The Emotional Health Coach

 Last week was National Work Life Week organised by our friends at Working Families and it also coincided with a Team Emotional Health day for us at The Centre for Emotional Health. We hold three of these a year when the whole staff team, both hybrid and remote workers gather together to think, collaborate and have fun. We spent time revisiting our strategic plan, checking in with our strategic goals and seeing what actions we had completed to achieve these goals and what had changed a year into our plan. We also considered some impact data and were reminded about why we do what we do by watching a video of some parents discussing how attending The Nurturing Programme had positively impacted their lives. Later in the day we spent time together trying Kintsugi – the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by using lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum making a feature of the cracks. As well as being a fun activity to do together it also reminded us tha...

  As anyone who follows me on Instagram (@peterleonard200) can tell you – I love a good meme. I only post those that either make me chuckle or which resonate with me in some way. One I reposted yesterday resonated massively with me.  As Chief Executive of The Centre for Emotional Health I spend a great deal of my time talking about the importance of emotional health. I’m passionate about it because I have seen how it has benefitted me. I have written elsewhere about my experiences of so-called conversion therapy and anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric at the hands of the Church of England and the damaging impact it has had on me throughout my life. Years of therapy and support from friends and family mean that although this can never be undone and the scars remain, I have moved on from allowing it to hold me back. That said there are days when something happens which triggers the memories and the symptoms arise again. When it does occur these days there is one dominant emotion which rises...

  We are interviewing for a new Impact and Research Coordinator at The Centre for Emotional Health this week. Those of us in the office have done our best to help relax candidates as they arrive early to avoid the infamous Oxford traffic and await their interviews. We have also been sharing our previous interview experiences with each other, both good and bad. I remember arriving for one interview a whole day early! I’m sure it was them who got the date wrong and not me and I got the job anyway even if I did leave three months later! Every single time a new person joins a team the team changes as that person brings their unique skills, gifts and presence with them and as the existing team responds and adapts accordingly. Every single role in an organisation is significant and it is important to appoint the right person for the role and for the team. It got me reflecting on the whole interview process. As a student, then as a teacher, I was always an advocate of continual assess...