How do we find the balance between the flexibility and autonomy that many employees desire, with the need to regulate for the protection of those same employees?

Question and opinions on the current working landscape from Howard Rich, Motion Learning

Rakhee is another amazing member of our team who manages to juggle family life, house building (!) and coaching and consultancy work in her busy schedule.

With her background in HR, she’s at home working with senior leaders and high potential talent, and is also part of our team of parental transition specialists.

Who better to ask about the experience and value of maternity coaching than the mother’s who’ve undertaken it? If you’re thinking about maternity coaching for your organisation or yourself, here’s an insight into what to expect…

Bert Stemarthe is the latest member of the Motion team. He’s an aficionado of music, food and travel and a highly experienced and skilled therapist and coach.

Bert takes an holistic approach to his work, and indeed his life - there’s always a multitude of things going on!

Direct, no nonsense and action focused - that’s Gayle, who we’re delighted to have as part of the Motion team. She believes you can achieve pretty much anything you want if you put your mind to it.

Gayle brings all her retail and learning and development experience to bear when she’s supporting her clients to achieve their goals.

What are the challenges of coaching in a redundancy situation? What are the dual responsibilities of outplacement coaching? Our coaches have experienced both sides of this challenging situation and understand the requirements of successful outplacement coaching.

Sophia Taylor and Gayle Tong, Motion coaches and specialists in outplacement work, recently discussed the issues involved.

Long standing colleague and more recently coach at Motion, we’re delighted to have Sophia as part of our team.

With a wealth of experience in management and HR, which she’s always too modest about, Sophia brings warmth and humour, along with genuine empathy and interest to her work with her clients.

We’re all part of personal and professional systems, whether we are mindful of it or not. Visualising them, representing them and then discussing them can open up routes to greater awareness and understanding.

Rachel Morris and Kim Gieske discuss the value of adopting a systemic approach and share their own examples of its application.

What links executive coaching, business ownership, strategic planning and motherhood?

They are all part of Motion partner Rachel Morris’ hectic life. Remarkably she manages to balance it all whilst maintaining a serene focus on her clients and a smile on her face.

We're delighted to have Rob Olorenshaw join our team of highly experienced associates this year.

With years and many hundred's of hours of coaching executives and managers under his belt, he bring's a calm approach and a great deal of wisdom, as well as a wry sense of humour!

Our recommendations for Christmas reading. See our thoughts on the following reads:

The Boys in the Boat

Ditching Imposter Syndromw

Nonviolent Communication

Working Out Loud

We’ve been listening to a lot of people this year, which is good, as it’s our job to listen. There are a lot of things people want to talk through, work through and share – but in a quiet, safe space; away from all the noise.

We’ve asked a few of our coaches to tell us about what they’ve been listening to, and how they’ve been helping people this year.

Faced with the continuing pandemic, civil disquiet and an overdue focus on issues of equality, diversity and inclusion, it can be difficult to feel a sense of happiness.

The answer is not to ignore the wider world, but respond in an authentic way, tapping into the wisdom of others to learn some key lessons.

We use our personal experience to support our clients as they progress on their own journeys.

Here’s one of our coaches, Lucy James, sharing her own experiences of balancing motherhood and career

Our recent research on paternity coaching shows that it’s rarely an option, is little understood but could be welcomed by working fathers

To understand more about the paternal view of coaching we conducted some research with almost 50 fathers contributing their thoughts and feelings.

Over the course of 15 years, we’ve never stopped learning at Motion Learning. Here are a few thoughts from our journey so far.

We weren’t completely unaware that to make a success of a business would take lots of energy, time and some good ideas, but to paraphrase, we certainly “didn’t know what we didn’t know”.

Communities of practice have been much on our minds over the last 12 months, particularly in light of the value we gain from two of our own.

In the course of our own investigations and experiences, we’ve come across information we think might be useful to others.

Just over 3 years ago we went to see Martin Seligman share his views on Happiness and Positive Psychology in London. We think it’s worth sharing again our notes and reactions to his talk.

Martin Seligman, the “father of positive psychology”, was in London, sharing his views on happiness with over 900 people in a packed venue, where at least 60% of the audience, according to Martin, were engaged in the topic! The other 40% were too busy indulging in sexual fantasies, apparently…

Are you clear about the factors which motivate you; is it the pleasures in life or a need to achieve before the inevitable occurs?

It’s neither cake, nor death, which drives us on, but instead a combination of pleasure, engagement and most importantly the opportunities we have to make a contribution, according to Martin Seligman, one of our favourite gurus.

Who do you turn to when you need advice, support or inspiration? Is it one person, or different people depending upon your need?

A personal development board, AKA The bench, is a group of people standing behind you, supporting you, keeping you on track, guiding, challenging and stretching you.