Transitions and Belonging: Navigating Change with Purpose

Description

Are you navigating a major life transition or supporting others through relocation? Relocation and major life transitions often come with far more than logistical challenges. Behind stress, performance dips, cultural misunderstandings, or difficulty integrating lies a deeper emotional landscape: endings, uncertainty, identity shifts, and a search for belonging.

Transitions and Belonging is a five-day, human-centred, coaching-informed course designed for professionals who support internationals, migrants, refugees, or mobile employees adapting to a new environment. While many practitioners encounter the emotional and relational layers of transition every day, few have structured tools to explore them safely, meaningfully, and with confidence.

This course provides a clear, compassionate framework for understanding the three phases of transition — endings, the neutral zone, and new beginnings — and offers practical coaching tools to guide individuals through each stage. Through experiential exercises, guided reflection, and group dialogue, participants learn how to recognise the emotional dynamics of change, work effectively with themes of loss and identity, and support others with clarity, intention, and cultural sensitivity.

By the end of the program, participants are equipped to help individuals acknowledge endings, navigate uncertainty, rediscover identity, and cultivate a renewed sense of belonging, both personally and professionally. This course is offered in partnership with the Online Coaching Academy.

Summary of the program

Day 1 — Values Integration: Foundations of Identity & Belonging


Day 2 — Navigating the Transition Journey: Mapping Endings, Neutral Zones & Beginnings


Day 3 — Accepting Endings: Rituals, Meaning & Personal Insight


Day 4 — Navigating Uncertainty: Clarity, Direction & Purpose


Day 5 — New Beginnings: Integration, Renewal & Forward Momentum

Lecturers

Hamed Noori
Hamed is the author of Coaching Across Continents, a handbook shaped by years of practical experience supporting people through change. His career has taken him from entrepreneurship and CEO roles to executive coaching, where he discovered his passion for helping individuals and communities grow.

He founded the Online Coaching Center and the Online Coaching Academy, initiatives that have supported students and individuals across the world and that he continues to build and grow into a diverse community of emerging and experienced coaches. His work now reaches across the EU, where he develops programs that support belonging, understanding differences as a source of learning, and growing together. He has also contributed to major national and international initiatives, including the Dutch National Education Program (NPO) and the EU MILAGRO project Migrant and Local Grow Together.

Hamed’s contributions have been recognised at Utrecht University with multiple honours: a Diversity and Inclusion Award nomination, a Game Changer in Education Award, and recognition as a Role Model for Student Well-being.

Rosalia Cranfield
Rosalia Cranfield is a transition coach and program designer with a Master’s degree in Social, Health and Organizational Psychology from Utrecht University. She specialises in values, belonging and the emotional experience of change. Her interest in this work began while supporting displaced elderly communities in South Africa, where she witnessed the emotional impact of forced change and disconnection. She also facilitated wellbeing projects for marginalised young women, whose experiences revealed different challenges of identity, belonging and human potential shaped by cultural and structural barriers. These early experiences deepened her understanding of how people navigate unfamiliar environments and seek connection in complex circumstances. After moving to the Netherlands, Rosalia developed a coaching program focused on the emotional and psychological aspects of adapting to a new country. She draws on both her professional background and her lived experience of integration, using psychological safety, reflective practice and meaningful dialogue to support people through periods of change. Rosalia brings a warm, grounded and human-centred approach to group facilitation, helping individuals and professionals understand their story of change and cultivate a renewed sense of belonging.

Target audience

This course is intended for:

• HR professionals supporting international or mobile employees
• Coaches working with individuals navigating relocation, transition, or cultural adjustment
• Social workers supporting migrants, refugees, and newcomer communities
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) professionals working with cultural inclusion, belonging, and integration
• Professionals seeking practical tools to address emotional transition in multicultural or international contexts
• Master’s level students; highly motivated advanced Bachelor’s students may also be accepted based on their motivation letter

Aim of the course

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Apply values-based reflection to explore how cultural background, identity, belonging, and personal expectations shape the transition experience.
2. Identify and explain the emotional patterns that arise during transitions, including endings, uncertainty, and new beginnings.
3. Assess how loss, identity shifts, and cultural disconnection influence adaptation and well-being.
4. Support individuals in acknowledging and navigating endings in ways that cultivate emotional clarity, meaning-making, and integration.
5. Facilitate self-awareness, resilience, and grounding, during periods of uncertainty and ambiguity.
6. Help individuals reconnect with purpose, integrate insights, and cultivate a renewed sense of belonging as they enter new beginnings.
7. Use simple, practical coaching interventions that align values with action, nurture belonging in new cultural or life situations or everyday environments.

Study load

Every day, we will start at 10.00 hours and we will finish around 16.00 hours. Every day, there will be around one hour of homework to prepare for the next day.