coaching in leadership

“Coaching is about unlocking potential in order to maximise performance

– it’s about bringing out the best in people.”

David Dixon
2008
Objectives
The session has been designed to give you the confidence
and solutions to develop your skills as a coach and
improve teacher leadership.

• Clarify coaching and your role as a coach

• Improve your skills to coach others towards improved
performance
• Explore goals, motivation, questioning, listening and finding
solutions
• Understand the coaching relationship
• Explore coaching models and undertake practical sessions
• Motivate you to coach further immediately
Rationale
• Learning to be a coach is one of the most
effective ways to become an excellent
teaching/leadership practitioner yourself

• Coaching is personalised learning

at its height

• Enables people to challenge limiting

beliefs safely

• Developing leadership capacity: growing

tomorrow’s leaders
Activity 1 – What is a coaching?

• Think of a special person in your childhood or

career, someone who helped you develop.
Then ask yourself the following questions

• What did they do?

• What qualities and behaviours did they

display?

• How did you feel as a result?

 Is this common?
They: I felt:

• treated me as an equal • special

• listened to my point of view • valued
• believed that I could… • confident
• challenged me • safe and cared for
• were fun and enthusiastic • supported
• showed trust and respect • self-belief
• gave me time and full attention
Coaching is not about:

• giving answers or advice

• making judgements
• offering counselling
• creating dependency
• imposing agendas or initiatives
• confirming long-held prejudices
Coaching is about:

• Coaching is a leadership approach that can be used flexibly to

meet the needs of individuals and groups.

• The coach should focus on the goals of the individual and/or

the school and use sensitive questioning to establish an agreed
action plan.

• The process is based on the three core skills of deep listening,

precise questioning and promoting action.

• Coaching fits best in a school culture that is predicated on

shared leadership rather than a command and control,
hierarchical structure.
 Activity 2 – Approaches to coaching
Identifying learning goals Sharing planning Providing guidance and
Providing support for Establishing the direction
progression relationship Drawing evidence from
Modelling, observing and Providing feedback research and practice
articulating practice Questioning Supporting reflection
Listening Reviewing
Action planning

High
Motivation

Low
Motivation

Low Skill High Skill

Activity 3

• Assessing your coaching skills…….

• Where are you at?

• What areas do you need to work on?
Coaching models

COACH
GROW
STRIDE
COACH

• Competency - assessing current level of

performance
• Outcomes - setting outcomes for learning
• A ction - agreeing tactics and initiate action
• CHecking - giving feedback and make
sense of what’s been learnt
GROW

Goal - Reality - Options - Will

• “What you want to get out of this session?
(Goal)
• How do you see your current situation?
(Reality)
• What is the best way to use what you are
saying to find a solution? (Options)
• How committed are you to taking this action?
(Will)”
STRIDE
Common ground

Coaching is grounded in the skills of :

• Building rapport and trust

• Listening
• Questioning
• Prompting action and reflection
• Developing confidence and celebrating success
Activity 4 : in practice

• Listen to this coaching session

In pairs
• can you identify the different aspects of
the STRIDE coaching model?
• What strikes you about the process?
• What limiting beliefs are challenged
here?
Feedback

• How open are we with one another in

our feedback?

• Can we think of a time when we weren’t

open in feedback and discuss it now, so
that we can identify what got in the way,
or what we might have done differently?
 Giving Feedback

You need to wrap it up as well as you can so that it is as acceptable to

the receiver.
Types of feedback

• Positive – the easy bit

• Constructive – A I D

• Negative – B E F A A
Negative feelings feedback
• Describe the behaviour or action you feel
strongly about.

• Point out the effect this has.

• Tell them directly what feelings or reactions

you have about this.

• Say what you want to happen and get their

agreement.
What next?

• What are you going to do as a result of this

training?

• Choose someone in your department that you

would wish to develop in some way and try
out some of the skills you have developed

• Come back next time and share your

coaching experience

"Coaching is 90% attitude and 10% technique"

further reading

VLE – www.wickersleyvle.net

StaffZone > PDP

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 The Ten Principles of
Coaching
There are ten key principles upon which coaches operate:

1. Be non-judgmental.
2. Be non-critical.
3. Believe that people can find their next steps within them.
4. Make agreements about how you will work together
5. Be positive and believe that there are always solutions to issues.
6. Pay attention to recognizing and pointing out strengths and building and
maintaining self-esteem.
7. Challenge individuals to move beyond their comfort zone.
8. Break down big goals into manageable steps.
9. Believe that self-knowledge improves performance.
10. Hold a genuine willingness to learn from the people you coach.