Ruth Pearson
Most organisations have a wellbeing strategy. Far fewer know what to do when a senior employee is quietly managing a chronic condition that never appears on a sick note. The gap between published policy and what a line manager actually says on a Tuesday morning is where retention is lost, talent is hidden, and stress becomes attrition.
Ruth Pearson is a wellbeing speaker, coach and former deputy headteacher who helps organisations turn stated wellbeing policy into the everyday behaviour of managers, drawing on more than two decades in secondary education and her own experience of leading at senior level while living with lupus.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ruth Pearson
- She speaks to hidden disability from inside it. A leader who built a 25-year senior education career while managing lupus brings a credibility on long-term illness at work that policy decks and HR training cannot manufacture.
- Her coaching framework, 5STEPS2LEARN, set out in Say Yes To New Opportunities!, gives line managers and individuals a shared vocabulary for the conversations they usually avoid: stress, capacity, and reasonable adjustment.
- She has stood in the room with both audiences a wellbeing strategy is meant to serve: senior leadership teams who set the policy, and frontline staff who have to live inside it. She translates between them.
- As a verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter, she has assessed wellbeing claims against organisational reality, which sharpens how she diagnoses the gap between intent and behaviour.
- Her broadcast work with GoodNewsBritain.com, including hosting Tomorrow News Today, gives her a register that holds a non-specialist audience, useful for all-staff sessions where the room is mixed seniority and mixed engagement.
Biography highlights
- Founder of Listening To Your Voice Ltd, a wellbeing, coaching and training consultancy serving business and education leaders.
- Former Deputy Headteacher with over 25 years in UK secondary education.
- Author of Say Yes To New Opportunities! Be Motivated to L.E.A.R.N. (2015), which introduces the 5STEPS2LEARN coaching strategy, and Listening for God’s Voice.
- Television presenter and broadcaster with GoodNewsBritain.com, host of Tomorrow News Today.
- Verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter; founding member of Cornerstone Counselling Services.
- Has spoken at The Business Show, ExCeL London.
Biography
The hardest wellbeing problem in most organisations is not absence. It is the senior employee who never goes off sick, but who is quietly running at half capacity through a condition no one knows about. Lupus is one such condition. Ruth Pearson has lived with it since 1996 and continued, through that period, to lead teams in UK secondary schools up to deputy headteacher level.
That experience is the spine of her work. Through Listening To Your Voice, she coaches leaders, runs sessions for boards and frontline teams, and writes for managers who want a vocabulary for the conversations wellbeing policy assumes are already happening. Her coaching framework, 5STEPS2LEARN, is set out in her 2015 book Say Yes To New Opportunities! Be Motivated to L.E.A.R.N. and is built around motivation, capacity and the practical mechanics of asking for help at work.
Her credibility on workplace standards is not only personal. As a verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter, she has assessed how organisations actually deliver against the wellbeing claims they publish, which informs how she diagnoses the gap between policy and behaviour. She is also a founding member of Cornerstone Counselling Services and a regular broadcaster with GoodNewsBritain.com, including hosting the live show Tomorrow News Today.
She is most useful to organisations that already have a wellbeing strategy on paper and want to know why it is not landing with the people it was written for. The answer is usually behavioural, not structural, and it tends to surface most clearly in how managers talk to employees with conditions they cannot see.
Key speaking topics
- Workplace wellbeing and burnout prevention
- Hidden disabilities and chronic illness at work
- Stress, resilience and personal capacity
- Motivation and engagement through change
- Inclusive leadership in education and corporate settings
- Communication between managers and employees on health
- Personal narrative as a workplace inclusion tool
Ideal for
- HR and wellbeing leads designing or relaunching a wellbeing strategy
- DEI and inclusion leads addressing hidden disability and chronic illness
- Education sector leaders, MAT executives and headteachers
- All-staff or whole-school events where the room is mixed seniority and engagement
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of what hidden disability looks like at senior levels and where current policy misses it.
- A working vocabulary, drawn from 5STEPS2LEARN, for the manager-employee conversations stress and chronic illness require.
- A sharper read on why their existing wellbeing strategy lands well in some teams and not in others.
- Renewed energy and a sense of permission, especially for staff currently managing a condition they have not disclosed at work.
Talks
A session on the conversational mechanics that determine whether wellbeing policy becomes day-to-day practice or stays on the intranet.
Key takeaways:
- Why most wellbeing breakdowns are conversational, not structural.
- A simple structure for the manager check-in that surfaces capacity issues early.
- How to talk about stress and ill-health at work without breaching confidentiality.
A talk drawing on Ruth’s lived experience of lupus and her years leading school teams while managing a chronic condition.
Key takeaways:
- What a hidden disability actually looks like in a senior role.
- The signals managers usually miss and the assumptions that cost organisations talent.
- How to design reasonable adjustments that people will accept rather than refuse.
An applied session built on 5STEPS2LEARN, the coaching framework set out in Say Yes To New Opportunities!.
Key takeaways:
- A motivation-led model for personal wellbeing under sustained workload.
- How to recover capacity without stepping back from leadership.
- Practical habits that hold up through long periods of pressure or ill-health.
A keynote on individual difference as a workplace asset, particularly relevant in DEI, schools and youth-facing audiences.
Key takeaways:
- Why standardisation of behaviour at work leaves capability on the table.
- How leaders model permission for difference without performing it.
- The link between psychological safety and disclosure of hidden conditions.