A personal reflection on coaching in schools

 

Ms Jennifer McCoy Positive Change Consulting Carnegie, Victoria, Australia

 

Abstract: This paper offers a personal view of coaching in schools based on the experiences of a consultant who specialises in coaching for leadership and, over the past six years, has worked in schools, facilitating management training programs, coaching school principals and facilitating her own programs ‘Coaching Skills for School Leaders' and ‘Coaching Skills for Leading Teams'. This paper describes the feedback derived from these experiences and reflects on the challenges still to be faced, nonetheless observing a growing awareness and acceptance of coaching.

 

Introduction

This paper offers one view of coaching in schools, in the hope that it might offer some insights to others and possibly lead to the wider adoption of coaching within education. I fervently believe that coaching strategies offer immense scope for achieving all those things we want for education through improving communication, bringing out the potential in people, respecting and valuing differences, even for diffusing conflicts. We just need the skills – all of us.

My viewpoint is limited by my positioning, as a consultant outside the school system, reliant upon marketing and contracts to be able to engage with the issue. That engagement is currently coaching school principals and training teacher-leaders in coaching skills. The training program ‘Coaching Skills for School Leaders', has now been tested in a small way across most education sectors and then revised, with gratifying feedback – and will no doubt respond to more improvements over time.

The second, ‘Coaching Skills for Leading Teams' focuses on the application of group coaching and facilitation skills for working effectively with a team.

My links with education as a teacher, and then welfare coordinator, are extensive but a little distant as I moved on to leadership training, quality management, and then coaching in other industries. More recently I returned to education working in those same fields and my training and experience as a coach in organisations convinced me of its potential in education.

Mentoring or coaching: is there a difference and, if so, does it really matter?

My interest is with coaching and with the skills coaches, in particular, must bring to the role, for their responsibilities are arguably more complex than those of a mentor. However, the reality is, when we talk about mentoring and coaching in most workplaces, and probably in all schools, we're often talking about the same thing.

By definition, there should be a difference and perhaps both mentors and coaches need to understand the different responsibilities of each role. To be effective, people in either role must operate according to similar fundamental beliefs about the value of education, their role in that process and a respect for other people. Both roles demand some common communication skills; indeed, mentors would probably find some coaching skills quite valuable but, in my experience, to try to maintain a purist standpoint leads only to confusion. So I'll refer to coaching in this paper without really being concerned if some schools talk about mentoring.

What coaching is

Coaching is a formal process that allows space and time for a coach to sit down with a coachee in a framework of mutual respect and strict confidence, to discuss how best to help the person, for example, improve their teaching, class management skills or achieve career goals. The coach uses skilful questioning and tools to lift their coachee above their situation, guiding reflection, questioning assumptions that might lie behind opinions held or actions taken, helping them to find solutions that fit their needs or those of their students or team members.

A coach has a responsibility not simply to be nice. Coaches must be able to establish trust, be confident in challenging fixed ideas and capable of providing skill-training in a range of communication and professional behaviours. They should also challenge self-imposed limitations, opening the potential for development and growth and then help the coachee formalise an action plan. The coachee, in return, must accept accountability for making and keeping commitments.

These are not simple skills – establishing trust, skilful questioning, the ability to identify areas of concern and challenge excuses, effectively using coaching tools to negotiate performance commitments and ensure they are kept. Professional coaches take months or years to fine-tune these skills. School-based coaches may not develop these skills to a professional coaching level but I doubt they need to – yet. What I don't doubt is their need to be trained in these skills.

Where coaching can be used in schools

For coaching to be really effective, ideally it should be introduced at the most senior level and gradually implemented across the school, made an integral part of performance reviews, and with students involved in the process. I strongly endorse this approach.

There are some valuable pilot projects being undertaken where coaching is introduced to the school as an integrated system. Hopefully, the people fortunate enough to be involved in those projects will give their reports to this forum. I have not been able to engage that level of commitment yet.

However, coaching is very new in schools, very much in transition. Interest is growing and a recent study by Suggett (2006)from the National College of School Leadership, in the UK, Time for Coaching, supports that contention. However, implementation at any level is still piecemeal and the ‘coaches' largely untrained. There is a real chance, though, that coaching could work in schools, and that it won't be dismissed as a fad because the skills, by and large, build on communication skills that are already valued in the school environment – an advantage not always present in other industries.

