Maren Deepwell

Search results for: “coaching”

  • Holiday ‘reflect-along’: What’s YOUR measure of success

    Holiday ‘reflect-along’: What’s YOUR measure of success

    Last year I released the first of these popular ‘reflect-along’ resources, designed for you to see how a particular tool is used in practice and to reflect along with me as we progress through the accompanying podcast episode. This year, I am sharing a resource all about defining YOUR own measure of success and reflecting on impact.

    It’s been a stand-out resource for many of my coaching clients this year, and I hope it’ll be a useful way for you to 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.

    This tool is inspired by a visual thought (by the always inspiring Liz and Mollie) about how we measure success, what makes it rewarding to work in our team or organisation and how we measure success and impact. It’s a great prompt to collate evidence of all you have achieved at the end of the year, and align what you have done with what’s important to you.

    Listen along

    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.

    Find what’s important

    I recently shared a post on keeping my own archive, i.e. a list of things I have done, and in the spirit of festive list making, this is where we will start.

    The practice of making a list and adding new entries to it is useful in itself. You could probably use a tool to compile this kind of information for you, but there’s great value in the act of processing what you have done and reflecting on it as you make the list.

    To get started, add literally anything. You could add a workshop you have run or an event you attended, or even books you’ve read. You could add projects you have been involved with or led, or papers you have published.

    The key is not to worry whether something is worthy of being included, and to simply include everything. I find once you start making a list of everything, things quickly amount to more than expected.

    Make your measure

    There are different categories you could add to your own chart, for example opportunities for professional development and learning. Good non-salary benefits or working on a healthy organisational culture. You could add opportunities to travel and having fun. Although you can simply conduct a thought experiment, this tool is more effective if you actually take a piece of paper or open up a digital document to create your own measure of success.

    Here’s how:

    1. Draw a circle;
    2. List what factors are important to you;
    3. Mark out slices of the ‘pie’ according to importance.

    Once you have your completed chart, you can use it to reflect on what you want more of in the year ahead.

    Enjoyed this?

    Check out the Hybrid Working Wheel ‘reflect-along’.

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    Featured image: Photo by patricia serna on Unsplash

  • Celebrating 100 podcast episodes and other ‘centuries’

    Celebrating 100 podcast episodes and other ‘centuries’

    In just a few weeks the 100th episode of Leading Virtual Teams is due to air. I’m delighted that an experiment I started a two years ago to mark the publication of my first book has grown into a weekly podcast featuring special guests on a regular basis.

    The format is still audio only (sorry, Youtube fans), but the podcast is now available via more platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast and Pocket Casts . It’s also now recorded and edited using better tools, including my Neewer mic, Audio Hijach and Fission.

    It’s been a lot of fun taking inspiration from the original book and turn it into podcast episodes, resources and courses. And… this podcast milestone got me thinking about other ‘centuries’ that I celebrated this year… and there seem to be a few. So here goes:

    In spring, I celebrated a milestone on my coaching journey, as after two years of training and 100+ hours of coaching with over 20 clients I was set to formally complete the ACC credential of the International Coaching Federation (ICF). I achieved the final step in May, when I gained my ACC credential 🙂 . Fast forward to the end of the year which is fast approaching and I am closing in on 200 coaching hours, with over 30 individual clients and 20 group coaching participants.

    This year I have also continued to share my work openly, via my blog, podcast and newsletter. The newsletter, which started life just over a year ago, has now also gathered over 100 subscribers. It’s nice to see folk connecting with me and my work in this way, and I really enjoy compiling this monthly email as a way to take stock and mark my progress.

    A big thank you!

    Thank you to everyone who listens to the podcast and all my guests who have come on to join me for a conversation. It’s been wonderful to have the opportunity to talk about all things hybrid working, finding balance and learn a lot about stationary, pets, pot plants and metaphors along the way!

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  • Reflect, reframe, regroup. Inspiration for when life is messy.

    Reflect, reframe, regroup. Inspiration for when life is messy.

    I struggled to find a title for this post, because describing what it is about will lead to expectations it is not likely to meet. This post is about how to stick with things, be they new habits or intentions, plans or commitments.

    In my work as a coach I often read and share books about habits and how to stick to them, and there is a huge wealth of information out there about how to be more productive from the ever popular Atomic Habits by James Clear to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks and so on. I go through phases of finding one of these titles or authors that really chime with me at a particular time in my life, and I love their approach for a while, find the inspiration I am looking for and… move on.

    Alongside the books there is an army of podcasts about the same subject, and I am guilty of adding to the genre with my own weekly episode of Leading Virtual Teams. Through my coach training I have discovered a lot of amazing coaches many of whom share their expertise on habits and productivity on their shows, and my favourite of these is Katie Linder’s podcast for Higher Education professionals, You’ve Got This. Katie led the coach training I completed and I find her particular mix of reading, writing, being creative and productive really appealing. Definitely a recommended listen!

    But…

    And yet, of course, there is a but… . Because life is messy. Life keeps changing, and evolving and however much the data we collect through the devices and platforms we use would like us to believe otherwise, moving forward is not always a straight, upwards curving line. And not every season of life can be productive. I recently read a wonderful book, Ebb & Flow by Easkey Britton, which beautifully explored the concept of periods of ebb in life as necessary and valuable.

