." Tamsyn.co

  4. Jul 28

    Ep 71: Rejection, Reinvention and Learning to Give Yourself Grace with Emily McGuirk

    Emily McGuirk is back on Pivots & Plot Twists, and what a year it's been since she last joined us. This episode picks up her story exactly where change loves to strike, without warning. Emily talks openly about losing funding for a project she was passionate about, an unexpected end to a role she loved, and the gut punch of having a business loan approved to buy a stage school, only for the offer to be turned down. She shares what it felt like to be rejected twice in quick succession, and how that rejection became the foundation for the next chapter of her business, Small Steps Big Vision, now focused on communications and confidence coaching for founders, leaders and teams. This is a conversation about community, autonomy, and the discipline of giving yourself grace when nothing is quite in order yet. It is honest, generous and full of hard won wisdom for anyone standing where Emily stood a year ago. Key themes Rejection is often redirection, even when it does not feel that way at the timeYou are never starting from scratch. You are evolving into the next chapterThe importance of building and leaning on your support network before you need itAutonomy and flexibility as non-negotiables, not nice-to-havesGiving yourself grace when things are not all in place yetReframing nerves as fuel rather than something to fearGetting clear on what you offer, rather than searching for the perfect role Emily McGuirk is a speaker, communications coach and award-winning business owner. With over 15 years of experience and a background in acting and the performing arts, she helps founders, leaders and teams communicate with confidence, credibility and impact, supporting professionals to manage nerves, build presence and trust their voice when pitching, presenting, networking and leading. Connect with Emily: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-mcguirk-helping-people-build-confidence-presence-impact/ #PivotsAndPlotTwists #ChaptersOfChange #Reinvention #CareerPivot #Confidence #PersonalGrowth

  5. Jul 21

    Ep 70: The Future of Leadership is Human, It's Time to Be Brave Enough to Lead That Way

    This is a solo episode, and one I have wanted to share for a while. It is based on a keynote I recently delivered at a people and culture conference, where so much of the conversation was dominated by AI, automation and the pace of change. And I wanted to offer something different. A pause. A provocation. And a reminder of what actually makes leadership work. Because in a world that is speeding up, becoming more machine-driven and more noisy by the day, I genuinely believe that being human is not a weakness in leadership. It is the differentiator. What this episode is about I open with a story from earlier in my career, a moment that has stayed with me for years. We were doing a culture survey inside a business and one word kept coming up unprompted from employees across the organisation. That word was love. And a senior leader shut it down in a single sentence. That moment taught me something important. Not just about that leader, but about the choice every leader faces between getting curious about what their people are actually telling them or sanitising it because it feels uncomfortable. From there I get into the bigger picture: why we have built organisations that ask people to perform at the highest level while simultaneously suppressing the very conditions that make high performance possible. Why resilience has become a survival tool we have somehow mistaken for a leadership strategy. And why the gap between what organisations say about values and how they actually use them is costing them more than they realise. I also talk about the shift I think we need to make, from leadership development to human development, and why the skills we have historically called soft are anything but. The things worth sitting with People do not leave organisations because they are tired of working. They leave because they are tired of shrinking. Resilience is a survival tool. It was never meant to be a permanent state. Human skills are not soft skills. Emotional intelligence, psychological safety, clarity, dignity and the ability to hold complexity under pressure are precision skills for the world we are operating in right now. The leader casts a shadow. You set the tone for whether the people around you feel safe to think, safe to speak and safe to be human. In a world increasingly powered by machines, being genuinely human is not just important. It is a competitive advantage. Who this is for If you are a CEO, CPO, HRD, COO or anyone with responsibility for leading people and shaping culture, this one is for you. But honestly, if you lead anything, including yourself, I think there is something here worth hearing. Want to know more? If anything in this episode resonated and you want to explore what this looks like in practice, find out more about the LeadWell methodology over on LinkedIn or head to tamsyn.co Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts If this landed, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And follow Pivots and Plot Twists so the next chapter finds you easily. #PivotsAndPlotTwists #ChaptersOfChange #Leadership #HumanSkills #FutureOfWork #Podcast

