Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • Autumn ramble: Pocket edition

    Autumn ramble: Pocket edition

    I love this time of year and I love walking whilst talking. On a personal level that is one reason why having dogs is a good fit for me, as it prompts me outside daily for long, rambling walks through the colourful woods and along the river.

    However until recently I hadn’t found a way to translate my love for a good autumn ramble into my work… . That all changes in recent weeks as I embarked on creating the first of what I call ‘coaching walks’: It’s an autumn ramble, pocket edition.

    What is it?

    The idea for this format comes from my own experience of having wonderful reflective conversations with my then mentor Margaret as we walked our way through parks discussing strategy and solving the knotty problems I encountered as a CEO.

    We didn’t get to meet very often, but when we did and had time and space to head outside instead of limiting our sessions to a phone call or even an in person meeting, it was transformative.

    I think better when I walk, and I love following my train of thought and my feet, with an open mind about where they might take me.

    As a coach I now offer a walking format, both in person and remotely via a phone call, but the logistics of aligning diaries as and when important moments arise can make it challenging to actually make it happen.

    What I wanted to offer instead as a walk on demand, an option to take time away and find some headspace as and when my clients really need it. And so the idea for the coaching walk mini course was born.

    How does it work?

    The format is quite straight forward: it’s a mini online course in six parts, which covers setting out on the walk, the actual walk itself and coming back again. The screenshot of the course overview gives you an idea of the structure: each section has a narrative and activity as well as an audio recording to listen to (which you can download to listen to out and about):

    I have designed the activities so that you can choose to simply listen and walk and come back to the written version of the reflective prompts I share along the way later. Each element of the course includes pictures I have taken myself as I go on the walk.

    As you will be able to hear, I actually recorded a lot of the audio as I was walking myself, and I found that the most enjoyable part of creating the course.

    Where can I try it?

    You can preview and try out the full course for yourself for free. Simply head to the course homepage to get started. I think my coaching clients are very much going to enjoy trying this new format and I look forward to hearing what you think.

    Hopefully I’ll get a chance to create more seasonal resources like this, so let me know what you’d find helpful for the next edition. I’m already thinking about a coastal path coaching adventure… .

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  • Small things. Celebrated.

    Small things. Celebrated.

    Every now and then I take a month and celebrate a small win every day. When I blogged about this a couple of years ago, the motivation came from a time of being overstretched, a period during which it felt like no matter how much I did I never achieved enough.

    This time round my motivation is different, and more aligned to my desire to practice gratitude and to make the most of a busy, but precious time in my life – when many things pull my focus in different directions both personally and professionally.

    Gratitude journalling is a practice that I like and I have tried previously, and yet it doesn’t feel like quite the right fit for what I want to achieve this month. This celebration of small things is more about slowing down and paying attention, to be more present.

    The list of small things I have celebrated so far

    Day 1: Make a fire and be warm all evening
    Day 2: Go for a 2 mile run
    Day 3: Get flu vaccination
    Day 4: Received a letter with the best stamp. Ever.
    Day 5: Went to the beach!
    Day 6: Plant care hour
    Day 7: –
    Day 8: Time out and a nice coffee at my local cafe
    Day 9: got a huge box of pumpkins and squash
    Day 10: Went to the Theatre
    Day 11: Completed the last run in a training phase
    Day 12: Decorated the house with a garland which was a gift
    Day 13: Tea in bed
    Day 14: Went for a run although I didn’t feel like it
    Day 15: Signed up for a charity run

    I’ll be adding more as the month continues. Definitely looking for the bright spots in these times.

    Day 16: Went to the beach
    Day 17: Listened to vinyl
    Day 18: Had a good walk with the dogs
    Day 19: Finished a work project
    Day 20: Got beautiful flowers
    Day 21: Went on an autumn ramble
    Day 22: Had a quiet, restful day

    Listen to the podcast episode

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  • Congrats Cohort! Coaching course completion

    Congrats Cohort! Coaching course completion

    Today is an exciting day as my coaching course Healthy Hybrid Habits for Leaders and Managers wraps up after four weeks. It’s been a wonderful experience to work with a cohort of 20 individuals this month, and if you haven’t yet discovered this project, you can find out all about the course on the dedicated course page.

    Time to celebrate…!

    As this is the final week of the course, it’s time to celebrate. It’s been a joy to work with everyone participating in the course over the past few weeks and initial feedback has been really positive. For my part, I hope that the course has been both inspiring and helpful.

    Healthy habits take time to get right and can be hard to make stick… . All the tools, readings and resources included in the course are there to support participants on their journey. For now, it’s time to celebrate your achievement – and there’s a course certificate and digital badge to collect.

    Some favourite moments 🙂

    There was a lot to enjoy over the past month, and I found the weekly live group coaching sessions especially energising and inspiring. I loved hearing the group reflections and questions… and I was very happy to see folk playing along with the activities, too, from office origami to writing postcards with Positive Feedback by Post.

    I decided early on to include a course letter in the design, and this element was one of my favourite parts of the course delivery.

    Another element that has been great for the course is welcoming participants from different sectors and timezones. Although a group of 20 isn’t that large in itself, the group coaching format I had designed into the course doesn’t work as well with groups larger than 10, so that was the maximum number of participants for each live session.

    As the course was designed to be taken largely asynchronously, and audio based, which received a lot of positive feedback, the live session weren’t essential to attend, but proved very popular.

    Audio first wins!

    Given that the aim of the course is to establish healthy habits for hybrid working, it was my intention from the start to create audio instead of video content. Although video is very prevalent in this kind of course usually, providing audio recordings ready to download accompanied by transcripts and (mostly) openly licenced resources proved to be a very effective approach.

