Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • Thank you for an awesome year in coaching

    Thank you for an awesome year in coaching

    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 formal credentialing process it’s interesting to look back to when I started coach training in January 2022. At that stage I wasn’t expected that two years later coaching and mentoring would become such an important part of my professional practice. It’s been a fantastic fit for me from the start, and throughout the training process I have learnt so much about leadership and professional development.

    Until October all of my coaching and coach training had to be accommodated alongside a very full on job, and I am grateful to have hit the milestone of having worked with 25+ clients in the past year! Mostly individuals, and also a few teams, have been part of my work and I am grateful to everyone who’s connected with me about coaching.

    It’s been a huge privilege to share your journeys and a whole lot of fun to put curiosity at the heart of exploring work, life and everything in between. This year I have worked with academics, edtech professionals, leaders and their teams, founders and entrepreneurs – and I am already looking forward to what 2024 has in store for us! 

    Share your feedback or a testimonial

    Do you have feedback about coaching with me or a testimonial I could share with future clients? Get in touch, share your feedback on social media or complete the form below. I’d love to hear from you.

  • Holiday ‘reflect-along’: Hybrid Working Wheel

    Holiday ‘reflect-along’: Hybrid Working Wheel

    According to Spotify Wrapped, the most popular episode of my podcast for the year is this one, about the Hybrid Working Wheel. If you haven’t come across this before, have a quick look at this blog post from last yearn which provides a bit of background. Simply put, I adapted a popular coaching tool for reflection, the Wheel of Life, for hybrid working.

    The purpose of the tool is to help you reflect on different aspects of how you work, including your working environment at home, at the office or on campus, communication & collaboration as well as social interaction and wellbeing.

    Holiday ‘reflect-along’

    One of the questions I get asked the most is how to reflect in practice. Many of us find it difficult to sit down with a blank piece of paper and jump straight into focused reflection.

    Hence, in this podcast episode, I offer you the opportunity to see how the tool is used in practice and to reflect along with me as we progress through the episode. Let’s have a bit of fun at the end of the year, and try out something a little different. Use this episode to “reflect along” with me as part of your run up to the holidays (and hopefully a well deserved break!) or as you prepare to begin the new year.

    How to take part

    I have made an updated template especially for this reflect-along episode, and you are welcome to use this if you’d like to jot down your own scores and notes.

    Find a cosy spot and get yourself a hot drink or take the episode outside and listen along as you walk. The important thing is to bring some curiosity to this exercise, and to be open to discovering something new.

    Listen to the episode

    My completed wheel

    If you’d like to take a look at the completed template that I used during the episode, here it is:

    Enjoyed this blog post? Subscribe to my newsletter!

    [newsletter_form type=”minimal”]
  • Re-inventing Mondays… 2 months in

    Re-inventing Mondays… 2 months in

    It’s been a month since I last updated on my progress with the new chapter in my working life, free-lance working life, and my mission to re-invent my week, starting with Mondays.

    Unfortunately, as I type this, I am still recovering from a cold, and so podcasting is on hold for this week and instead I get to write this blog post. Blogging is, still, where it’s at.

    Beach/work balance

    One of the goals in my strategy for my business for this year is to achieve a better work/life balance. I am not sure how common a goal that is for a business plan, but my thinking is that work/life balance is one of the key goals of my career change. Being a CEO made work/life balance hard, partly because everything that goes really wrong eventually lands on your desk and partly because running an organisation always involves a crisis or three. Over time, you find strategies to set boundaries, but ultimately it’s a responsibility that is part of job and it’s hard to leave that behind even when you are not working.

    Although I loved it, one of the reasons why I chose not to pursue another CEO role is that I want to give myself the chance to explore a life with less responsibility for a while and to see if I can find a work/life pattern that is better for me in every sense. When it came to it, sitting down and trying to define what that would look like in practice, I didn’t really know what the answer would look like.

    Over the past couple of months I have come up with a practical metaphor: beach/work balance. To me that means that I am prioritising getting to the beach during the week every other week, and my partner and the dogs and I can enjoy a couple of hours where we love being the most.

