🧠✋🏼💜 Head, Hand & Heart: How to Work Through Blocks With Empathy (And Help Students do The Same)

Ditch brute force in favour of gentle discipline for better quality of life

Happy Wednesday, I hope you’re having a wonder-full week.

Here are two items I have on the menu today:

1. Head, Hand & Heart framework

2. My new workshop series

Both are designed with empathy to give you structure with TLC.

Let’s dive in.

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Breakout rooms are my favourite part of online courses. Because intimate conversations run deep. Here’s a glimpse of a breakout from last week.

How to Work Through Blocks With Empathy (And Help Students do The Same)

I had a eureka moment this time last year. After five weeks of brute force to publish weekly in a writing course, I realized a gentler approach would serve me better.

I’d been coaching the Maven Course Accelerator—a course on how to create a course—when it hit me that one of the frameworks I used to get instructors unblocked could be useful to me as well.

Head, Hand & Heart Framework

Here’s how I modified Maven’s framework to cater to publishing blocks (this is a recap from a writing workshop I ran on Friday).

Feel free to try out the exercises and let me know how they go.

You’ll notice I put an emphasis on tactics. The reason is twofold:

1. In coaching entrepreneurs and creators, I’ve found their most prominent blocks tend to be recurring. So instead of thinking of them in isolation, I look for patterns and suggest tactics to overcome them.

2. I’m a “Tactics Mentors” for Write of Passage. My goal is to help students develop a rock-solid publishing practice by adopting the right tactics.

The Original Framework

The original Head, Hand & Heart framework was designed to help instructors get through one-off blocks in their course-building journey (ex. publishing their course landing page in the next week).

With that in mind, here’s the original three-step framework to overcome said blocks:

1. Diagnose: Is the block a head, heart, or hand issue?

2. Negotiate: What 2-3 options could you take to remove the block?

3. Commit: What 1-2 actions will you commit to taking to remove the block?

Here’s what a quick 20-minute coaching call might result in:

1. Diagnosis: Heart (the instructor is nervous about what people will think)

2. Negotiation:

   • Option 1: Have 1-2 peers review the draft landing page and provide feedback

   • Option 2: Have 1-2 prospective students review it and provide feedback

3. Commitment: Pursue options 1 and 2 by Friday to publish by Sunday

Now the instructor has an action plan to work through the paralysis they felt from fear.

My question to you is, how can you use the Head, Hand & Heart framework to help yourself (and your students) gently work through blocks?

My Upcoming Workshops

Beginning next Monday, I’m hosting weekly workshops on how to create engaging online workshops and courses.

Whether you’re new to this space or looking to up your game, I’d love to have you join.

Get Involved

Here’s what’s coming up for the next three Mondays from 12pm-1pm EDT:

• Oct 17: Create an Outline For an Online Workshop - FULL

• Oct 24: Create an Outline For an Online Workshop Series - OPEN

• Oct 31: Create an Outline For an Online Course - OPEN

Attendance is capped at 20. So register ASAP and share the links with your friends.

My first workshop has hit capacity but there are more workshops to come. As a subscriber to this newsletter, you’ll be the first to know when I add new ones.

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That’s all for today. Thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed this week’s edition, please like, comment, or share it with friends. It would help me tremendously in expanding my reach.

Wishing you a wonder-full week,

Alexandra