Space to Think

You don't necessarily need more time to think.

You might need a space and a group to think with.

• Perhaps you've tried blocking out an afternoon for more strategic work, only to find yourself answering "another quick email" for the whole time.
• Maybe you're circling a decision because every option seems to have consequences you don't like the look of.
• Perhaps there's something happening in your team that you know you need to address but you're just not doing it.
• Or you're trying to lead through a restructure, a merger or another round of cuts without enough people to do everything being asked of you.
• Maybe your Director has made a decision you don't agree with and you're caught between pushing back, getting on with it, or  working yourself into the ground trying to make the impossible thing happen.

And perhaps the thought you don't particularly want to admit is:

“Maybe I'm just not really up to this.”

But what if sometimes you genuinely do have too much to contend with?

The answer isn't always better time management, another productivity system or delegating work. You might not have people in place to delegate to.

But being unable to control the conditions around you doesn't mean you have no choices within them.

Sometimes you need enough space around the problem to see what those choices actually are.

Bring it to the coaching.

You don't need to know what your “coaching topic” is. Just bring the stuff you're really working through.

Bring the fact that there’s been an email in your inbox for 5 weeks and you can’t figure out why you haven’t just answered it yet.

Bring the conversation you've been avoiding.

Bring the decision you've changed your mind about four times.

Bring the team problem that's taking up far too much space in your head.

Bring the meeting with your Director that didn't go how you wanted.

Bring the job advert you keep looking at.

Bring “I don't know what I'm doing.”

Bring “I don't think I care about any of this anymore.”

Bring your real life.

That's the curriculum.

What happens in the coaching?

We slow things down. (Ah, I just let out a sigh even typing that. How about you?)

I'll listen, ask questions, challenge a premise, point out something I think you might be missing, draw on my knowledge of Higher Education where it's useful, or offer a distinction or model that helps us see the situation differently.

Sometimes another person's question will unlock something for you too.

We might discover that the problem isn't quite the one you thought you had.

Eventually, the noise starts to clear. Eventually we’ll arrive at something like: “Right. I know what I'm going to do now.”

Then you go back to work and do it.

Next time, you bring what happened next.

This is the rhythm of Space to Think:

Work → Coaching → Work.

Over six months, we're not just solving a succession of problems. You're practising how to meet complexity differently.

You'll be noticing your patterns sooner. Interrupting the spiral. Tolerating uncertainty. Working out what belongs to you. Making good decisions. Having the conversation. Trying something. Seeing what happens.

The aim isn't for your working life to stop being messy.

It's for you to become less tangled in the mess.

Sturdiness, not certainty.

Most of the people I coach tell me they'd like to feel more confident. But I think that's a bit of a trap.

I'm increasingly interested in something slightly different. Sturdiness.

The kind that means you don't need to know exactly how something will turn out before you act.

You can have the accountability conversation before the problem festers.

You can walk into a meeting with your Director, Dean, or whoever, curious about what's driving their position rather than feeling you have to capitulate against your better judgement.

You can decide what genuinely matters and make progress on it, including the scary things.

You can actively shape the culture and ways of working in your team.

You can think about what you want from your career rather than fantasising about an imaginary job where none of this happens.

You can finish work and actually finish work.

Maybe even sleep a bit more soundly at night.

“She cuts through noise brilliantly.”

One of my long-term coaching clients described arriving with so many things clouding his view that he felt completely stuck.

He said our work helped him understand the questions he actually needed to answer, find his own way of doing his job, manage his team better and see much more clearly what he wanted to do with his career.

His description of my coaching has stuck with me:

“She pushes, she challenges, she encourages and she cuts through noise brilliantly.”

That combination matters to me.

Space to Think isn't somewhere I'll endlessly reassure you that everything is fine.

Nor is it somewhere I'm going to perform certainty and tell you how someone at your level is “supposed” to behave.

Instead I'll help you get underneath the noise so you can work out what you think.

Why a group rather than 1:1 coaching?

Because there's something valuable about discovering that other very capable people occasionally think: “What the hell am I doing?” too.

But that's not the only reason.

You learn from other people's coaching. It's often easier to recognise a pattern when you're not the person caught up in it. Someone else's situation might raise a question about your own stuff. Or someone articulates something you've been experiencing but hadn't found words for. And you get different perspectives without being surrounded by people from your own institution who are embedded in the same system.

