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AboutTwenty years of asking a better question
I am Nikki Mitchell. I assess how minds work, and I change what happens around them.
How I got here
I have spent more than twenty years in education, leadership and psychology, most of it in schools, watching capable children be described as disengaged, disruptive or lazy and capable adults describe themselves the same way. The question being asked was almost always some version of why can they not do this. It is the wrong question, and it produces nothing useful.
The better question is how this particular mind works best, and what we can put in place to let it do that. That question produces answers you can act on by Monday.
Nikki Mitchell LLC grew out of that. I work across the whole picture rather than one slice of it, because a child with a beautiful report and a school that ignores it has gained nothing, and an employee with a diagnosis and a manager who is frightened of the topic has gained less.
This must be a real photograph of you. Natural light, looking at the camera. 900 x 1200 or larger
Reveal. Reframe. Realise.
The same three movements underpin every engagement, whatever the age of the client and whatever the setting.
Reveal
Establish how the mind in question actually works, using standardised assessment where it helps and careful observation where it does not. Evidence, rather than assumption inherited from a previous setting.
Reframe
Change the story being told. Difference becomes distinct ability. The person moves from being the problem under discussion to being the authority on their own thinking.
Realise
Turn that into strategies that work on an ordinary difficult day. Realise the strengths, and make them real in the classroom, the household and the workplace.
Registered and accountable
Much of this field is unregulated, which makes it reasonable for you to ask what anyone is qualified to do. These are mine.
ACCPH Fellow
Fellowship of the Accredited Counsellors, Coaches, Psychotherapists and Hypnotherapists professional body, with the ethical framework and complaints route that carries.
BPS Registered Test User
British Psychological Society registration permitting the use of standardised psychometric assessment, which is what allows a report to be accepted by schools and examination boards.
CPT3A and NPQSL
Certificate of Competence in Educational Testing at level 3A, and the National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership, from two decades of school leadership.
The working assumptions
Disability is a distinct ability
Not a slogan for a wall. A working assumption that changes what you look for in an assessment and what you recommend at the end of one.
A diagnosis is not required
Plenty of neurodivergent people have no formal identification and never will. The strategies work regardless, because they come from the profile.
The environment is usually the variable
You can rarely change how someone processes information. You can almost always change the lighting, the noise, the way instructions are given, how a meeting is run and the format work is delivered in.
A report nobody acts on is worthless
Which is why the work does not end at the document. It ends when something has changed in the room the person is actually in.
Shall we talk?
The first conversation is free, and I will tell you honestly if I am not the right person.