Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • Books, books, books.

    Books, books, books.

    It was bookshop day on 11 October, which got me thinking about books. This year I am working on changing small habits, making small changes, in an effort to make more ethical choices and also to support local businesses more, as well as finding more joy in small things. I wrote a post a few months ago with an update and since then, things have moved on nicely, specially when it comes to my favourite habit: reading.

    Earlier in the year I found it pretty easy to find alternatives to Amazon to buy paper books, but audiobooks provided a little harder, at least initially. I closed my Audible account and tried out the local library app, BorrowBox, and also Libro.fm. A couple of months on, here is what I found:

    BorrowBox

    I’ve come to love this app, which links to my local library membership. There is a small library near where I live and a couple of others fairly nearby, and I order books online and pick them up regularly. However, up to this year I never tried to borrow ebooks or audiobooks. Since I started using the app, that’s changed!

    So far I have borrowed 18 ebooks and 25 audiobooks over about 6 months and I have really enjoyed being able to read more freely that I would do if I was buying them. Instead, I have tried new genres and authors and I have also read more non-fiction books.

    The library is still in the process of digitising more of its collection, so that more and more titles are becoming available each month and I am finding plenty to read and explore even if the collection is patchy in places.

    I shall definitely continue using this service and very much appreciate this free and open approach to reading. Big win!

    Libro.fm

    Starting to use this new audiobook app was pretty easy, and I managed to find and link to a local bookshop in Cardiff. Given that this is a US-based app I was pleased that there was a local option, and through that I discovered a new local bookshop, too, which now benefits each time I buy an audiobook.

    I started with a membership which enables me to buy one title each month, the same I had with Audible, and so far I am on 7 titles for this year. Building up an audiobook collection afresh in a new app feels a little lonely, but I like using it and find it easy to do everything I want to do.

    As I found, exporting audiobooks from audible is possible, if not completely straight forward, but more of that in another post.

    So what have I been reading in the past few weeks?

    In addition to ebooks and audiobooks I also read a lot of paper books, both borrowed and bought, and I don’t track what I read. However, these last few weeks I have enjoyed my reading particularly, so I have tried to make a list of everything I’ve read (in no particular order): Conversations with friends, Sally Rooney; V.E. Schwabs Gallant and the trilogy: a darker shade of magic, a gathering of shadows and a conjuring of light; 4:50 from paddington, Agatha Christie, Guilty by definition, Susie Dent, Sherlock Holmes; The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman; You are here, David Nichols, The Villa Ariadne and Margalit Fox’s The Riddle of the Labyrinth; and the Moonlight Express by Moisha Rajesh.

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  • Turning over a new leaf

    Turning over a new leaf

    It’s Monday, it’s October 6th, and I am turning over a new leaf. Today is my first proper day back at my desk after a few weeks focusing on happy wedding celebrations with family and friends and a lovely honeymoon trip to Crete. The photo featured at the top of this post shows one of my favourite places we visited, the Minoan Palace at Malia.

    So today is the start of a new chapter in more ways than one, and I feel happy that one of the priorities I set myself two years ago, namely focusing more on my life outside of work and finding balance, has been achieved.

    There’ll also be some new developments on a professional front in the coming months, but more of that in a future post. For now, I’m focusing on getting my head back in the right mindset for work. As I’m also making the switch from late summer in Crete to autumn in Wales, I’m using the seasonal changeover as a way to help me gain focus. I find it really helps to change some things around to mark a new season or a new chapter, and in this post I share some examples of how I do that.

    Exercise and healthy habits

    Over the summer, I switched back to journalling in a paper notebook and it’s really helped me to invigorate my morning journalling. I don’t always follow the Morning Pages approach, as some days I feel the need to think and reflect and pause rather than keeping going no matter what, but I do aim for three pages of handwritten reflections each day. Most days it happens, some days I skip or write much less. All together, it’s been a fantastic tool for me over the past few months to navigate some choppy waters. So when my current notebook is full, which is nearly is, I’ll be sticking with this habit and opening a new one to continue my writing.

    As an aside, I really enjoyed working on the topic of journalling in a professional context as part of my Long Distance Leadership Postcards. As the September topic I got to think a lot more deeply about how and why journalling can be such a powerful practice, which was really fun!

    Alongside reflective habits my exercise and training schedule has been pretty good, and my year of 10k races continues in just over a month with the next race. I much prefer to run outside, but with the weather turning cooler and wetter, and the days growing shorter, I am incorporating more indoor activities into my routine, both in terms of running and strength training. Setting up a dedicated nook to store all my exercise equipment ready to use has been another little change that’s helped me get ready for the new season.

