Spring Newsletter 2025
What’s been happening?
Bright Lead may have seemed a bit quiet on the social media front lately, and this has been because we have been out with clients, working away in the background, and getting over the winter bug season. It’s also been a lot of fun, meeting new and old friends and clients, and so it’s meant we’ve not been as active on social media as previously.
We’ve been to schools, providing team coaching, and leadership development, as well as appraisals and consultancy. We’ve also been providing remote leadership development coaching, and facilitation to some of our games company clients.
Earlier this month it was great to see so many activities going on world-wide for International Women’s Day, and it was a pleasure to provide a session on Menopause awareness for a school in Bath around this time.
What’s coming up?
I’m very excited to have been asked to take part in the newly launched International Coalition of Girls’ Schools Global Leadership Institute, supporting the ICGS in offering their transformative year-long leadership development journey for educators and leaders passionate about advancing girls’ education, beginning at the June 2025 conference in Philadelphia, USA. It will be an honour to be there facilitating the sessions, and I’m really looking forward to it.
“Join us in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA to spend time in community with girls’ school advocates and educators around the world, as we network, share best practices, and learn about emerging educational trends through a wide array of breakout and INSPIRE! sessions. A dynamic roster of keynote presenters also will offer their inspirational perspectives”
2025 ICGS Conference description
The next cohorts of our Senior Leaders’, and Middle Leaders’ Group Coaching programmes, which are run in association with GSA, will be starting in the first week of September. These two programmes provide the opportunity to develop personal and professional leadership skills and achieve your goals with a like-minded group of leaders from across the independent schools sector. We follow a curriculum designed to ensure you gain clarity of direction and develop awareness to bring the most positive energy possible to really inhabit the roles you have with confidence, leadership presence, and persuasive influence. To sign up please follow this link, or, to find out more, contact me on nicky@brightlead.co.uk or book a 15 minute conversation with me via my Calendly link here. You do not need to be from a GSA school to join these programmes, they are open to all Middle and Senior Leaders in education.
"I highly recommend this course. It is an excellent platform to reflect on and develop your practice and draw on Nicky's expertise, while meeting and working alongside people from different settings. Having completed the course I now look at my professionalism and performance in a different way."
Emily. Senior Leaders’ Group Coaching: Cohort 6
We now provide very successful team coaching, for teams that want to maximise their performance together, perhaps teambuilding, or further enhance their way of working to the next level, or simply to iron out some communication difficulties. This is a powerful and growing new type of coaching, and is distinct from the facilitation work we undertake providing leadership development programmes for senior, middle and aspiring leaders. Working with one of my associates, Ros Sutton, who has a background working with corporates such as PWC, start-ups and tech firms, we work with teams during the normal course of their meetings together, and perhaps also supplement with development facilitation. The work we have been doing building psychological safety has been particularly well received.
"I really appreciate all you’ve done. So much more has come from it than the written objectives - 100 times more than that."
Heather Cavannagh, Burgess Hill Girls Team Coaching Programme
All our leadership development facilitation is bespoke to the needs of the team and leaders involved. As well as our gaming companies, we have several 6-9 month projects for this academic year with schools and organisations in Bristol, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and London. These can be tailored for aspiring leaders, middle leaders, aspiring senior leaders, or senior leaders to enable skills development and an understanding of the needs of leadership roles at any level.
"The course was awesome, probably the best I've ever done."
“Thank you so much for everything and putting together this amazing training. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to build better habits and develop as an individual as well as become more efficient professionally.”
Video Games Leadership Training Programme
Linked to this are the one-off CPD sessions for training days or twilights, on any aspect of leadership including Leadership Presence, Developing Awareness, Resilient Decision Making, Establishing Psychological Safety, and Successful Challenging Conversations. An example of this was the GSA webinar on Thursday 10th October 2024.
“Outstanding. This was clear, focused and really helpful.”
“It was a really impactful and collaborative use of time. Thought it was also a really great team building exercise. I felt like I got to know my team a little better.”
Bespoke CPD clients
I get many requests for 1:1 coaching services, both in person and online, and again devise bespoke packages for leaders depending upon their needs – some want support establishing themselves as they take on new roles, others as they consider the different direction they want their career to take, and some are at critical times and want to process what is happening and gain clarity of direction.
“I found the coaching support transformative. It helped me gain clarity during a period of great change and uncertainty and led me to a new role - a promotion - with even greater purpose and sense of fulfilment. I am really grateful.”
Dal Hundal. Associate Technical Director at Sumo Digital Ltd
And the peri/menopause awareness raising continues. You can access the #Diverse Educators Menopause toolkit I wrote here
“Thank you, very engaging and enlightening.“
“Thank you so much for your time and presentation yesterday, we’ve started having some really useful conversations."
Participants in Menopause Awareness Workshop
Sign Up and Contact Us
If you would like to sign up to one of the Group Coaching Programmes, please follow the link. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss how Bright Lead can help you and /or your team, please do not hesitate to contact me, I’d love to hear from you.