    It’s a good measure for how much my life goes to plan, and how much scope I have to plan in an afternoon or a morning away from my desk and for it to actually happen, too.

    The picture at the top of the post is from last Friday, when we managed to get to the beach an hour before sunset, watching the wintery sunset as the week wound down. For me, that’s a huge win.

    So, at least for now, beach time is one of the indicators that help me assess whether I am finding the right balance.

    Doing enough of what gives me joy

    I don’t want to give the impression that all my days are spent doing yoga with my dog or going to beach. Far from it. Since the start of October I have been working hard and I have been doing a lot of hours.

    In these first two months I have been dividing my time between working as a consultant and a coach, doing both paid and pro bono work.

    It’s been great to continue the work with ALT and AmplifyFE, a partnership project around a growing network of 2,700 professionals in FE and Vocational Education for which I am the Strategic Lead. Alongside the day to day work on the project this past month has been a busy one of travel and talks for AmplifyFE, including launching new research.

    I’ve also continued my work with Reclaim Hosting, where my official title is now Asana Overlord. I love working with Jim Groom and his team on strategy, business development and team coaching. Alongside the work we do which is focused internally, I get involved in some of our community activities, which are hopping into festive mode this month. Karaoke for Christmas? Yes, please!

    The work I do with Reclaim is closely related to my interest in hybrid working, and this past month I have done a lot on that front as well, running a session for Oxford University, delivering my second free and open hybrid working course and marking a year since the publication of my Open Access book on the topic.

    Coaching groups or teams has become a much greater part of my practice than I had anticipated, and I have some new projects in that space planned for early 2024 which I am excited about. In the meantime my coaching for individuals is also continuing to develop.

    Coaching is a fantastic tool that I hope more people, particularly those of us who are juggling a lot whilst also achieving a lot, will make use of. I know just how hard it can be to find time and funds for professional development. That’s why I offer 10% of my coaching sessions pro bono and over the past month I have been able to offer pro bono sessions to four new clients.

    Auditioning days

    In the midst of working on a lot of different projects and with a whole host of people and finding time for the all important beach visits, I have noticed that I have started to reflect a bit more on what I enjoy doing the most. Subconsciously, I am ‘auditioning’ days, checking in with what I want to do more of and what I will say no to and refer to colleagues instead.

    When my former mentor Margaret and I discussed my free-lance venture, Margaret said something that really stayed with me. She said that it’s easy to re-invent your job without noticing and that it’s even easier to forget to say no when opportunities are on the horizon. Feeling the precarity of giving up a permanent role and worrying about where money to pay the mortgage was going to come from, I didn’t really get it at the time. Don’t get me wrong, the precarity is obviously still very much on my mind, but I find that being a CEO and being responsible for the annual turnover and salaries of an organisation was good preparation for managing income generation for myself as a free-lancer. There are always risks.

    However, what I am learning at the moment is that I need to manage my capacity carefully and to not commit to too many things just in order to hold my financial worries at bay. Instead, I am looking for things to do that are the best fit, and stretch me in ways I find rewarding.

    It’s a privileged position to be, and it’s an opportunity I don’t intend to squander. This is my time to evolve in my working life, and the sense of reinvention that comes with that is very precious to me. Over the past twenty years I have gained a lot of experience and skills and I am very good at many things. Right now, I am becoming better at figuring out where I can make the biggest difference and what I find most rewarding. Every day is an opportunity to figure it out.

    One of the things I am planning to do is a day out later this month, to give myself space to think and plan for 2024. A retreat for one, if you like. If you are interested in having one of those for yourself, look out for the next blog post 🙂

    Thanks for reading and thanks to all who’ve helped me along the way .

    Listen

    All the podcasts about my fresh start in order:

    Listen to Leading Virtual Teams on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify

    Enjoyed this post? Get my free monthly newsletter directly to your inbox.

