Why would school administrators want a coach?
Dr Aili Pogust
The Pogust Group
Marlton Lakes, New Jersey, USA
I knew I was in trouble. I was presenting my customary half-day workshop to department heads and administrators in a regional school district consisting of a high school and middle schools. The middle school principal walking toward me had agreed during break to participate in a 15-minute modelled coaching session. I had planned to model effective listening skills. He sat down in the chair next to me. As soon as we began, I knew. Alpha male. My mind raced to that famous line in the 1942 movie Cassablanca when Humphrey Bogart, after having seen his lost love Ingrid Bergman again, lamented, ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine!' Of all the alpha males in all the schools, in all the world, he had to walk to my chair. It could just as easily have been an alpha female.
He had an attitude. He was used to being at the top of the food chain. His mind worked quickly. He liked solving immediate problems. He liked the power. He didn't need a coach. Unless you walked in his shoes, whatever you had to say wasn't useful. Modeling coaching with an alpha male for 15 minutes in front of a group of people was not my best training moment. I have been an educator for 30 years. I have a doctorate. I have an active educational consulting practice. I have logged over 400 hours of coaching with teachers, teacher leaders, supervisors and department chairs in elementary, middle and high schools. Yet, I don't have many opportunities to coach school administrators.
Why is that? In thinking about it, the answer that surfaced has to do with mentoring versus coaching. I view mentoring as a process to transfer job-specific skills. Coaching doesn't require that kind of knowledge. It focuses more on the perceptions, insights and realisations a client has about accomplishing a goal. Since I had never been a school administrator, my services were not needed as a mentor. Alpha males and females in school administration would, therefore, find me useless.
In order to gain a more balanced view of my limited coaching experience with administrators, I contacted John Hourani, an inquisitive vice principal with seven years experience at a large local high school. I had been hired by his district to train and coach teachers to implement effective reading and writing lessons in their classrooms. During my second year of four years, the assistant superintendent thought it would be a good idea to have me accompany an administrator while he or she made short, informal classroom visits. I did this with eight different administrators. After each visit, the administrator and I would discuss what we saw and how he or she would share the information with each teacher.
John was one of the administrators. When he and I discussed the classrooms we had visited, he expressed an interest in the coaching skills I used with the teachers. Because of John's interest, when we met during two subsequent sessions, I actually coached him through some ideas he had about changing his style of questioning when he met with teachers. He was very receptive to the process, even though we had backed our way into these coaching sessions. Our sessions were few because my coaching schedule did not leave any more time for us to meet.
When I interviewed John for this article, I wanted to know if he had been able to maintain the questioning style we had discussed during our coaching sessions. He said it had begun well but began to erode over time. This made sense. Coaching clients have a better chance to achieve their goals if they are committed, provide the time needed, stick to it when it gets tough, overcome distractions and design a way to maintain a focus.
John told me that a monthly coaching session is what he would have needed to maintain his goal.
A concern John expressed was whether it was even realistic for him to be able to enter into a coaching relationship with teachers because of his role as an administrator who conducts formal evaluations. Coaching requires building a relationship based on trust. He has been thinking a lot about this question. There is one idea he has been kicking around. Since the faculty is formally evaluated by specific administrators, he has been wondering whether he could build a coaching relationship with teachers who are not assigned to him to evaluate.
That's certainly a creative idea. To coach these teachers does, however, require coaching skills. What the field of education has offered to the teaching profession for some years is peer coaching or content-area coaching. It doesn't always follow that educators who know how to teach specific content effectively or supervise effectively have the skills to coach others. It helps a great deal if those who are coaching others also experience solid, professional coaching themselves. John did say that he would want to be coached by an external coach, as there was no one within the district he felt had strong enough coaching skills.
As coaches, we are drawing out the best in people. That takes strong people skills and strong listening skills. It also takes a code of ethics. The International Coach Federation is one of several coaching organizations providing coaching standards for its members. The ICF also accredits coaching schools and provides a process through which its membership may receive ICF accreditation. Why would school administrators even want to pursue coaching skills? What would be the pay-off?
One pay-off would be to create a school culture where skillful questioning and effective listening among colleagues provides a mindset to achieve desired outcomes, rather than a mindset solving a constant round of problems. A case in point is what is currently occurring in New Jersey, where I live. We have over 600 school districts. April is the big month where the local voters of all these districts decide whether they will cast a vote to approve the budget presented to them. Much of the school funding is supported by property taxes. New Jersey has the highest property taxes of all 50 states. The voters in 47% of our districts voted down their local budgets. We are moving into a time when school districts have to tighten their belts and do more with less. Creative outcomes can be achieved when people are coached with powerful questioning and deep listening to take a good, hard look at where they are going and what they want to accomplish with what they have to spend.
Now there's a paradox. Coaching can help a school district find creative outcomes when deep cuts need to be made, so where is the money to pay for the coaching?
There is a trend in the corporate world by executives to hire their own coaches to be coached for skills, performance, personal development or some other agenda they have set. I asked John what would motivate him to hire a coach. He immediately responded that he would want a coach to help him develop an ‘interpersonal skill set and go to the next level of my job'. He also stated he would be willing to pay US$100 per session. It is well known that many educators pay for books and supplies from their own pockets. I have done it myself. What would it take for administrators to pay for coaching out of their own pockets?
My musings about coaching school administrators has left me with even more questions. Yes, I could attach the power of coaching to changing school culture and creating a more collegial environment, but how does that changed culture actually transfer to more effective student learning? Even the corporate environment, with its focus on the bottom line, is currently challenged to generate evidence that coaching supports its organizations. And how will coaching survive the perennial initial resistance, when many yell out that famed three-letter word, FAD? I also wonder about the capacity of some administrators to be self-monitoring and self-reflective, which are important requirements for effective coaching. Not everyone is a candidate for coaching. These may be some of the reasons why I don't coach school administrators.
There is hope for me, however. When I asked John what really drew him to coaching, he explained that he found coaching to be a reality check, a way to collect other perspectives. And, in a deep democracy, all perspectives need to be explored if answers to complex problems are to be found. It certainly won't be found by alpha males and females who think they are the only ones with the answers.
Dr Aili Pogust has been an educator for 30 years. She is currently located in Marlton Lakes, New Jersey, USA, and has extensive experience as a teacher at the elementary, secondary and graduate levels. Dr Pogust currently maintains an active educational consulting practice with schools that range in size from 20,000 students, to ones with less than 500, in urban and suburban environments. Her training classes focus mainly on best practices in teaching reading and writing skills across grades and disciplines. She has logged over 400 hours of coaching with teachers, supervisors and department chairs, as well as mentoring teacher leaders in their ongoing development as coaches in their respective school districts. She is a member of the International Coach Federation and an active member in the Philadelphia Area Coaches Alliance, an ICF local chapter. As an ongoing commitment to her coaching skills development, Dr Pogust has participated in 150 hours of coach training through Coach Training Institute.
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