Tim Segaller ‘Coach & Trainer Spotlight’

You are a coach and trainer on the Associate Programme – can you tell us a little bit more about your work with the Associates?

I help Associates get the most out of their involvement in the On Purpose Programme – so they can advance their career prospects and make a meaningful contribution to society in the process. I do this through both one-to-one and group work. I run half-day group workshops for Associates on ‘Resilience and Authentic Leadership’ – helping them to maximise their professional and personal development and performance. I also provide one-to-one Executive Coaching to one Associate per year, where they can explore their long-term career aspirations and how to make best use of their time with On Purpose. I love this work, as I believe that On Purpose is doing something tremendous in finding and nurturing highly talented people who want to dedicate themselves to careers in social purpose organisations.

How do you help Associates better understand and define their (career) goals and support them in taking clear steps towards them?

Well, that would be giving away all my coaching secrets! But since you asked so nicely… What seems to work best here is going back to first principles. In other words, our goals – in any aspects of our lives – are best defined and ‘owned’ when related back to what really matters to us, in our minds and hearts. So I always spend lots of time helping Associates get really clear about their values, passions and strengths. When people feel rooted in these, the most appropriate (career) goals naturally emerge, along with the motivation and determination to keep working towards them, even in the face of setbacks. My job is to keep bringing people back to the deepest truths about their potential and sense of purpose.

You also founded the social enterprise ‘Rising Minds’ – Can you tell us a bit more about Rising Minds (and the programmes you offer)?

As a coaching and mindfulness social enterprise, Rising Minds delivers commercial-quality coaching & wellbeing programmes to organisations and people who usually don’t get to access these services. Founded in 2013, we’ve helped hundreds of people learn and grow in many settings. All our 1-1 and group programmes are about connecting people with their natural clarity, energy and resolve to thrive in life and work. We’re very excited to be launching next year ‘The Inside Track’, our new flagship programme. This will help people cultivate core qualities of self-awareness, resilience and leadership – leading to clear action plans for life and work. The programme is suitable either for leadership teams in social purpose organisations, or for people in the communities they serve. Or even better, we’d love to run joint programmes for both cohorts to foster meaningful service user engagement and co-production. ‘The Inside Track’ could be very beneficial for some On Purpose host organisations. If that might be you, feel free to drop me a line at tim@risingminds.org.uk.

And finally: what’s your top-tip for mindfulness at work?

Work with, not against, the grain of your brain. We function best when doing one thing at once, and having regular breaks for our higher brain functions to rest. Reduce disruptions to your workflow (e.g. auto-notifications). Decide how many times you really need to check emails each day, and avoid the temptation to check it more often!