Maren Deepwell

Category: hybridWorking

  • From inauguration day to origami.

    From inauguration day to origami.

    This week a cohort of 16 leaders and managers wraps up the current run of my Healthy Hybrid Habits course. As this is the second time I have run this course in this format, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on and celebrate what’s been achieved.

    Whilst I regularly facilitate similar workshops or courses on similar topics for institutional cohorts, I designed this course in a coaching format, offering weekly group coaching sessions alongside the asynchronous content. There’s a mix of audio recordings to listen to, resources and tools to try out and further reading and I sent out a course letter by post, too.

    The informal design of the course means that individuals can engage in a dialogue and a 1-to-1 coaching session with me, and because of that I cap the cohort size at a maximum of 20. Over the course of the four weeks, we get to know each other a little and share perspectives on leading organisations and teams in different sectors and different size organisations.

    Timing is everything

    Running a course starting 20 January 2025 had its drawbacks. When I set the dates, back in autumn 2024, I didn’t yet know what the start of the new year would bring with it in terms of global events. However, as I had a full cohort booked onto the course I didn’t want to change the start date at short notice, and thus the start of the course coincided with political and social events that… well, that made it even more urgent (and yet even more difficult) to prioritise a balanced relationship with work, technology and being online.

    Digital Productivity Double Speak

    One of the things I have noticed in the past couple of years is that very similar language is used to describe things like digital wellbeing and digital productivity even when referring to the opposite. I have blogged about this before, but it’s worth revisiting:

    1. In the wider context of digital health it can mean using technology, applications, websites or online services to help us manage our health and wellbeing.
    2. In the workplace, and specifically in an increasingly hybrid workplace, we often use the term digital wellbeing or digital wellness to describe how the use of digital technologies impacts our physical, mental or emotional health and wellbeing, for example screen fatigue or stress caused by digital overwhelm and constantly being connected.

    My work, and the course, is very much about the second definition and not the first. But much of the discourse around being “healthy” and “online” is about the first: Use an app to be more mindful, track your sleep, measure how stressed you are and so on. Of course, the skills required to use technology to manage health and wellbeing are important, but they are not in and of themselves sufficient.

    Many of the activity in the course are designed to encourage you to step away from digital technology and focus on developing awareness, of noticing and focusing on your embodied self, people and relationships (even if these are mediated by technology).

    The AI “solution” to digital overwhelm

    I conceived of much of the course content before all major work platforms and tools came with AI functionality baked in, but it doesn’t surprise me that one of the solutions to too much information and digital overwhelm is… summaries. Summaries of emails, summaries of reports, of work meetings, presentations and brainstorming sessions. Summaries of the books you don’t have time to read during lunch or on your commute because you are too busy staring at a screen.

    It’ll be interesting to see how the design of the course changes over time, if it does. I am thinking about how to best update its content where needed, but also to retain its core message of how deepening our awareness of and skills for managing people and projects can help create playful, positive interactions for a more meaningful working life.

    Congratulations are in order!

    I am really grateful for the inspiring conversations and playful interactions we shared over the past month, and congratulations are certainly in order. It takes a lot of energy to step away from a busy workload and focus on what a better work/life balance, a more balanced relationship with technology and digital productivity could look like.

    If you’d like to join us for the next run later this year, get in touch or join the waitlist.

  • The Hybrid Working “1% Better” List

    The Hybrid Working “1% Better” List

    Since I first published this list of 25 obvious, yet effective, ways to improve your working environment, all the way back in 2022, it’s become one of the most read posts on my blog. Many of my coaching clients and course participants come back to this again and again, to find new ways to tweak their set up and improve their working environment.

    Given that we are once again in January, and given that this week I’d do just about anything to make work a little easier, I’ve gone back to review and update the list to include a few new things and approaches. There are a lot of things you can try to make your day a little more comfortable, calmer and more balanced. What will make a real difference to you depends on the way you work and your personal preferences.

