This is my 10th year of doing the #OneWord commitment where you choose a word to set an intention and to frame your year ahead. I really recommend it as a goal-setting exercise as my previous choices have helped me to manifest some opportunities and to make some big decisions. My previous #OneWord commitments since 2015 have been Courage, Connection, Change, Thrive, Joy, Purpose, Freedom and Legacy. Since leaving headship in 2019 and setting up my business in 2020 (following a short stint working in Higher Education) my lifestyle and my mindset have changed a lot. Some of my reasons for leavin ..read more

noun. an amount of money or property left to someone in a will. Personally, I find this definition problematic, as to me a legacy is more than what is just left in a will to family members. It is instead what is passed from one generation to the next and is a gift. A gift that is greater than money or property. A gift of ideas, of relationships, of community, of stories and of a way forward. Moreover, leaving a personal legacy means to me that we are putting a stamp on the future, and making a contribution to future generations. We are leaving a footprint. We want to leave a leg ..read more

noun. an act of choosing between two or more possibilities. Following my 3 day weekend being trained to coach my clients for Fulfillment in early January, we spent another intense 3 days exploring how to coach for Balance. This is where the theme of Choices emerged from. A lot of people say they want more balance in their lives. What we usually want is to feel that we are choosing our lives, not just reacting to them. Balance coaching is a way to guide people into making powerful life choices and actively manifesting the experiences they want most. Balance coaching makes us active participants ..read more

noun: fulfillment; the achievement of something desired, promised, or predicted; the meeting of a requirement, condition, or need. The irony of having ‘Fulfillment’ as our December theme for the #MonthlyWritingChallenge was that I had Covid and was feeling very unwell, fatigued and generally very unfulfilled from mid-November to the end of December. The theme this month came from my ongoing coaching accreditation with the Coactive Training Institute (CTI). I am on a 15 day intense training programme with a group of fellow international coaches, and we spend 3 days virtually together over ..read more

Noun. the expression of disapproval of someone or something on the basis of perceived faults or mistakes; the analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work. I am a natural-born critic. I am someone who asks a lot of questions, who brings a lot of challenge and who strives to perform well. I am not a perfectionist, but I have high standards. My MBTI profile is an ENTJ (only 1.8% of the world have this Myers Briggs personality type): ENTJs are planners. Making decisions and having a schedule or course of action planned out gives them a sense of predictabilit ..read more

Noun. a single step taken when walking or running; speed in walking, running, or moving. Verb. walk at a steady speed, especially without a particular destination and as an expression of anxiety or annoyance; move or develop (something) at a particular rate or speed. I do things quickly – I always have. We were brought up in a busy household of self-employed and action-oriented parents. Thus I am a quick thinker, a quick speaker and a quick doer. I make decisions quickly based on my instincts and experience. I also have long legs so I walk quickly too. (But as for running…!) As a teacher I had ..read more

noun. knowledge or perception of a situation or fact; concern about and well-informed interest in a particular situation or development. Awareness is the state of being conscious of something. More specifically, it is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. Awareness is a big part of the work I now do as a Leadership Development Consultant, Coach and Trainer specialising in DEI and MHWB. As an accredited RLE and C-Me coach awareness is central to the coaching conversations I have with clients and the training I design and deliver. In Resilient Leaders ..read more

Noun. the action or process of affirming something; emotional support or encouragement. * The word affirmation comes from the Latin affirmare, originally meaning “to make steady, strengthen.” It is interesting to reflect on which themes create flow for our group of writers and which ones make the head (and the heart) hurt whilst we grapple to unpack a word to get some words on the page. I usually write and share before I read and share the other posts but I fell behind with my writing this month, so I have just had a peek at everyone else’s angles on this topic. The tension between the he ..read more

noun. a strong belief that something will happen or be the case; another term for expected value (a predicted value of a variable, calculated as the sum of all possible values each multiplied by the probability of its occurrence). I have always had high expectations of myself and others, in my professional and my personal life. It comes from the simple family rules and values my parents instilled in us as children, and it also comes from the work ethic they established as self-employed small business owners. Professional Expectations: For 2 decades, working in the school system I operated with ..read more

noun. the state of being close to another person or other people. After writing so much last year and finding it really cathartic, I fell off of the writing bus in the Autumn as my life began to get busier, I am constantly thinking about (normally when in the shower or in the car) all of the things I want to write about, but I need to intentionally return to the writing habit to make this happen. I also wonder if this theme has been a particularly hard one to sit with, following the sense of isolation of the last 12 months. Being together. I am a sociable person, I have a large friendship grou ..read more