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!

There’s been a squeeze on meaningful conversations at “work”, and a knock on effect upon our well-being and work-life balance.

Rachel Morris, executive coach, explores the impact of the dramatic changes in 2020 on our conversations and notes the need for coaches to adapt their working practices to ensure coachees still get the full value from coaching

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

What does the future look like for coaching?

Having shared our clients’ and our colleagues’ views on how they have experienced remote coaching this year, we now want to think about some of the practical skills being brought to the fore, and look forward to a more varied coaching experience in the future.

Coaching has changed dramatically during 2020.

The coaches at Motion share their experiences with executive coach and partner Rachel Morris about the reality of coaching in a virtual space, along with their coachees’ reactions and thoughts about the remote coaching experience.

We all know there are times where having someone objective to talk to helps tremendously. Those moments when, through skilled conversation, complications and confusions begin to become crystal clear.

How do you know when you’re at one of those moments?

How do you choose an executive coach? How do you know the fit is right?

Rachel Morris, executive coach and partner at Motion Learning, shares her views on the signs of potential for a good coaching relationship and reveals some of the key qualities of any great coach.

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.

Rachel Morris, our motherhood and career expert, shares her insights from coaching businesswomen for over a decade through this transformative experience.

Rachel explains the 3 phases of the transition from expectant parent to mother to professional once more.

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…