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...

  I have been working over the summer while everyone else had their break. That was my choice and I am shortly heading off for a week so no sympathy needed ! As so many of the meetings and events I would normally take part in didn’t happen over the summer the vast majority of what I was doing was the less fun part of being a charity CEO. Lots of administration and budgets and finance and governance. All extremely valuable and necessary but not something which necessarily fires me up! This week meetings and events have started up again and on Tuesday I had the delight of attending the autumn meeting of the Emotional Health Alliance. A group of about 40 or so organisations that we at The Centre for Emotional Health convene, people who understand emotional health as the important thread which runs through the work of all the member organisations. We spent time sharing what had been going on for us recently, any big events coming up and considering some new research around empathy, t...

It’s Monday morning and I have just arrived in the office. This is the last day where I can have a more leisurely commute from my home in Hampshire to my offices in Oxford. Schools start back properly tomorrow for the autumn term after the long holidays and various inset days. For me that means the flexibility of leaving home pretty much anytime is gone and in order to avoid the worst traffic delays I need to have left the house by 6am or not even attempt it until gone 9am. In the great scheme of things it isn’t the worst problem in the world but I am stuck by how my year is now marked by journey times to and from work. Of course, when I was a teacher, it was very much marked by school terms for different reasons. I wonder what the school holidays and terms mean to you? For some reading this it will be all about spending time with the children, either as parents and carers or as aunties, uncles, grandparents and friends, both quality time and keeping them occupied! For others it might ...

I wonder what activities you do that have you so lost in the moment that you forget everything else and just concentrate on the immediate? It has happened to me twice in my adult life - I suspect it happens much more in childhood but the instances decrease as we grow older and shoulder more responsibilities. The first time I recall it happening was when I was climbing Mount Snowdon, or Yr Wyddfa as it is called in Welsh. About halfway up I stumbled across a hidden lake in a dip and as I looked across it to the stunning scenery beyond, I realised that there was nowhere I wanted to be more than right there at that moment. A combination of stunning views, making sure I stayed upright, a keen desire to reach the summit and remain on the correct path gave me a focus which meant that all the other everyday stuff faded away and I was only aware of the here and now. This last weekend I climbed Yr Wyddfa for the third time. Work has been fairly full on and what with that and the other gener...

  Passion is such an evocative word and can be used in so many contexts. At an event which The Centre for Emotional Health held last year to launch our collaborative report with DEMOS, my amazing team were ensuring that I ‘worked the room’ and spoke to all the people that a CEO ought to speak with – they are particularly good at this kind of hospitality and connection. I met one of our patrons for the first time and she asked me what I meant when I talked about emotional health. As anyone who has been fortunate, or unfortunate enough to ask me a similar question will know, it is a subject I can speak at some length on! With my customary enthusiasm I launched into the definitions we use and why it is important. After some time, she looked at me and with a smile said “Well you are clearly very passionate about it!” And I am. I’m passionate about something which has had such a profound and positive impact on my life but also because of the impact I see it having on the many people...