Coaching for principals?

For about 18 months now, in the program ‘Coaching for Experienced Principals', organised through the Australian Council for Educational Research, some principals in Victorian schools have been given the opportunity to work with a coach to improve their leadership skills, thus joining increasing numbers of business executives who work with coaches.

Coaches in this program have been drawn from professional coaches, as well as current and ex-principals who are trained for the role. The program aspires to develop ‘transformational leadership', allowing those principals selected into it, the time and space for reflection and an opportunity to explore leadership issues with an objective and skilled coach. The commitments they make for themselves possibly transcend those they might otherwise lock into, in the ‘busyness' of work-life; and their action plans acknowledge the value of work-life balance. Often, too, coaching helps to affirm a path being pursued.

As individual principals, independent of the funded program, are now beginning to contract for coaching, clearly the value is being recognised. Two school principals summed up their experiences as follow:

‘I began the coaching program, feeling some frustration because I needed feedback on my own strategies. [My coach] works in a relaxed, casual and confidential way so, although it was challenging to admit my own shortcomings to myself, I came away feeling that I've added a bit of wisdom to my profile, that sometimes I expect too much from others, and I'm feeling a lot happier, contented and accepting now.'

‘I think the experience of coaching has been an affirming one, where I had the opportunity to clarify some complex concepts in terms of my own future and life in general … It is obvious that my coach has been trying to extend my thoughts outside my immediate work environment, which has been challenging for me. I know (now) that what I want to achieve is appropriate and achievable.'

Coaching by, and for, school leaders?

In Victoria already, some teacher-leaders have been appointed officially as Teaching and Learning Coaches or simply given ‘coaching' responsibilities to improve the teaching skills of their colleagues. However, these coaches operate without any formal skill training to support their title or responsibilities. These people report frustration that their ‘coaching' is met with resistance or say they ‘feel used' because teachers demand assistance but don't follow through on commitments they make. As an added challenge, the ‘coaches' working in secondary schools raise the problem of teachers responding defensively to their efforts to enter a classroom. The problem may well be peculiar to teaching, where one's own classroom has been sacrosanct.

All of them seem to stumble through their responsibilities, feeling inadequate, even embarrassed, by their inability to meet the expectations of their role and/or to bring about the improvements they hoped for.

Other people find themselves in leadership roles where they must quickly change their mindset from teacher to leader and then handle ‘discipline' issues with people who were formerly their peers, a challenge not confined to education. Some of the specific and more personal concerns include: ‘What do I actually say when…'; ‘I don't know how to encourage/confront a member of my staff who…', ‘How do I help a staff member to…' and ‘How do I encourage staff not to come to me always to solve their problems?'

These people are in leadership positions and yet they have not been trained in leadership skills. Many of the issues they are facing are very personal, involving inadequate teaching skills, and they require quite sensitive handling.

Could basic coaching skills help? Coaching skills, such as respectful discussion, questioning to uncover where the problem lies, guided reflection to identify what strengths can be brought to the situation, and what new strategies might comfortably be applied, all provide simple strategies, even some of the words to say, for handling difficult situations. Coaching tools, too, allow both people to distance the situation from the personal, increasing objectivity to allow honesty and confidence to emerge.

Once-upon-a-time, a search for more constructive ways of handling these situations would not have been considered. Today there is an increasingly receptive environment for a coaching approach, even for discipline.

Coaching for students

Skills that help teachers to work more effectively with students may possibly be the most productive avenue for introducing coaching skills within a school. The focus and interest of teachers is on skills to help them teach, and rightly so. Perhaps, in this instance, change can be implemented from the bottom up.

On another level, students are being asked to give feedback on their teacher's performance - a performance review. In some schools, student peer support systems operate. In both instances, coaching skills would not only increase students' ability to carry out these responsibilities more effectively but also equip them with fundamental communication skills for the long-term.

Coaching skills for school leaders

At the risk of introducing a commercial, let me briefly refer to ‘Coaching Skills for School Leaders' and ‘Coaching Skills for Team Leadership', both one-day programs I have developed to address needs at this level.

For the first program my aim was to:

• introduce fundamental theories or concepts underpinning coaching;
• encourage understanding of, and respect for, where someone was ‘at' in terms of their skill, receptiveness and readiness to change;
• provide a model for coaching, a structure and framework to operate within.