    What makes this approach work (for me at least) is that the aim is to start thinking about making very small, incremental improvements, not big or radical changes that new year resolutions so often come with. I can always find ways to make myself 1% more comfortable, even on a bad day. And along the way, I gain a little more awareness and distance from being lost in digital productivity curves.

    My “1% better” list

    Use this list to find ways to make a small change, or maybe two, and see how things shift:

    Working environment

    • lights for different times of day, i.e. a work lamp, SAD lamp, fairy lights, a candle
    • a selfie or ring light
    • A place for a pet to be… if you can persuade them
    • a place for papers/desk tidy
    • open window or fan
    • heated seat pad

    Work set up

    • a new mouse mat or a mouse you like
    • wrist rest/mouse rest
    • glare protector
    • foot rest (cushion or yoga bolster can work, too)
    • headphones that suit your ears

    Stepping away from the screen

    • an alarm or similar that reminds you to take regular screen breaks
    • a physical reminder to go to a different room/downstairs/outside
    • cushioned slippers or shoes (particularly handy for standing desks)
    • a paper planner/diary you can use away from the screen to think/plan
    • a lunch date/appointment with someone away from your desk

    Engage your senses

    • scented candle or a diffuser for aromatherapy oils
    • music
    • new flavour hot (or cold) drinks to try such as new herbal teas or coffees
    • a secret snack stash (healthy or not)
    • something tactile like a soft throw or a fidget toy
    • a pet

    Analogue joys

    • a plant
    • a nice coaster
    • photos/pictures/art
    • a rock or shell from somewhere you like
    • record player

    Healthy habits

    • eye mist and glasses that help filter blue light
    • a water bottle
    • cleaning products for your workspace, i.e. eco wipes, disinfectant, screen cleaner
    • find a window sill or high shelf you can use as a place to have meetings with your laptop or a sit stand desk or desk shelf

    A few notes…

    If you haven’t done so in a while and especially if you have recently moved things around, checking in on your work set up from a basic health & safety perspective and reviewing display screen equipment guidance is a good first step.

    Many of us easily ignore or tune out constant factors that make working uncomfortable, like glare, noise, a bad chair and so forth. Try and look at your set up with fresh eyes.

    Ask yourself, if someone else had to use it for a week, what do you think they might like or find difficult?

    Support from your employer with purchasing office equipment for home working (or if you are self-employed here in the UK, you can apply for support with office equipment costs from the Department for Work) should help with making bigger changes, such as buying an adjustable desk, a suitable chair and other equipment.

    What are you going to try to make your day tomorrow 1% more comfortable?

  • 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!

    Don’t miss out on new offerings. Subscribe to my monthly newsletter:

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  • 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
  • Healthy Hybrid Habits for Managers and Leaders

    Healthy Hybrid Habits for Managers and Leaders

    For many of us, hybrid working is here to stay. In my work with education professionals and entrepreneurs I support managers and leaders looking for new strategies for virtual and hybrid teams. This includes running effective hybrid team meetings, keeping oversight of progress, helping their teams be at their best and everything in-between.

    If it’s part of your role to translate the newfound flexibility of the hybrid workplace into effective working practices then my course, Healthy Hybrid Habits for Leaders and Managers, might be for you. It will look at collaboration between colleagues, establishing communication channels that engage a hybrid team with diverse capabilities and preferences all whilst balancing work with other commitments.

    Starts 7 October

    Over four weeks we will take a deep dive into what it takes to manage happy hybrid teams, lead in ways that reflect your strengths and your values, and create healthy habits to balance the demands of a busy leadership role even when work/life boundaries become blurry.

    • Learn at your own pace with weekly course modules with podcasts and resources;
    • Stay on track and put your intentions into actions with a personal roadmap and regular check-ins; 
    • Join live group sessions led by me and take a deeper dive into each topic as you reflect with peers;
    • Get creative as you receive inspiration delivered by post; 
    • Receive your digital course pack with everything you need in one place. 

    Registration is open

    If you’d like to take part in this group coaching course, simply complete the registration form. Spaces are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

    10% of places are available on a pro bono basis, absolutely free. If you’d like to take up one of the free places, complete the form below and I’ll email you to confirm.