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High-impact university workshops and coaching
🎓 Workshops for Universities: Practical, interactive online sessions on resilience, time & energy, confidence and leadership
🧠 Academic Coaching: 1:1 support for researchers, lecturers, PhD students and academic leaders
✨ Fun, Evidence-Based Learning: Engaging programmes that create meaningful, lasting change
Support Your Academics With Practical, Evidence Based Development
We help universities strengthen the wellbeing, performance, and confidence of their researchers, lecturers, supervisors, and academic teams. Through interactive workshops and tailored academic coaching, we offer practical, personalised support that creates meaningful, lasting impact across your institution.
How Universities Work With Us
Trusted by Universities Across the UK
We support researchers, lecturers, academic leaders, and professional services teams with high-impact workshops and coaching.
Workshop Facilitation for Lancaster University Researchers
Resilience & Wellbeing Training at The University of Manchester
Time & Energy Workshop for Academic Staff at Lancaster University
Universities & Organisations We’ve Supported
What People Are Saying About Our Workshops & Coaching
Here’s what academic staff, researchers, and university leaders say about working with us.
“Alison facilitated a workshop I organised for one of the projects I’m leading. She was amazing on helping the team to reach its objectives on finding what research topics we were really keen to work when applying for a second grant. Alison had us working on different tasks during the morning and all were very helpful.
Don’t hesitate to hire Alison to facilitate your workshop or meeting, I highly recommend her.”
“Neil has delivered several workshops for postgraduate researchers at Lancaster University, as part of the wellbeing and resilience strand of the Science and Technology Graduate School research training programme. Neil’s workshops have always been well received by those who have attended and this has been a popular addition to our programme.
Neil has been great to work with in developing these workshops and shows a good understanding of the needs of postgraduate researchers.”
“I’m hugely grateful to Alison for her skilful guidance of the Lancaster Medical School Senior Leadership team in our recent away-day.
I would highly recommend Alison’s gentle and empathetic coaching in bringing teams together to self-reflect openly and productively, realise joint goals, ‘own’ their work and find joint solutions to improve work environments.”
“Brilliant. Fun, engaging and supportive. Perfect duration. Lovely group size.”
Excellent workshop with good combination of activities, small group and whole group discussion – thank you. Take home point: The people pleasing beliefs and how these can be applied to my limiting beliefs.
“Fantastic session – I wasn’t sure what to expect but I found the questions and the space that was created really helpful and inspired me.”
Brilliant session, lots of good scenarios. Very helpful to understand beliefs and explore them.”
“Very engaging and informative. A great workshop and I am inspired to use the approaches in my life too.”
“To be honest this was the best training I have done in my experience in Lancaster and also other universities in UK and abroad. Thanks a lot for organizing it and I would be very happy to attend more trainings similar to this one or or related to improving confidence.”
“Last week I had my final session with Neil and I am a different person at the end of it. I thought I was self-aware when I started the process and also thought that I knew exactly what I needed to work on. However, I learned new things about myself and discovered what my real struggle was. I now also know what to do. It’s a journey of several years but I can at least say that, this time, I am going in the right direction.”
“Neil is exactly what I want in my coach; someone who will make sure I hold myself to the highest standards, focus on helping me find solutions and not let me get away with excuses. His coaching has made me be more determined, focussed, reflective and stronger as a result. I would not hesitate in recommending him to everyone in my network. Neil has helped me to unlock Peak Me and, for that, I am exceptionally grateful.”
After my first session with Ali I was blown away – she made me feel so comfortable and at ease and unlocked the root of the negative feelings I was constantly obsessing over. She helped me to unravel what was really going on behind some of the surface-level blocks I had around creating content and showing up for my audience, and not only that but when I came away from our session I instantly noticed where I was falling into the same negative thoughts in other areas of my life, only now I could recognise & correct them almost instantly. And that was after 1 session!
After just 3 sessions my mindset has now completely shifted. Where in the past I could procrastinate for days and even weeks over tasks, sometimes never completing them, I’m putting a lot less pressure on myself and finding that I’m easily making decisions without hours of overthinking. Any wobbles I’ve had that would have set me back days and weeks in the past, I’ve managed to work through using the tools Ali taught me, to recognise and quickly get past these obstacles in my mind.
Our sessions have also helped to hold me accountable to the tasks I wanted to achieve in my business and as a result, I’m flying through them and well ahead of where I even planned to be at this point in the year. I feel clearer about how I’m going to achieve my goals and have learned so much about myself and my business simply by slowing down, reflecting and not trying to skip 10 steps ahead, which was one of the things that was hugely impeding my progress.
I can’t wait to work with Ali again because the change in my approach to my business through our sessions has been invaluable and I know there’s so much more she can help me work through to help me become the best version of myself.
Who Are We?
At One Life Coaching, we support universities to build healthier, happier and more effective research and teaching cultures. We believe that when academic staff feel confident, supported, and resilient, everything improves — research quality, student experience, collaboration, and wellbeing.
Founded by professional coaches Dr Neil Mclatchie (ILM Certified) and Alison May (CMI Certified), our work blends evidence-based psychology, mindset coaching and real-world academic experience to create practical, engaging development for staff at every level.
Neil is a former Psychology lecturer with a background in researcher development and curriculum design. He specialises in energising mindset, accountability and helping people overcome overwhelm, procrastination and confidence challenges.
Alison brings deep expertise in NHS leadership, behaviour change and facilitating effective thinking spaces. She has coached senior healthcare leaders, delivered coach training to hundreds of professionals, and supports academics to navigate pressure, find clarity, and grow with confidence.
Together, we deliver high-impact workshops and coaching that help researchers, lecturers, supervisors and academic leaders — from PhD students to professors — build resilience, strengthen performance and thrive in fast-paced university environments.
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