175: The Good Listening To Show with Chris Grimes and guest Julia Felton175: The Good Listening To Show with Chris Grimes and guest Julia Felton
UK Health Radio Podcast
Chris Grimes chats with leadership strategist Julia Felton about how her herd of horses, time in Africa and experience of burnout shaped a new approach to modern leadership. Stories of nature, travel and reinvention are used to show how presence, safety and continual change affect work and life.
34:19•27 Jun 2026
Horses, Burnout and Reinvention: Julia Felton’s Leadership Lessons
Episode Overview
- Nature and horse herds offer practical models for leadership, showing how interdependence and clear energy help teams function well.
- Businesses that fail to reinvent and stay current, like some well-known brands mentioned, risk falling by the wayside in fast-changing markets.
- Corporate burnout can be invisible until you stop; stepping away created space for Julia to recognise exhaustion and reset her life.
- Living in the African Bush taught the importance of presence, awareness and appreciating how every sound and movement has meaning.
- Horses respond to energy and presence, highlighting that leaders must create genuine safety and attentiveness if they want people to follow them.
“I realised I was going through life with this tick list… I was doing it all, but I wasn’t present to what was going on around me.”
What drives someone to seek a whole new way of living and leading? This conversation on the UK Health Radio Podcast teams up host Chris Grimes with guest Julia Felton for a warm, humorous and surprisingly down-to-earth look at how horses and nature can reshape modern leadership. Julia introduces herself as a “leadership and teamship strategist and advisor” and a “reinvention practitioner”, focusing on how businesses can keep up with a rapidly changing world.
Using her herd of horses as both teachers and metaphors, she shows how feedback from animals who “never sugarcoat the feedback” can reveal blind spots in communication, team dynamics and leadership style far faster than a PowerPoint deck ever could.
She talks candidly about corporate burnout, admitting she “didn’t even know I was burnt out until I stopped,” and shares the pivotal moment in Africa when she realised, “I was going through life with this tick list” instead of actually feeling her experiences. From a sabbatical on a Colorado ranch to months living in the African Bush, Julia connects her love of nature with practical lessons on presence, resilience and psychological safety at work.
You’ll hear stories of horses rescued from motorways, ex-racehorses with arthritis, and how a herd became the backbone of her business, Business HorsePower. Her reflections on nature’s rhythms – and the way leaders burn out by running “flatline” instead of cycling between performance and rest – will particularly resonate with anyone juggling high-pressure work, recovery, or both.
If you’re curious how leadership, burnout, nature and a few cheeky horse analogies might intersect with your own life, this gentle, story-rich chat offers plenty to think about and smile at. Who knew that learning to lead people could start with learning to listen to a horse?
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