Author: Maren Deepwell

Summer: a very special (guest) season

This season on Leading Virtual Teams I am interviewing a whole host of special guests!

These interviews are part of the research for my new book, which will continue my work on hybrid working from Leading Virtual Teams (2022). It will also expand on that and have a much greater focus on long term hybrid working, how it impacts our senses and wellbeing. There’s so much to explore, and drafting the chapter outlines has got me very excited about the research and interviews ahead. One of the key relationships I am interested in exploring is between human beings and technology, and the radical shifts in the balance of power in the workplace (as in the classroom) with the advent of AI and surveillance technologies.

Special guest Joyce Seitzinger joined me recently to talk about hybrid working, work/life balance and custom emoji. Joyce is based at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne (previously RMIT Online) and has a wealth of experience when it comes to leading virtual teams. We had a lot of fun as we swapped stories of leading distributed and remote teams, the joy of spending more time outside and cycling to the office (which in Australia sounded a lot more appealing to me than here in Wales, where this summer seems to be endlessly wet and grey..).

Listen to the interview with Joyce and look out for the next instalment of this season on Friday with special guests as the one and only Bryan Mathers comes on air to talk what he would take on a desert island (clue: it’s not digital) and staying creatively productive whilst working from home with your cat for company.

This new book isn’t a solo project, but a wider collaboration with case studies and interviews with leaders and experts. Do get in touch with me if you’d like to join us for an episode and contribute to the book.

Recent episodes

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22/07/2024
Coaching moments from career transition and crisis support to supporting long term change.
I often get asked about my own experience of having a coach by my coaching clients, especially as in the UK coaching is still a (largely unregulated and) relatively new profession. A lot of my coach training and credentialing process was designed to enhance the professionalism of coaching as a practice with lots of different applications, and I love hearing about what the contexts in which other coaches work: from health, fitness and nutrition coaching to student and career coaching to family and divorce coaching and so on. If you want to get from where you are to reach a new place, be that in your personal health, relationships, career or life generally, chances are that there is a coach out there to support you along the way.

The question most of my new clients ask to begin with, is whether coaching is right for them. Coaching can bring many benefits, and it’s a really powerful tool for self discovery, productivity, professional development and much more, but it isn’t the right fit for everyone or every situation. Over the past 15 years I have found coaching an invaluable support in a number of situations and I wanted to share some examples which may be useful if you are considering getting a coach yourself. In general, I would say that coaching might be a good fit if you are:
- Looking for a safe or creative space to focus on an important decision or period of change;
- Feeling stuck and struggle with productivity or specific tasks;
- Ready to plan for the next stage in your career or further ahead to the next 5 years;
- Looking for someone to think (or draw) with to find solutions to problems.
Coaching through a new leadership role

I first came to coaching and mentoring when I started my first leadership role, and from the outset, the support of an external professional became helpful to me. Managing a team of people and being responsible to many stakeholders made it hard to share a lot of what was on my mind openly, and I found coaching conversations really helped me clarify my thinking.

Having someone mirror back to me what I was articulating provided a reality check when I needed it most, and helped me recognise my own needs alongside other priorities.

Coaching on tap for crisis moments

Once I had built a good relationship with my coach, we fell into a rhythm of meeting less frequently. However, I was able to schedule sessions and get in touch as and when I needed to and that gave me confidence and reassuring as a young leader. It was invaluable to be able to have support on tap for when I really needed it, in moments of crisis, and not having to confide in someone new.

Over a period of years I appreciated how much my coach was able to help to reflect and chart my own progress by referring back to previous conversations, which helped to hold me accountable to the goals I had set myself no matter how long it took to achieve them.

Coaching to mastermind a big career change

Planning a big change can be a lonely task, especially if you don’t have many people to talk about your plans with. I found it difficult to draw on my usual support network when I set out to plan a big career change, partly because I didn’t want to unsettle colleagues and partly because making a change always has a element of figuring out why the current situation no longer suits. What I really needed at that time was someone I could trust completely, who was not connected to my current institution or role.

I wanted someone to think alongside with, someone to share my hopes and fears with and someone who would not judge or advise, but hold space. The space that my coach created was crucial for me to develop a new vision for the next chapter.

If you are thinking of embarking on a coaching relationship, remember to double check the coach’s credentials and experience, and look out for someone who is a really good fit for you.

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15/07/2024
Let’s Walk’n’Blog…

Hi, welcome to this blog post which I am not typing but dictating.

It is now mid-morning and I have plans to be getting on with before I have to be at my desk. So I wanted to try and write this blog post as I’m doing things… I’m making some coffee just now and I’ve just come back from walking the dogs. So it is a good time to blog but not a good time to sit at my desk. Hence the dictation.

