I've been sitting with a question lately that I suspect every researcher knows well: where do you actually start? Even when a study is grounded in solid theory, the analytical choices are anything but automatic. Statistics is a language, and like any language, there are many ways to say the same thing — and the one you choose matters. This update is about data preparation: the essential work that happens before any meaningful analysis can begin. I had planned to move quickly through this...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Trained Coach. Got Experience. Now you want the credential? More coaches are asking this question than ever before. The answer is YES. Whether you trained one or 20 years ago. Maybe you completed an ILM Level 5 or Level 7. A university-based coaching programme. A CIPD or CMI qualification with a significant coaching component. An EMCC-accredited programme. Something rigorous, something well-evidenced — just not an ICF-approved course. You've been coaching for years. You're good at it. And now...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Prefer to listen? Click here to hear the podcast version [10 min listen]. In April 2026 there were four major announcements in a single week from the ICF (The International Coach Federation is one of the global professional bodies for coaching). If you are working towards your credential — or thinking about it — this post is a plain-English version of what’s changing, what it means for you, and what you actually need to do next. I’ll be honest. The rollout hasn’t been clean. The details...
2 months ago • 7 min read
How does two weekends a week sound? ...this is what Happened When I Stopped Working on Thursdays. Prefer to listen? find it here [ 20 minutes]. How do I actually switch off? I’ve always been fairly disciplined about finishing on time. My challenge was more subtle than that. My creative brain doesn’t get the memo. Ideas arrive mid-swim, mid-walk, mid-dinner. The work doesn’t follow me; my thinking about it does. And whilst I’d never want to lose that quality entirely, I was curious whether...
3 months ago • 12 min read
Prefer to listen? Click here to listen to the podcast version. When distraction isn’t harmless: a reflection on driving, thinking, and attention Once in a while, someone arrives for coaching… in their car. They suggest we go ahead anyway. They’re driving, but it’s 'hands-free', so ‘it should be fine’, they say. It’s an immediate no from me. Not just because of safety, but because of what coaching asks of us. Coaching requires presence, reflection, and the ability to think beneath the surface....
3 months ago • 3 min read
I was stuck. Not the dramatic, life-questioning kind of stuck. The quieter, more familiar version. A blank page. Trying to describe what I do as a coach in a way that actually lands—not “this is coaching,” but “this is what changes for you.” And nothing felt quite right. So I tried something different. Story Cubes. Nine dice. Six faces each. Random images. No agenda, no structure, no promise of making sense. Exactly what I needed. Rolling into the unknown I threw three dice at a time. First...
4 months ago • 3 min read
I’ve spent the last few (many!) weeks doing something that doesn’t feature much in the romantic version of being a researcher: cleaning data. Not the exciting kind of work. Or so I thought. I’m in the middle of my doctoral level research exploring the impact of coaching on resilience and wellbeing. That means surveys, lots of them — 173 participants across 8 time points, all needing to be pulled together into one clean dataset (or person-wide to get technical). I taught myself Power Query in...
4 months ago • 2 min read
I only meant to pop into Poole Museum for a quick nosey with my Dad whilst he was visiting.Instead, I found myself standing in front of a wall of etchings, thinking deeply about amongst many things, coaching. Our local museum in the Old Town has been beautifully refurbished, and tucked up on the top floor is a changing exhibition space. This time it was a touring collection of etchings by Lucian Freud – yes, one of Sigmund Freud’s great-grandsons. The whole museum is free to enter, full of...
5 months ago • 3 min read
If you prefer to listen, you can do that here on Spotify [10 min listen]. In recent months, I have sat with people from very different walks of life — clinicians, leaders, parents — in coaching spaces, supervision and everyday conversation. Their bodies had gone on strike. One person lost their voice. Not metaphorically — they literally lost their ability to speak. Another couldn't get out of bed. Another's gut had seized up so severely they had been referred for tests that came back clear,...
5 months ago • 5 min read