In short, I wanted to take the mystery out of coaching at its most basic level, to foster mutual respect and increase the skills of people thrust into ‘official' coaching roles. What the program cannot do, of course, is ensure commitment within a whole school, or even a department, to the philosophy of a coaching approach to education.

In a rush of idealism I included in the first few versions of the course a Draft Protocol of coaching and spoke enthusiastically of the intrinsic value of a top-down approach. Still too early, and I quickly learned to minimise this approach, including a modified protocol but focusing on the basics.

Feedback at the end that program includes:

‘I'm going to re-focus school dialogue about uses, etc., of the coaching team and implement clearer accountability through the use of plans.'

‘I'm now going to review my entire mode of operation. I need to make the coaching relationships I have a more equal partnership – where ‘they' take on some responsibility, too.'

‘I will probably listen a little more closely at the beginning (of a teacher interview) without pre-judging scenarios/situations.'

‘The most important thing for me was contextualising a framework of coaching with respect to interpersonal skills, together with a model for us to use as part of our coaching repertoire.'

‘Coaching is about the questioning – I need to think more carefully about the questioning.'

‘Coaching has made me more accountable to myself.'

‘After today, I'm going to focus on supporting people in what they want/choose to do instead of directing the change.'

These people are not yet skilled coaches, but they feel more confident about managing staff, coaching and teaching-skill issues and they have greater understanding of interpersonal skills and leadership. They also have a ‘bag' of professional tools to call upon, to help defuse and clarify sensitive issues.

Where to from here?

My experiences raise a number of questions, probably common to each of us - the main one being: ‘Where do I go from here?' I believe my training program is now appropriate but it's just the start. Commitment and decisions still need to be made at the top. A very recent email from a Teaching and Learning Coach who initiated a training program for a group of her colleagues reported:

‘Unfortunately the network of coaches has not taken off. I will pass on the info. to our principals and see what happens from there. Thanks for the follow up.'

More positively, a network of principals has booked the program for themselves and their leadership teams in two areas and one principal has made a personal commitment to his own coaching. This may be the opportunity for testing out an integrated approach to coaching.

Acceptance of coaching, and then its effective implementation - the point when it becomes ‘the way we do things around here' - is a way off. Forums like this one will assist and I look forward to discussing the experiences of others. Small opportunities also need to be built upon, but I believe the journey will prove worthwhile in the end.

Readings

Buckner, Kermit G. & James O McDowelle (2000). ‘Developing Teacher Leaders: Providing encouragement, opportunities, and support'. In National Association of Secondary School Principals. NASSP Bulletin Reston: May 2000.Vol. 84, Issue 616.

Fullan, Michael (2002). ‘Leadership and Sustainability'. In Principal Leadership (Middle Level Ed.). Reston: Dec 2002. Vol. 3, Issue 4.

Haines, Chris. ‘ One-to-one Leadership: Coaching in schools'. Study Report to Effective Teaching and Learning Network, UK. See: www.etln.org.uk.

Police, Susan M. & Amy J Bach, (2004). ‘The Heart of the Matter: Coaching as a Vehicle for Professional Development'. In Phi Delta Kappan, Jan. 2004, Vol. 85 Issue 5.

Robertson, Jan (2004). ‘Coaching Leaders: The Path to Improvement'. Paper presented to Biennial Conference of the New Zealand Educational Administration and Leadership Society Dunedin.

Suggett, Neil (2006)' Time for Coaching. Research Associate Report. NCSL. See: www.ncsl.org.uk/media/1E6/15/time-for-coaching.pdf.

 

Ms Jennifer McCoy (M.Mgt. M.Ed.ST. B.A. Grad.Dip.Lib) is a member of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) and a Director of Positive Change Consulting. Jennifer taught in secondary schools for 15 years, and left to go into management training in industry. She established her own consulting company, specialising in coaching for leadership and management in 1999, trained as an Executive Coach and now coaches workplace leaders. She facilitated the workshop, Investment in Innovation: Coaching to Inspire Commitment at the ACEL Conference 2003 and now coaches school principals, facilitates leadership workshops and trains school leaders and business leaders in coaching skills. For further information see website: www.positivechange.com.au.

Join the online discussion for all supporting papers from Monday 19 June to Sunday 26 June 2006.