Recently I had a really interesting conversation with one of my coaching clients around the benefits of not always sitting down to reflect or to write, avoiding being faced with a blank piece of paper or a blinking cursor on an empty screen. Instead, we talked about ways to use technology like dictation software for example to try and give yourself some flexibility. Inspired by this conversation, I went back through a couple of blog posts I have written about how to reflect, and I came across one about using dictation for reflection. From there, it was a small jump to try and use it to write a blog post, too.

Now, just as I was recording this, the doorbell rang, and it was a delivery. One of the joys of living and working in a community around many people who still work in an office, is that I get to be the local delivery depot for all deliveries in the neighbourhood. And it’s so practical to be able to just pause, walk to the door, deal with things and then being able to come back to this without having to run up and down, start typing again, start a new document and so on.

Using voice recording also gives me a chance to write a different kind of blog post with a different kind of voice, one where I’m sipping coffee, thinking about things, having a bit more room to explore, which is lovely. Now, the joy of being able to record voice notes and turn them into blog posts is transcription software. Recently I’ve started to use a different software package, whisper transcription, which is easy to get and great, particularly when you’re a Mac user. And I’ve been using this for my podcasts, but also to make some of my audio resources more accessible. I’ve been finding it a real joy to be able to have a very easy and quick transcription that I get to keep rather than something that a platform that I use makes and then they keep it. It’s been fascinating to produce and then use transcripts of podcast episodes and interviews.

The other thing I really like about using voice recording instead of typing on a keyboard is that I can take my blog activity on walks and get out more. At the moment for me it’s summer, although you wouldn’t know it by looking out of the window. It’s grey and dreary and it’s just about to start raining. But this morning, when I would normally spend time sitting at my desk, I really felt like going out with the dogs to have a nice walk to start the day.

I’m going to spend plenty of time later sitting at my desk and staring at a screen. Being able to make a quick voice recording on my phone and then being able to have the transcription of that which I can turn into a blog post is a nice way of giving myself an opportunity to kind of reflect as I walk and talk. I felt inspired as I was walking and I often have my best thoughts in the morning. I had some ideas about the new course I’m working on, specifically the design of the course. And I thought, oh, I really need to write this down when I get back to my desk.This is a really good idea! I was thinking about the ] course design, which is a blended design in a number of different ways, it’s both online and a physical thing. It’s asynchronous and synchronous and so on. And as I was rehearsing in my mind what I was going to say to introduce the course in a short video, I thought, oh, great, I can just record myself now with my phone, make a quick voice memo and record the thoughts that are on my mind. I can note them down now. When I come home, I can just pop them into the transcription software and voila! I’ve got my notes from my inspired dog walk ready to go for when I want to sit down and get back to working on that video.

For me, recording my ideas as I walk feels like a really lovely seasonal way to create more flexibility in my day, particularly as at the moment my meeting time is blissfully low. So now that I’ve got a bit of breathing room in the summer for the first time in many years, it’s just so joyful to be able to have 10 meetings a week rather than 80 meetings a week. And it’s also a relief not having to have every single meeting be a revenue generation must have rand instead have scope for exploratory conversations to see where things are going.

So, yeah, I think his is probably all I want to cover in this post and I’m very curious to see how long this post turns out to be. Usually when I sit down to write a blog post, I know what I’m looking for in terms of length, and I very rarely write very long blog posts. Sometimes I get into the rhythm and I’ll write something longer, but most of my blog posts are fairly short. And so it’s interesting to see how that will differ in this format. I shall write a little post script to see how many words this blog post ended up being [this post is 996 words].

11/07/2024
The year in blog posts… so far
As I am half way through the year, I am taking a look back at what I have blogged so far, and in the best tradition of the form, to blog about blogging once again. And, if you missed one of these, now is a good time to catch up and bookmark posts for future reading.

Blogging in numbers

2024 has been a good year for blogging (it’s always a good year for blogging!). I published 35 blog posts in the first six months of the year, slightly fewer than last year (43), but still an average of six per month. March was the month with the most posts (thanks to lots of things to say about open education) and June was the month with the fewest (thanks to a deeply relaxing two weeks away and offline).

Top 5 posts
1. Post with the most comments: Twenty years of blogging… now on ReclaimPress
2. Post that was shared most widely: A milestone moment on my coaching journey
3. Post that was read most widely: What happens to our senses in the hybrid workplace?
4. Post that had the most successful podcast companion episode: Six months of gold dust.
5. Post that I enjoyed writing the most: The joy of not working.
January (6)
February (6)
March (8)
April (5)
May (6)
June (4)
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03/07/2024
New course coming up… autumn 2024

I regularly offer dedicated workshops and short courses for leaders and managers who manage people or projects in hybrid or fully remote settings. Over the past two years I have run several of these and each cohort has been a wonderful experience.