    Summer/winter wardrobe

    Coming back from a few weeks away means that there is a lot of laundry to catch up on. And that is good timing as I am using it as an opportunity to pack away all the shorts and summer dresses, and bring out my big wooly jumpers, scarves and wooly hats. I started a few years ago packing away and rotating clothes and I’ve come to find this a great habit that helps with more than just freeing up storage.

    I use a big storage bag that sits atop my wardrobe and every six months or so I bring it down and swap clothes in and out. It helps we tidy up and sort through things I don’t currently like or have forgotten I have, and it also feels like a nice refresh, as I discover something afresh every time. It feels like getting a new selection of clothes without buying anything new.

    It also means that I refresh what I wear day to day, and a welcome prompt to check in with what I feel best in and which items bring a smile to my face. Years ago my mentor Margaret got me into wearing things that make me happy, and I’ve found it a good maxim to shop by.

    Plants and pumpkins

    One of the most fun things for me each year is to move my plants to their winter places. Some of my houseplants don’t like being near the heating or the wood burner, and so they move to spots that are cooler and less dry. Similarly, with a lot less sun some post are moving closer to windows to catch the precious light. Then I have a couple of plants that hibernate and prefer a cooler room, so they move to the winter quarters, too.

    Other than a last tidy to collect seeds for next year and keep things ready for the colder months I don’t have a huge amount to do in the garden when it comes to plants, but I do have a couple of ceramic pumpkins that come out around this time each year, taking their place amidst the pots ready for spooky season.

    All these small changes help me adjust mentally and prepare physically for the next few months, and by the time I am done I am ready to get stuck into this new chapter.

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  • Reflection: Volunteering as a mentor

    Reflection: Volunteering as a mentor

    For the last few years I’ve volunteered as a mentor with the One Million Mentor programme:

    1MM mentoring empowers young people to become the best version of themselves: building relationships -free of assumption and judgement – where they benefit from another’s experience and perspective and can think bigger, find their own answers and take the next meaningful step into their future. We recruit, train and deploy volunteer mentors, matching them with mentees, providing high quality support to both so that they are well prepared and can have an effective and impactful mentoring relationship. Our mentoring is one to one, for young people aged 14-25 years old, for 1 hour, once a month, for up to a year.

    https://onemillionmentors.org.uk/

    It’s a great national initiative that I am glad to be part of and I found the training really interesting, especially as most of my work normally focuses on coaching and mentoring leaders and managers. Being part of the journey to support a much younger mentee is a different proposition and I’ve learnt a lot along the way.

    Entering a career

    One of the key questions that I work on with my mentees is finding a way into a career, either via higher education or an apprenticeship, or maybe through local initiatives and training schemes. Most of the time, the kind of questions they have are very similar to the questions my coaching clients ponder: they think about what they want to do, what needs a new job needs to meet and what progressing pathways are available. They often wonder about whether certain qualifications or certificates are worth having, and are always keen to hear from peers who have gone through similar experiences.

    Articulating skills

    We also work a lot on articulating skills and strengths. Just like the reflective approaches needed later in one’s career in order to determine and champion one’s achievements, so do early career mentees need strategies that help translate capabilities into their CVs and applications.

    It’s an awareness that’s very valuable to develop, but it can be difficult at any stage of professional practice. Developing confidence and reflective practice on what types of work might suit best is even harder when you don’t have a lot of experience to draw on.

    Reading the landscape

    One other question that we spend a lot of time thinking about is how to read the landscape of the sector or the broader area that the mentee is interested in. Is it growing or are there issues to be aware of? Are there a lot of jobs? What kind of professional bodies are there? What is the sector like for someone like them?

    Often we come across really interesting sounding initiatives that are designed to help young people into the sector, but are clearly not designed for anyone to actually reach out directly. It can be intimidating and difficult to find a route in.

    As we are just at the beginning of a new year of volunteering, I am mindful that there’s now more uncertainty in the job markets, and I am looking forward to supporting my mentee through the ups and downs of finding their first role.

  • Free resource: Coaching Walk

    Free resource: Coaching Walk

    Over the past year I have deepened my executive coaching practice to include walk’n’coach sessions. In order to give clients a taste of how this practice could work I’ve created an online resource, which is free to try.

    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).

    Explore the coaching walk
    Screenshot of the course
  • Healthy Habits: from Analogue to AI

    Healthy Habits: from Analogue to AI

    Over the summer I have updated my coaching course for leaders and managers, ready for the next academic year. I designed the course originally just over 18 months ago, and three cohorts later I have learnt a lot about what participants find most valuable. I’ve also had a lot of experiences working with coaching clients who are tasked with introducing AI in their teams, or supporting colleagues who are now using productivity suites such as MS Teams or Google Workspace with AI-powered tools, something I hadn’t specifically addressed when I designed the course.

