Join me and the dogs for a walk as we look back at a year of re-inventing Mondays. This is a two part episode to celebrate my first year of running my own business and I share how things have been going, what’s been joyful and what’s been tough. I want to use this episode to share my thoughts on the first anniversary of my career transition which is now a year in the making.…
Category: leadership
This month I had the best fun on the podcast in conversation with special guest Jim Groom. We talked about being a robot in a co-working space, teaching Slack to make jokes and building a blog studio in Trento Italy! Here is one of my favourite moments from the conversation: Maren: Reclaim Slack is very special! It’s partly how you use it, but it’s also all these little touches. I’ve never seen somewhere that has quite so many…
At the moment I am working on a new short bio to put on my social profiles. It’s not a task I relish because I do a lot of different things and work with a number of communities, so whatever I put will alienate some and attract others. It’s one thing I miss about being a CEO, as at least those three letters took up very little of the character count 😉 . Now that…
For many of us, hybrid working is here to stay. In my work with education professionals and entrepreneurs I support managers and leaders looking for new strategies for virtual and hybrid teams. This includes running effective hybrid team meetings, keeping oversight of progress, helping their teams be at their best and everything in-between. If it’s part of your role to translate the newfound flexibility of the hybrid workplace into effective working practices then my course,…
I recently came across a new report from the Work Foundation, a Lancaster University thinktank, and the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, exploring the decline of after work drinks or socialising at the pub, which at least here in the UK was pretty common until very recently. The report, Working together: Maximising the opportunities of a multigenerational workforce, (Atay, A. and Williams, E. (2024). Work Foundation at Lancaster University), explores a number of factors that are…
This month I am taking a proper break from work for the first time since I started working on a self-employed basis full-time. I love running my own micro-business, but when it comes to taking holidays it’s not yet working for me. I find myself fretting about work and checking emails or committing to things because of my clients’ schedules and as a result taking a complete break from work hasn’t happened so far. Now…
I recently shared that as part of my work with Reclaim Hosting, I had the privilege to talk with Bryan Mathers and Meredith Huffman about the story behind ReclaimPress and as a result there’s a case study all about ReclaimPress on Reclaim the blog, that is definitely worth having a look at (I wrote it, so I might be a little biased, but hearing from Bryan and getting a healthy dose of his creative genius…
The ASCILITE’s Women in Academic Leadership Initiative aims to provide mentoring opportunities for academics and brings together its members via a community approach to support each other to progress in academia. Thanks to a recent invitation to speak at an upcoming WiAL webinar, I have started to think about my journey as a leader and what I could usefully share with this group of inspiring and aspiring academic leaders. My story, like so many of…
Recently, I have done much work in leadership development. Both in the workplace and when I coach clients, I come across emerging and established leaders who have developed strengths and skills gradually over time, whether through informal learning or through practice or also outside of work. Especially where skills have come easily, grown over a period of time or when we have learnt something just for fun, these are often overlooked in favour of those…
‘Digital Skills for Emerging Leaders’ is a new micro-credential course from the Digital Learning Institute that I am working on together with the amazing Lynne Taylerson. It’s a super project to be involved in, and it’s extra special for me as I get a change to collaborate with Lynne outside of our other favourite project: AmplifyFE. Usually we work on this kind of project at a distance, using the kind of digital skills we talk…