There’s also a practical financial angle on this too. I know investing in 1:1 coaching isn’t feasible for everyone. This option is around 1/2 the price of ongoing 1:1 coaching with me. 

I still want these groups to be intimate though so there will be a maximum of four people in each group, with no two people from the same institution.

If you know you don't want to talk about your working life in front of other people, that's completely legitimate. If that’s the case then Space to Think probably isn't the right option for you.

Why six months?

Because one good conversation can help you resolve one difficult situation but it takes longer to change the habits of a professional lifetime.

I want you to have time to try things.

To make the request and see what happens.

To approach the meeting differently.

To stop rescuing and discover what follows.

To make a decision and then discover that the consequences weren't quite what you predicted.

And then to come back.

You aren't being sent off after one brilliant conversation to figure out everything that happens next by yourself.

The group is still there for you next session.

Over time, the goal is not that you become better at asking me what to do. It's that you become increasingly good at finding out what you think, even when things get busy and stressful.

“Make sense of chaos.”

Another former client came to coaching while struggling with autonomy and a lack of strategic direction. It was affecting his confidence and his decision-making.

He specifically chose me because of my Higher Education experience. He didn't want to spend half the conversation explaining the peculiarities of university structures before we could get to the interesting bit.

After working together, he described becoming much more able to step back from the day-to-day, see his team's work more widely and connect the dots between different activities.

His summary?

"Fiona helped me to 'make sense of chaos'."

I can't promise to make Higher Education less chaotic.

I can provide somewhere for you to make sense of your place within it.

The practical bits

Space to Think runs for a minimum of six months.

We'll meet twice a month for 60 minutes.

Each group has a maximum of four people.

There will be no two people from the same institution.

The investment is £200 per month, for six months.

There isn't a syllabus, workbook or programme of content to keep up with.

Your working life provides more than enough material.

Is Space to Think for you?

I mean, if you’ve read this far then I’d suggest it probably is. 

It’ll be a good fit if you're a thoughtful, capable Higher Education professional with meaningful management and leadership responsibility and enough agency to act on what you discover.

You don't need to hold a particular grade or job title.

You probably do recognise the experience of being reliable, useful and good at getting things done, while increasingly realising that the next stage of your leadership requires something other than simply trying harder.

Space to Think isn't a management course, a productivity system or a mastermind where everyone tells you what they'd do.

It's also not four people taking turns to have miniature 1:1 coaching sessions while everyone else waits.

The whole session is the coaching.

And it's for people who are willing to do something with what they discover.

Perhaps you do need to leave.

I want to say this explicitly.

Space to Think is not designed to make you better at tolerating a working life you don't want.

Sometimes, when we get underneath everything that's happening, the answer really is:

• I don't want this anymore.
• I want a different job.
• I want to work differently.
• I want less responsibility.
• I want more.
• I want out.

That's allowed.

One former client worked with me during a critical point in her career and ultimately made the decision to go freelance. She described it afterwards as a courageous decision that felt “100% right” for her, her family and her professional interests.

I'm not invested in what you decide.

I'm invested in helping you get clear enough to know that you are choosing it.

So if you're finding yourself fantasising about quitting because you can't currently imagine another way for work to feel, I'd like you to have some space to work out what you actually think before you make that decision.

I'm forming the first Space to Think groups now.

I'm starting with two groups of up to four people.

They won't be filled first-come, first-served. The chemistry matters.

So when you apply, I'll ask you a little about what's happening in your working life and what you're hoping Space to Think might give you.

If it sounds as though it could be a fit (and we haven’t worked together before), we'll have a conversation.

I'll then put together groups based on fit, career context, institution mix and the combination of people I think will work well together.

If I don't think it's right for you, I'll tell you.

And if you're right for Space to Think but I don't yet have the right group for you, I'll tell you that too.

You don't have to do this alone anymore.

About your coach

I’m Fiona Bicket, the founder of The Hidden Curriculum of Progression and a specialist self-belief coach for Higher Education professionals.

I spent 13 years as a Professional Services manager in UK Higher Education, working across multiple institutions and functions. I know what it feels like to step into senior HE roles: the isolation, the complexity, the pressure to get it right immediately.

For the past five years, I've coached over 300 HE professionals through career transitions, promotions, and leadership challenges. I understand the hidden curriculum of HE leadership because I've lived it, learned it, and now I help others navigate it.

I get the sector because I've been in the sector.