    [newsletter_form type=”minimal”]
  • Festive Karaoke. Reclaiming online fun…

    Festive Karaoke. Reclaiming online fun…

    I love being online, and I love the communities I am part of online. As someone who relies largely on the internet to sustain long distance relationships with family and friends as well as collaborating with work colleagues on a daily basis, I am very invested in my corners of the web.

    It takes a lot of effort however to keep those spaces good spaces to be in, on platforms like Discord and Mastodon, as well as this blog – my own domain for the past twenty years. In one of my favourite blog posts of the year, my partner Martin Weller reflected on the fragmentation of social media landscape to the tune of 70s disco tracks.

    For me, the ‘secret sauce’ that keeps the network I am in truly fun, inspiring and genuine is the work happening in and around open education. From the OER Conference to working across various Open Education initiatives and group publications like this one from earlier in the year (Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices). For me, for the past 10+ years that usually involves the folk from Reclaim Hosting, the people who help you (and your students) get – and keep – a domain of one’s own. Incidentally, I have been digging into the archives and came across this gem of a post, from 2014, in which Jim Groom recounts how:

    …we are still hoping to team up with Audrey Watters and Kin Lane to start realizing the vision behind “Reclaim Your Domain” as an extension of the Reclaim Hosting environment. Not just commodity hosting, but a space to synch, archive, and own your social presence around the web, while at the same time developing crucial web literacy skills.

    Over 1000 Reclaims

    Domains have been reclaimed, and ten years into the making there is no sign of letting up – Reclaim is thriving through technology as well as community. The community bit is the part I am especially excited about, and getting to work with the team that makes a packed calendar of events happen is a privilege as well as a lot of fun.

    So this month, as we near the end of 2023, there is a whole host of activities to get involved in, as well as a very special session of festive karaoke, which is happening on December 22nd!

    You’ll be able to watch the show on Reclaim.TV or listen in on Reclaim Radio… and if you let us know that you’d like to join us, then you can sing your festive favourites to your hearts content.

    Me, I live in fear of karaoke, and unfortunately there’s a lot of evidence of how true those feelings are on YouTube. However, there must be a song by The Cure that I can co-opt as “festive”, and I am really looking forward to joining in, and reclaiming a bit of online fun before I head off into the holidays.

    See you there!

  • A year after publication: Leading Virtual Teams

    A year after publication: Leading Virtual Teams

    A year ago my book Leading Virtual Teams was published, and I can very clearly remember all the wonderful excitement that led up to the launch, and am still grateful for all the encouragement for this Open Access publication.

    A year on, and the book, which was initially inspired by the work Martin Hawksey and I did at ALT, has turned into a whole host of resources, two free courses and a podcast which informs my wider work on hybrid working leadership development and coaching.

    A year in Leading Virtual Teams

    To celebrate the milestone, this post gives a quick overview over what’s happened in 2023 and if you are just discovering the book or my work, this is a great place to start:

    Open Access publication – December 2022

    Leading Virtual Teams – Field Notes from a CEO by Dr Maren Deepwell, was published in December 2022 as an open access publication by the Association for Learning Technology, UK. You can read and download a free digital edition, published as an Open Access publication by ALT in partnership with Open Academia.

    Digital edition – out now

    I also recorded a preview of the book on the podcast:

    Print edition via Lulu Press – January 2023

    The Open Access print edition, published by Lulu.com, came out in January and you can order it via:

    Podcast season 2 – March 2023

    I started the podcast in 2022, but in spring 2023 things really started happening. Each week, I share ideas and strategies for creative and fun approaches to help you succeed and lead in the hybrid workplace. Each episode includes tools, resources and strategies for different aspects of hybrid working, and links to blog posts and further reading.

    The podcast is available on different podcast platforms and I hope you enjoy the show. You can find it on: Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

    Free Leading Virtual Teams course launches – April 2023

    This was my first venture of translating the book into a course, and I learnt a lot along the way.

    If you’d like to explore the course, all materials are freely available:

    Week by week

    Podcast season 3 with weekly episodes – September 2023

    In September I was 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 kicked off with ‘new pencil case’ moments in episode.

