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…
Category: coaching
When I first started coach training, I set myself the goal to offer walking sessions for my clients. My thinking is that pretty much all of my favourite coaching and mentoring conversations happened when walking, either outdoors or pacing up and down in my office. I like moving whilst thinking, and I like talking and walking… . I take walking meetings, and walking catch ups, so walking whilst coaching feels like a natural extension of…
When I was a research student I came across David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, an ecological philosophy book. At the time, I was deeply interested in phenomenology, and as part of my research in Anthropology I was learning much about how human beings relate to and experience the world. Specifically how we relate to the world through our senses as embodied beings. From the articles and…
This month I am celebrating a big milestone moment on my coaching journey. After two years of training and 100+ hours of coaching with over 20 clients I am set to formally complete the ACC credential of the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Thanks to Katie Linder’s Higher Ed Coach Training, I have now completed all mandatory training to become an ICF Associate Certified Coach. Completing the training and gaining the requisite experience in formal coaching hours means…
I made a fun discovery today: It’s now been over ten years since I started this list of things I have done. Wow! I had no idea it had been that long, and seeing those entries from 2013 made me pause and reflect on the habit of keeping the list, a decade in the making. Why did I start tracking progress in this way? My archive page is a lot like a personal vault. If…
It’s been great fun this week to head up to Edinburgh to facilitate an away day for a senior leadership team at the university, and I wanted to share a few snippets of what made the day really memorable for me. The focus for the day was all about hybrid working and leading people and projects in a continually changing context, managing the enduring impact of lockdown working alongside emerging policies and priorities. Here are…
This week I am kicking off blogging with a BIG thank you to all my coaching clients and fellow coaches for an amazing year! I am really proud to have completed all components of my first milestone credential as a professional coach – thanks to Katie Linder’s inspiring training programme and all the coaches I have met and connected with through this supportive network over the past two years. As I wait to complete the…
… and come walk with me. How about a day along the windswept West Wales Coastal Path? The title image for this post is taken at the tip of the St David’s peninsula around this time of year. Let’s have a day buffeted by autumn winds surrounded by colourful heather, looking out to the endless horizon. I would love to have a day like that today. In reality, although that part of the Coastal Path…
Yep, this is another post about houseplants… or rather things we can learn from plants. I’ve previously published leadership lessons from office plants and in the same spirit this post is all about houseplant inspired tips for managing a period of change or transition. It’s inspired by my own experience of moving between jobs this month and my adventures in caring for a growing collecting of plants in my home and home office. It’s the…
I’m really excited to have Season 3 of the Leading Virtual Teams Podcast finally underway. It’s a new season in every sense… and that is why I am kicking off with ‘new pencil case’ moments in episode 1: This episode celebrates the start of September, and the new season or start of term for many of us. I have recently tried out a new gratitude journal share ideas for how to find bright spots in…