    I’m really looking forward to running the updated course, and to give you a sense of what’s in store, here’s a little preview of the updates I’ve made:

    AI and Hybrid Working

    Both AI and Hybrid Working change dynamics in the workplace. Colleagues see each other less, and communication is becoming more and more digital. Although many workplaces have seen at least a partial return to the office, often with 2-3 days on which everyone is on, the majority of meetings and activities is now blended, often supported by AI-powered tools.

    The pace of digital productivity is increasing, or at least it feels like we need to speed up, making it even more important than before to focus on building trust, communicating clearly and creating engagement. The skills to use new technologies are changing and I have included a new section about AI literacy to the course to reflect that, but the skills needed to be a good leader and manager such as keeping oversight of progress, continue to be at the heart of professional practice.

    Guided reflection

    One of the things that jumped out at me when I read through feedback from participants is how much they value prompts and tools to help them effectively reflect on their practice.

    Often, their day to day is so busy that even when they do make time to sit down and reflect, they find it hard to know where to start or how to make it useful. The course included a reflective exercise for each part, complete with prompts and practical tools, and I will include these in the live discussion session each week as well.

    Open resources

    The other piece of feedback that really stood out for me was how many participants wanted to take the resources we used in the course to work on with their teams. I had already openly licenced the resources, but this prompt made it easier for me to include even more of that in the updated version, enabling managers to translate what they work on in the course into their practice more easily.

    Join the next course run starting 20 October

    There’s also a group of participants signed up, but I have 10 places left for the next run of the course, starting 20th October 2025. The course will run over a period of 4 weeks, with an optional live session each week (which is also recorded to help everyone across the different timezones) and as before, all course content is available asynchronously to explore at your own pace.

    Course registration costs £149 (or £79 if you are one of my coaching clients).

    Register now
  • Podcast chat reclaimed!

    Podcast chat reclaimed!

    For the past two months my podcast has been enjoying a well deserved summer break! It’s been good to take a step back from the busy grind of producing the episodes. It’s work I love, but with so much else already going on this summer, it was necessary to pause. Regular listeners look out for the summer special, the first new episode since June, which is out next week!

    Fortunately for me, edtech’s extraordinary (and original) godfather Jim Groom was travelling rather more than usual this month, which left the studio door open for me to sit in the host chair of his prolific “On Writing” series for not one, but two joyful conversations.

    Most people struggle to set up a new podcast, but since the start of this year Jim has been rocking interviews about blogging and writing with a truly stellar line up of voices including Audrey Watters, Kine Lane, Mike Caulfield, Amy Collier, Tom Woodward, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Adam Croom, Bryan Alexander, Chris Long, Kate Bowles, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Tim Klapdor and Martin Weller.

    Catch up with “On Writing”

    When it came to my very special guests, I couldn’t have picked a better line up and I was thrilled to jump into these two conversations:

    Bonnie Stewart “On Writing”: Blogging, Belonging and Bowie

    Ahead of August’s Blogging Community of Practice session, I interviewed Dr. Bonnie Stewart of University of Windsor, Canada, about the belonging project, “a 2024-25 open research project exploring digital and socio-material practices of belonging at the University of Highlands and Islands in Scotland.”

    As a long time fan of Bonnie’s work, I was SO excited to talk about blogging for her sabbatical project, how to find your voice and inevitably we also ended up chatting about David Bowie.

    Bonnie has a way of articulating things that I deeply appreciate and connect with. I always learn something new, and after our conversations anything that may have been muddled in my brain feels clear and straight forward when she explains it. I salute her grace and joy, and her fierceness.

    Tune in: “On Writing” with Alan Levine on Reclaim TV

    The second conversation was with Alan Levine, AKA CogDog, and it will premier this Friday, August 29th. Watch the stream over at Reclaim TV, or catch the recording later on archive.reclaim.tv or on Reclaim’s YouTube channel! Usually Jim broadcasts these live, but thanks to living in very different timezones, my guests graciously agreed to pre-record our chats for these shows.

    Alan and I had awesome fun chatting across all sorts of topics, and he had prepared meticulously, sending me links and notes which provided much inspiration. Alan produces the OE Global Voices podcast, a masterclass in the richness of sharing knowledge and open practice that Alan excels at.

    Both conversations were very different, but what I found common to both was that open practice matters. How we do things and how we honour and reflect the values we hold in how we communicate and connect.

    There’re some fantastic guests lined up for the next few weeks and months and as Jim returns to the hosting chair, I’m excited to tune in for more blogging and open edtech goodness.