    This episode celebrated 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 a busy time of year. I also give you a preview of what’s in store for season 3 and the upcoming run of the ⁠Leading Virtual Teams course⁠ in October.

    Free Hybrid Working Habits course launches – October 2023

    I have experienced a lot of ups and downs working from home, managing remote workers and collaborating virtually, and I chronicled this in my book, Leading Virtual Teams (2022). One of the things I learnt along the way is that a good work/life balance and relationship with digital technology may look a little different for everyone but that the journey how we get there is similar. That’s why I designed this course: to share practical tips that you can use to find ways to make hybrid working really work for you (or you team or organisation) in the long term.

    It’s been great to see the course attract lots of listens and interaction. Although I do encourage people to register for free, only about half of the people participating in the course do. Others prefer to simply subscribe to the podcast to listen along and explore at their own pace.

    The topics for the course resonated well with participants, especially those designed to help manage digital overwhelm and setting life/work boundaries. Plus, I really enjoyed recording these as well, which is an added bonus!

    The course resources and podcasts are now freely available and you can explore topics at your own pace. The easiest way to do that is to listen to the course podcast:

    If you’d rather see everything at a glance, the Course information page provides a handy guide to the course and links to all previous topics:

    1: Audit your hybrid working habits to find out how your current habits are impacting on you and what to change;
    2: Set boundaries for a better life/work balance and stick to them even when things are busy;
    3: Increase productivity away from the screen by using strategies for communicating and collaborating outside of meetings;
    4: Communicate more effectively in the hybrid workplace in a way that works for you and reduces digital overwhelm.

    Special guest Martin Hawksey returns to the conversation – November 2023

    In November we went back to the origins of Leading Virtual Teams! I was delighted to co-write together with Martin Hawksey, and we created this joint blog post and special podcast episode:

    Working in the open

    It’s been a wonderful year, and it’s also been a lot of hard work. Practically all my work in this area since the publication of the book has happened around the edges of my day job, and especially until the end of September that was a very full on commitment. Since focusing full time on my free-lance work I have had a little more scope to take on paid work in this space, and thus give this topic a bit more time in my day to day work.

    Every now and then I get an email or a message or someone speaks to me at a conference about something valuable they found in the book, something that helped them in their work or opened up a new perspective and it always, always makes my day.

    I have chosen not to publish the book commercially, instead going the Open Access route with the book and all the resources and courses I have published since, because I want as many people as possible to learn from the mistakes I made and the experiences I recount, and find a better way to manage blended, hybrid and virtual organisations. One downside is however that I have not much data about how many people engage with the work I do, and with an ever more fragmented social media landscape getting a feel for one’s reach is more challenging still. Which is why I value it so much when folk do share some feedback or send me a message.

    All in all, it’s been a fun and rewarding year working towards putting the book into practice and making the ideas in it available to a larger audience.

    Enjoyed this post? Get my free monthly newsletter directly to your inbox.

    [newsletter_form type=”minimal”]
  • Stepping away from the screen – a lunchtime digital skills development session

    Stepping away from the screen – a lunchtime digital skills development session

    This week I am joining the university in Oxford online for a lunchtime digital skills development session. I am really looking forward to this talk, partly because the topic is a lot of fun and also because I love the format: it’s opt-in, open to all and informal, hence it (hopefully) attracts the kind of folk who are already interested in the topic or need some help. Whatever the case, it’s a win to have an engaged audience.

    The talk is structured as a pick and mix offering, in which I share different strategies, resources and tips about hybrid working. I have included ideas for individuals to check in with their personal set up, starting with their workspace. I also include activities teams or groups could try out and share some experiences of how these work in practice and why they are valuable. To prompt deeper reflection, the session also has a some elements that support you to think through your relationship with the way you work, technology and what work means to you.

    I have recorded a special podcast episode in which I deliver parts of the talk and you can also look at the slides which include all the links and references on the final page.

    Listen to the podcast

    Enjoyed this post? Get my free monthly newsletter directly to your inbox.