    That’s where for me conflicting desires arise: one the one hand I understand and appreciate that not every week, month or year can be super productive. Sometimes life just gets in the way. On the other hand, I am very used to pushing ahead with things or sometimes have a sense of being behind already, feeling frustrated and keen to make a change. At times like that, I use a couple of approaches to help find a path through the messy reality:

    Reflect: Need vs. want

    First, I find some headspace to reflect on what I need versus what I want. I think best when I actually write things down or talk to someone about it. Here are some prompts to think through this:

    • What do you want more of?
    • What do you want less of?
    • What would make things lighter?
    • What do you need to prioritise?
    • What do you need to finish?
    • What do you need to pause/stop?
    • What do you need to start?

    Reframe: Essential vs. desirable

    Next, I try to reframe the situation, to look at things in a different light. My own high expectations or sense of accomplishment is often the biggest barrier to feeling contentment, so my aim here is to be very clear with myself what is absolutely essential to accomplish and what is desirable. I often find that things drop off my plate once I can clearly articulate to myself what I really need to do, rather than all possible things I could be doing. Here are some criteria I use to sort things into the two buckets:

    • Essentials often are: time sensitive, external (i.e. someone else is waiting for this), income generating, high impact
    • Desirables often are: open ended, internal (i.e. only I wait for this to happen), unknown/low impact

    Once I have sorted my long list of things to do into these two categories, I take a look at what I identified in the first step, needs vs. wants and check that everything makes sense. For example, if I have a writing project I absolutely love doing and it helps to get me out of bed in the morning, then it might move from desirable to essential. Likewise, if I find I have overcommitted myself and I need to say no to more things, I go over my list of essentials again to identify things I can finish quickly or stop all together.

    Regroup: Grind vs. joy

    Then, I look at the practicalities and set out to tweak things to prioritise joy. What that looks like may be different for you, but these starting points should give you a sense of what to consider:

    Determine how many weeks stand between you and your next break. How long before you can take time off, go on retreat, travel or something else that offers a break from routine for you. A break, whether a change or a rest is essential to my mind. If you find there’s no let up in sight, take a moment and think hard about whether you can change that. What would it take to get a few days off?

    Once you found out how long you have to go, add a countdown to your calendar or other app.

    Then take a look at each week ahead of you. In my case I found certain days of the week in which I had much fewer commitments, so I moved things around to block out time for what I wanted more of (in my case creativity and time to get outside). I also took a look at what would be the hardest/busiest of times and started to schedule some time and activities around those days that would offer me some balance.

    Time to rest, read, walk the dogs and so on.

    I saw a post recently my a fellow coach, Mrs T, who coaches Headteachers, and in it she described how when days got very busy, her initial tendency was to fit in even more in any moments of calm. Fit in more tasks during breaks and taking work home in the evenings or at weekends. She then shared how nowadays her instinct is to step back and take a breath instead. I could really relate to that. When things get hectic, I used to try to be more productive, more busy still. The steps I have outlined above, to reflect, reframe and then regroup offer an alternative to being ever more busy. In that direction burnout looms.

    I hope you find more pockets of joy. Even when life gets messy. Let me know how you get on.

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  • Critical Cadence.

    Critical Cadence.

    The picture heading this post is a photograph I took this morning. It’s my favourite river oak that stands tall over the River Taff along my morning run route. I love this tree and the way in changes with the seasons and I especially enjoy taking a moment to pause and watch its reflection in the the river.

    The current attempt to return to running is going quite well, thank you for asking. It’s either my third or fourth since 2020 and so far the plan is holding together. I am ‘training’ for a 5k race, which I arbitrarily set for mid December, in the hope that I would manage that distance by then and also my desire to reach a milestone before the holidays. Currently I am running 3-4 miles three times a week, gaining a bit more fitness as the weeks go by, and I have even signed up for an actual 5k Santa run for December. I am determined. And yet I have been here before and I know that there’re a lot of factors that can easily derail this effort like the others before it. So fingers crossed.

    What my morning runs have done happily, is give me lots more space to think and walking and running, moving through a landscape at my own pace, has been on my mind. You will have already gathered that from the coaching walk project I recently completed (yay!), but this week my interest is taking a new return as I have started to craft my submission for an upcoming conference I hope to take part in:

    Education after the algorithm:
    Co-designing critical and creative futures
    20th and 21st of February, 2025 – Dublin City University
    Dublin, Ireland

    The theme that I am most interested in is ‘Unplugged, low-tech and lo-fi approaches to digital education and research’ which includes outdoor learning and rewilding learning. One of the core questions the course related to the conference aims to address is “How can we be open, creative and even wild in our digital learning design and teaching work?” and I am really curious about how the metaphor and practice of moving, through walking for example, can be helpful here.

    Both in learning and at work the frantic pace of productivity is determined by the speed of digital tools. Notifications, comments, emails and other content arrive ever more quickly and demand a piece of our attention. Digital noise can easily lead to digital overwhelm and our senses suffer. I have started to explore the embodied perspective of hybrid working (and learning) in previous posts, and for my conference submission I am keen to build on that work to consider strategies of how we can change the cadence of our digital lives to be a little more… human. A pace of thinking and working and learning that is more conducive to reflection, to criticality. Hence the title ‘Critical Cadence’.

    I’ll share the finished piece when it’s done, but for now, I shall go and get writing. At my own pace.

  • 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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  • 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

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