Although much of my work now is focused on helping other organisations design and build similar offerings for their own staff, I love the freedom that running my own courses offers – both in terms of the content and the design and delivery of the course. My own offerings give me a lot of scope to innovate and to try entirely new ways of engaging participants.

This time, there are a couple of things I want to try and add to the course design following feedback from previous cohorts: the course will offer more opportunities to get feedback and dialogue on a weekly basis so that we can discussed specific challenges and individual contexts in more depth.

I’d also like to experiment with adding some of the coaching resources and approaches that my individual coaching clients find most useful and offering more accountability and check-ins to help course participants stay on track and get the most out of the course.

As before, there’ll be a whole pack of practical tools and inspiring reading to take away as well as the course podcasts to support professional development beyond the end of the course and at your own pace.

I am really excited to get work underway on this new venture, and if you are curious to learn more, read the preview below and check out my previous courses, which are openly available.

NEW Autumn 2024

Healthy Hybrid Working for Managers and Leaders

When it comes to hybrid working, managers and leaders have a different experience to the wider workforce and different needs, too. From running effective hybrid team meetings, keeping oversight of progress and managing performance there are a whole range of challenges for hybrid people and project management.

If it’s part of your role to translate newfound hybrid flexibility into effective collaboration between colleagues, establish communication channels that engage a hybrid team with diverse capabilities and preferences and balancing work with other commitments, then this course is for you.

Over four weeks we will take a deep dive into what it takes to manage happy hybrid teams in a way that reflects your values, and create healthy habits to balance the demands of a leadership role even when work/life boundaries are blurred.

Start date: Monday, 7 October 2024
Duration: 4 weeks

Registration: opening soon. Limited spaces.

Costs:
Private clients: £149
Employers and organisations: £279
Groups: 5 places (20% discount)

Interested? Spaces are limited, so get notified when registration opens:
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02/07/2024
The joy of not working.

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 that a long-awaited break is upon me, I want to finally get that complete break and I am preparing for two weeks without work, two weeks filled with the joy of not working.

I love my work, and I have years of practice when it comes to staying connected and working too much, so I need to make an extra effort to achieve the kind of break I dream about. In case you are looking for inspiration for your own break, here are some steps I am taking this week:

Start to wind down early: I had my calendar blocked out for a while now, but about two weeks ago I started to actively manage my schedule to protect my time off. There are 0 meetings or other commitments this time, a kind of zero tolerance policy for work meetings, calls or check-ins. Between my coaching clients, projects and upcoming talks etc I have a lot of different folk I communicate with every month, and I have tried to schedule everything so that everything that needs to happen this month happens before I go offline.

Get things off the list: I do have work things that can’t just wait whilst I am away, and wherever possible I have planned ahead and completed work ahead of schedule, so that everyone else can get on with things whilst I am away. This has meant a very busy couple of weeks for me, but it’s felt good to get things done. It also means that I feel less guilty for taking time off.

Stack up analogue activities: for me, a proper break means that I spend A LOT less time online. I won’t be scheduling any social media posts for when I am away, and I will set my out of office on my accounts before I leave. To replace a lot of my digital activity, I have a whole stack of library books to read, pens and paper to get creative and a new camera to play with. For the actual trip, I have a travel guide, yes, an actual guide book, and plenty of yoga planned, too. The less time I can spend in the company of my phone, the better. It’s always a bit of a bump for me when I let go of the pace of being online, but after a few days of doing things differently, I usually find a new cadence for my days.

The permission principle: inspired by the writing of Elizabeth Gilbert and her idea to give yourself a permission slip in order to be more creative, to experiment, explore or even fail, I, too, am a big believer in giving myself permission to enjoy not working. It sounds obvious but it remains a powerful principle. Giving yourself permission to enjoy the time away from responsibility makes it much easier to sit with yourself outside of work.

Material markers of freedom: like many people who work from home regularly or permanently I have a whole host of work-related things in my space. When I prepare for a time off work, I try to clean and remove everything, packing away the office and replacing it with things that remind me that I am off work. My desk becomes a drawing table or a new home for plants. My office chair gets covered in a beach towel. Instead of notebooks and pens, I have records and cups of coffee. Even my digital desktop changes. I change my desktop background to a holiday one. I remove all my work accounts and apps from my phone or hide them effectively enough for me not to be tempted to check in.

Logging off: Finally, when everything has been done and I am ready, I log off. And then I immediately start a list where I can dump anything that comes into my head that I have forgotten, need to follow up on or that worries me. I always, always, remember something I didn’t do. And because I don’t want to go back and have to start the whole process of separating myself from work over again, I add it to my list instead. in 99.9% of cases, whatever I have urgently remembered or worried about has become irrelevant by the time I get back to work.

So, thats me done for June. See you next month.

P.S. When I got back from my break, I recorded this podcast episode, reporting back on how well these tips worked. Enjoy!

Image credit: CC-BY me, taken in West Wales

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13/06/2024