    Participants loved being able to download the recordings (usually around 30 min per topic) and listen whilst walking, or simply away from their desk. I am really delighted that this approach landed well… and I am definitely planning to use a similar format for future developments. Which brings us to…

    What’s next?

    First up, registration for the next run of the Healthy Hybrid Habits for Leaders and Managers is already open, and a few early birds have already signed up. Both free and paid places are available, and as before I’ll be accepting group registration (at a discounted rate), too! The next cohort gets underway on 20 January 2025… so if you are looking for a bit of a ray of light in the dark days of January, this might be the course for you.

    Also, I am VERY excited to have a new offering to unveil… Ta Da! Come and join me for a Coaching Walk: Autumn Ramble. If you are looking for some space to reflect and take a step back, then join me for a walk.

    Try a free, self-paced coaching walk I have designed as a seasonal guide to accompany you on an autumn ramble. This is the first of my seasonal offerings designed to give you some creative and fun ways to find time to reflect and focus. Enjoy!

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  • Second Breakfast with Audrey Watters

    Second Breakfast with Audrey Watters

    In this season of interviewing special guests on my podcast (all part of the research for my new book) I get to talk to many amazing and inspiring people and I deeply appreciate their time and input. So it was a special privilege and pleasure to talk to one of my favourite writers and friend Audrey Watters .

    Audrey, Kin and I first met over a decade ago during my time working for ALT and organising events, and over the years we survived a couple of the more ‘interesting’ industry conferences on the edtech circuit together from Berlin to Reykjavík. As you will hear in the interview, I am a big fan of Audrey’s thinking and writing, although nowadays it’s less about edtech and more about dog walk moments, pancakes and running.

    So join me for a wonderfully rich conversation with Audrey as we talk about the culture of trying to measure everything from workout metrics to workplace productivity, and what it means to resist living life conforming to algorithmic templates.  Along the way, we chat about dog walking, making pancakes for second breakfast, avoiding a world run by Clippy and Audrey’s new writing project about AI in education. 

    Mentioned in this episode:

    P.S. Fierceness, kindness, hope

    Since we recorded the episode I have begun a new run training plan, an endeavour which I have blogged about many times of the past few years and which, for a whole number of reasons, have all ended after only a few weeks. But this time starting to run again feels different. I’ve found a new kind of inspiration as I was listening back to the interview whilst editing the episode. It’s a sense of fierceness, kindness and hope that burns brightly. This I take away from this inspiring conversation with thanks 🙂

  • Making spaces

    Making spaces

    This week took an unexpected turn: first, I decided at the weekend to (finally) dive into building a book nook. I received the kit (Sunshine Town) to create this a while ago and loved the idea, but until now it didn’t feel like a good moment to get started.

    But thanks to my new enormous sit stand desk, I felt in the right place to start unboxing and get building. Plus, I also had amazing inspiration from one of my colleagues at Reclaim, Meredith, who recently completed a similar kit and the result was absolutely amazing. So at the weekend I was happily building away, surrounded by a sea of small pieces, glue and paint. Audiobook on, tea at the ready. It was bliss.

    What I didn’t know then was that less than 24 hours later my office would move rooms… in a spontaneous effort to create a better space for the postgrad student in our home. Although shifting things around to make a new study space wouldn’t have necessarily meant moving my office, it was a great opportunity to get things arranged in a way that made the most sense given who is using which space when and how. Also, there was a chance to have a floor in the house on which every room has it’s own record player, and who could pass up such an opportunity 😉

    Cue a day of shifting book cases and wardrobes, dogs ‘helping’ and me not so secretly regretting the amount of vinyl records that seem to have accumulated on the first floor. Thankfully we have a lot of practice moving things (me being a fan of re-arranging my office…) and moving things around the same floor mercifully avoids lugging things up and down stairs. Needless to say, it was maybe not the ideal time to have trays of drying, tiny pieces of model kits around.

    A day later and a relative calm has descended. Hold my calls… I’m blogging… at my newly cleared desk and in my new office space (which I love). Posey the dog has settled in her new nook, surrounded by cuddly blanket and toys. The plants are gently adjusting to the changes in light and position, settling into their new home, too. My yoga mat is stowed in its new corner, ready for a calmer start to the day tomorrow.

    Even though so much of my work happens in the digital realm, with collaborators and clients who are continents away, it’s the books, records and stationary that make up the analogue foundation of my practice. And when that foundation is in disarray, I feel it across the whole spectrum of my work. So here’s to making this new space home, so that I can get back to finishing my book nook 😉

  • Mental Health in the Workplace

    Mental Health in the Workplace

    Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day and this year’s theme is “It is Time to Prioritise Mental Health in the Workplace” -World Mental Health Day is an annual awareness day observed every 10th October.

    This is a cause I have long championed, and I am glad to see this year’s emphasis on mental health in the workplace supported by a whole range of resources. I’ve linked to some examples below and each of these point to further resources for help and advice:

    WMHD Source Files

    Many of my coaching conversations are related to finding balance between wellbeing, both mental and physical, and the demands of a busy work life or a career transition so I doubly appreciate the emphasis on mental heath at work.

    Hybrid and remote working has a big impact on our wellbeing. Much of the resources for leaders and managers features above identify the need to develop skills in supporting mental healthy in hybrid work places, but there’s a lot yet to do.

    I’ve previously blogged about a whole range of approaches to supporting mental healthy in hybrid and virtual teams, from mediation and mindfulness to team building on the radio and celebrating small milestones.

    This week I am going to take a moment to check in with myself, and those around me. So in that spirit, I’ll leave you with an invitation to reach out. How are you?

    WMHD Source Files