‘So, Diane, what do you do…?’ *Cue internal confusion.

I’ve felt a pull recently to recentre myself in my business. I’ve been trying to open corporate doors, unsuccessfully, and I’ve decided that it’s taking up energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

That’s quite a thing to admit, i.e. something that hasn’t turned out how I’d hoped, but c’est la vie.

I’ve been on a personal journey for more than a year, and I’m still on it. I’m not the person I was at the start of 2025…physically, mentally and spiritually.

The work I’ve been doing has been with small businesses, charities, schools and local authorities. Evoking curiosity, encouraging change. I have pointed my target at the corporate sector and larger businesses in the hope that, in the process of working with me, they would help subsidise the work I do with the aforementioned groups.

But I don’t need their help – I’m doing it already. ‘Breaking into corporates’ isn’t within my control, but freeing up my brain and my energies is.

And, let’s be honest here, even if a medium to large business wanted to work on their adoption of AI and the training of their humans in this scenario, they’re not going to work with little old me when there are much larger, more resourceful, more credible organisations offering them the same thing.

It’s a lesson that’s easy to see when you’ve got the right glasses on. Mine were rose-tinted.

Now I’ve got to figure out what to say when someone asks me, ‘What do you do?’

I’ve been trying to find the right words...

Not the workshops or the formats, not the titles or the names I give things, but the thread that runs through all of it. The part that stays the same whether I’m in a classroom, a community space, or I’m working with someone one-on-one.

A friend of mine reflected something back to me recently. She used words I probably wouldn’t have chosen myself, but underneath them was something I recognised. She described the effect I have on people, particularly young people, and the role I seem to fall into whether I plan for it or not.

And it made me realise that, for me, this has never really been about delivering a session or teaching a subject. It’s about what happens in people when they start to see themselves differently. (The irony that it’s taken me so long to do this for myself.)

I spend a lot of time with young people who are trying to work out where they fit. Some of them have a clear path in front of them. Many don’t. Some feel like they’ve already been placed on a track that doesn’t quite suit them, but they don’t know how to step off it. Others haven’t been given many options at all.

What I notice, again and again, is how much of what they believe about themselves has been shaped by what’s around them. School systems, family expectations, what they see online, what they think is realistic, what they’ve been told they’re good at or not good at. It all builds into a picture that can feel quite fixed, even at a young age.

I always root for the underdog. I hate inequality and injustice. I want to change things for people who can’t always advocate for themselves or who don’t know where to start.

I don’t tell anyone what they should do, but I do create moments where they start to question what they’ve accepted without really thinking about it – and this goes for people I work with of any age. Moments where they realise they’re allowed to be curious about their own direction. That they can explore, change their mind, take a different route, or build something that doesn’t follow the usual pattern.

Sometimes that happens in quite a big way. I think about a student who came to one of my sessions while studying accountancy. She got involved in the case, asked questions, built her argument, and at the end of the session, she came over to tell me she’d booked an appointment with her mentor the next morning about switching her course to law. This wasn’t something I’d suggested, it was something she’d arrived at herself, because something in the experience made her see it as possible.

In my workshops, students might speak up for the first time and realise that people will listen. Others start to question something they would have accepted before. They often go home and continue thinking, keep reading, keep turning something over in their mind, because I’ve sparked an interest they didn’t know was there.

I see the same thing with adults as well. People who have been in their roles for years, who are capable and experienced, but who have slipped into a way of operating that doesn’t leave much room for curiosity anymore. When they’re given the space to look at something differently, to explore rather than just respond, something shifts there too.

It’s not about telling people they’ve been getting things wrong. It’s about showing them there are other ways of seeing and being, and letting them decide what they want to do with that.

A big part of this, for me, is challenging the idea that there’s only one ‘right’ path.

The path that led me here wasn’t straight – in fact, it would resemble a bowl of spaghetti. We’re often guided, sometimes very strongly, towards what’s considered sensible or safe. Certain careers are valued more than others. Certain routes are presented as the standard. And while those paths work for some people, they don’t work for everyone.

I’ve met too many people who feel disconnected from what they’re doing, who don’t feel able to change it. Or young people who haven’t even started yet but already feel boxed in by what they think is expected of them.

What I care about is helping people find something that feels like it fits. Something that connects with who they are, not just what they think they should be.

That might be through education. It might be through a different kind of training, or a hands-on, immersive experience, or something they build themselves. There isn’t one route, and there doesn’t need to be.

But finding it takes more than being told what your options are. It takes space to think, to question, to try things out, and to have someone alongside you who is willing to ask the right questions and open up possibilities rather than close them down.

That’s the role I find myself playing day in, day out.

I challenge people, but not to catch them out. I ask questions that might feel uncomfortable at first, but only because they push beyond the surface. I encourage people to look at things from angles they might not have considered, and I back them to follow that through.

None of this is about having all the answers. It’s about creating the kind of environment where people can start to find their own.

When someone leaves a session or a conversation with me and says, ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that,’ I know something has shifted. It might not be visible straightaway. It might not lead to an immediate change. But it’s a starting point, and an opportunity to change the status quo.

Diane Hall works across businesses, schools, community groups and organisations, creating experiences that help people see things differently and explore what’s possible for them. With years of experience in a multitude of sectors, and with a background in forensics and criminology, her work is rooted in curiosity and challenge. She’s driven by a belief that people shouldn’t feel limited by the paths laid out for them, and that given the right space, they can find a direction that genuinely fits.