  6. Jul 14

    Ep 69: Backing Yourself and the Power of Something Over Nothing with Hayley Kyle

    Sometimes the people who know us best are the ones who end up on the podcast. Today I am joined by someone who has been in my professional and personal life for over a decade, and honestly, getting her in front of a microphone has taken far too long. Hayley Kyle is the founder of The HAPi PT, a women's health and fitness coach who left a stellar career in hospitality tech to do something she had always been passionate about: helping people feel stronger, healthier and happier. In this conversation, we trace Hayley's journey from growing up in her parents' hotel, where the guests always came first, through a decade of building and scaling hospitality SaaS businesses, to the pivot in her 40s that led her to retrain as a personal trainer and launch The HAPi PT. This one is full of honesty, warmth and some genuinely brilliant reminders that we are often the only thing standing in our own way. What we talk about We cover a lot of ground in this episode, including growing up in hospitality and what it taught Hayley about commitment and putting others first, her years as a competitive swimmer and the moment she stepped back from the Commonwealth Games trials, and what that lesson has followed her ever since. We also talk about her career journey from account manager to Customer Success Director and then Director of Value Creation, navigating a private equity acquisition and what happens when your values stop aligning with the business around you, the moment she decided to back herself and retrain, and why it still took six months even with financial security in place. We get into her philosophy of something over nothing and the 22 minute concept, and why tiny consistent actions compound into something remarkable over time. And we close on what it really means to invest in yourself, not just physically, but as a leader, a parent and a person. About Hayley Hayley Kyle is the founder of The HAPi PT, a women's health and fitness coach on a mission to simplify wellbeing in a world that often makes it far too complicated. After spending over 15 years building and leading successful businesses in hospitality technology, Hayley made a bold career pivot in her 40s to focus on something she had always been passionate about: helping people feel stronger, healthier and happier. A former competitive swimmer, mum of two and self-confessed believer in something over nothing, Hayley specialises in supporting women who are juggling careers, families, hormones, stress and the endless pressures of modern life. Her approach challenges the idea that health has to be extreme, all-consuming or centred around becoming smaller. Through The HAPi PT, Hayley helps women shift their focus away from chasing perfection and towards building strength, resilience, confidence and long-term health. You can find Hayley at https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayley-kyle-22hk22/ A line that stayed with me "Nobody tells you how much you can earn or whether you can be good at what you do. The only person who does that is you." Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts If this episode resonated, please do leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't yet, come and find me on LinkedIn where I share more conversations about change, leadership and navigating whatever chapter you are in right now. #PivotsAndPlotTwists #ChaptersOfChange #CareerChange #PersonalGrowth #Podcast

  7. Jul 7

    Ep 68 : Navigating unchosen chapters and introduction to chapters of change with Tamsyn Allington

    Tamsyn Allington reflects on her personal and professional chapters, emphasizing how change, pivots, and plot twists shape our careers and lives. She shares her journey through grief, burnout, and rebuilding, highlighting the importance of learning from unexpected turns and embracing each chapter as part of a larger story. Takeaways Chapters in a career represent deliberate turns and unexpected plot twistsNavigating change and reflecting on personal chapters are essential for growth Find me: website : Tamsyn.co linkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tamsynallington

  8. 05/20/2025

    Ep 67 : Embracing the Pause: A Season Finale Reflection

    In this final episode of the season, I invite you into a moment of stillness. Pivots and Plot Twists has always been about connection, reflection, and the messiness of being human. And now, it's time for a pause. I explore what happens when we stop, breathe, and listen—not to fill the silence, but to honor it. I share my personal reflections on creating the podcast, the power of meaningful conversations, and the beauty of knowing when it’s time to rest. This is an episode about trusting the quiet, and letting it lead the way. Take a breath. Come home to yourself. We’ll be back soon—with more stories, more truth, and a deeper sense of purpose. Connect with Tamsyn Book a free consultion call: https://hello.dubsado.com:443/public/appointment-scheduler/637dfe6d55641a24b89cb06b/schedule Join the Pivots & Plot Twists newsletter : https://tamsynandco.myflodesk.com/welcome Our Website : www.tamsyn.co LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamsynallington/

    Ep 67 : Embracing the Pause: A Season Finale Reflection
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About

The podcast where I invite a group of inspiring change makers and leaders from different industries and walks-of-life to discuss the topic of being brave, navigate change and what to do when life throws a plot twist or two.

Information

  • Creator
    Tamsyn Allington
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    74
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Tamsyn Allington
  • Show Website
    Pivots & Plot Twists