Do you share coaching data with your school leaders?
It can be challenging to find the balance between confidentiality and data transparency
I like to say we are striving for confidentiality with transparency.
One simple strategy to work within this framework is to create a Data Dashboard – specifically for your school leaders.
Learn how Andrew Ranson, HS Instructional Coach at Shanghai American School (and graduate of The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program) got started – and how it helped transform conversations with his school leaders!
During his time in The Coach, Andrew created the tool that he’s sharing today – which is deceptively simple, and has also a hugely powerful impact for his work with his principal.
If you’re curious about what data to share, and how to share it – and how data can prompt great conversations with your principal, this episode is for you!
And if this is a topic that’s been on your mind, make sure you also check out these previous episodes too:
- Measuring Your Impact as an Instructional Coach
- Coaching for Impact, Not Activity
- What Can Instructional Coaches Do to Measure Their Impact?
Keep reading for the details on Andrew’s Data Dashboard!
What’s YOUR level of coaching mastery?
All coaches go through various stages of coaching mastery. Once you identify where you’re at, you can begin to build the skills needed to move to the next stage.
This quiz is based on real-life case studies compiled from years of working with coaches inside The Coach Certificate & Mentorship Program!
When you receive your results, you’ll also get your matching case study from the STRIVE Case Studies to see where you fit in the stages of coaching mastery.
Ready to tackle your challenges and move on to the next level in YOUR coaching practice?
The STRIVE Model of Coaching Mastery quiz will help you identify your level of coaching mastery by matching you with case studies compiled from years of working with coaches inside The Coach Certificate & Mentorship Program so you can easily see where you fit!
When you complete the quiz, you’ll get:
- Your matching case study,
- Specific strengths & challenges aligned to your result;
- Suggested next steps for each stage;
Plus the Case Study Document includes:
- Case studies leveled by coaching mastery;
- A framework to identify essential stages of professional growth & key areas to focus on in your professional learning;
- Alignment with the THRIVE Model for a Successful Coaching Culture;
- Space for you to reflect & prioritize so you can take action immediately!
You’ll go straight to the Quiz, and get the Case Studies by email.
Why Create a Data Dashboard?
I created this coaching check-in data dashboard as a milestone artifact in The Coach. This dashboard came as a response to a little gap that I’d noticed I had for years as a coach. I’ve been collecting data about my coaching interactions and then report that data around the end of year and sometimes mid-year check-ins. This means the data was kind of generalized. There’s lots of information available at a high level.
When I came to Shanghai American School, I came in the same year that there was a big coaching overhaul. We created a framework to really define coaching in our context. We agreed that there were four coaching stances that we would hold in our school:
- coaching,
- collaborating,
- consulting, and
- facilitating.
As I was tracking my data, I wanted to be able to share that with my principal. I had a weekly check-in with my principal and vice principal, and I found that it was hard for them to see the entirety of my work. We talked a lot about some parts of it, but not at all about others.
I didn’t know how to meet with them and get them to understand the bigger picture of what I was doing without me just talking and talking and talking, and I didn’t want to do that.
What is a Data Dashboard?
So, I had to create an artifact for the Coach and I experimented with some ways that I could report data that I was already collecting to my administrators. What I came up with was this simple thing, which reports:
- the number of conversations or coaching interactions I’ve had in the past week.,
- the number of ongoing cycles and total cycles in a year
- themes or trending topics
- the primary coaching stances or support functions that I’m using.
Outcomes of the Data Dashboard
What I found immediately was that data provoke questions, much like an inquiry cycle. You have provocation and then the questions come. My admin colleagues were asking questions about things in the data dashboard, and they’re asking questions because they were curious and they wanted to understand either what the data meant or what the implication was. I found very quickly, they had a much fuller understanding of the work I was doing and how I was spending my time and where the success and where the struggles were than if I had talked and talked and talked and talked. So right from the beginning it was a success.
We’ve done this a couple dozen times and the conversation has progressed so that they now have an understanding that the more precise they are when they are articulating a goal for a group of people like the whole division or subgroups within that, the more precise they’re about the outcomes, the easier it is for coaches, people like me to use coaching to support those, reaching those outcomes. It’s a lot easier to talk about what’s happening without breaking confidentiality. It’s much easier to operate as a coach. They know my role, my boundaries, and there’s lots of opportunity, because we have a shared understanding of what that is, to talk openly without ever getting into territory that might compromise things that have boundaries around them.
The use of this dashboard has really not only just plugged a hole, but it’s also created this entire opportunity for shared understanding and, and collaboration between coaches and administrators that wasn’t available before.
They can also tell, because there’s some patterns that develop, for example there’s usually about 10 to 16 coaching interactions that get recorded in a week. So if there’s something above that or below that they notice it. I don’t have to tell them it was a busy week, or, wow, this big disruption happened. They can tell right from the, from the data.
That makes my work feel valued, visible, and all those other positive things that coaches are looking for when they interact with their supervisors. It was just a little experiment when I started and it’s turned into something really great.
So I’m gonna keep using it and I encourage anybody else to use it or something like it because coaches have to spend a lot of time working on data.
When coaches can help operate in the two domains of reflection and data, really good things are gonna happen. I feel like I am following my own guidelines: I’m providing data to this group. I’m part of the group, but we have a chance to interact with and make meaning out of it. And that’s what I want to do with other people in my school. So it feels really good that I get to act like a coach in a meeting with my administrators about how coaching’s going.
This experiment that Andrew tried this year has inspired so many conversations in (of course) the SAS Private Cohort of the Coach, but also The Coach global cohort, and Coaches as Leaders. It’s such a practical, actionable simple step that coaches can take immediately – not only to get a high level picture of their own work (which is also important – and I have a QuickTips episode about that too!) but to start great conversations with their school leaders.
We know that administrators want to see the data on coaching, but it’s all too easy to get sidetracked into the who and the what. This level that data Andrew is sharing helps keep the conversation at a level where administrators can make high level, impactful decisions, without getting distracted by personal details that may not actually be necessary. As Andrew points out, it also helps you, and your administrators see patterns in the work, which is hugely valuable.
One of the other challenges coaches often have is ensuring that they’re maintaining confidentiality – I talked about this on a recent QuickTips episode!
If you’ve been thinking about how to share coaching data (and what data to share) with your principal, Andrew and I both hope you test something like this out! And if you do, please let us know – leave a comment below, or send me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn so we can hear what you did and how it worked!
Watch the Clip
And, if you want to have deeper conversations about your coaching practice so you can start to implement strategies like this with intention, come join us in one of our courses for coaches! We talk about the importance of collecting data and measuring your impact in all of our courses – at the level that’s just right for your experience level.
Workshops for Instructional Coaches
To continue your learning, try one of our FREE workshops where you’ll be able to dig deeper into the concepts in this post, and get a peek at all of our courses for coaches.
We have workshops (and courses) to support coaches at every stage of their career: from educators curious about coaching, to new and aspiring coaches making the move from classroom to coach; to current coaches ready to be more intentional and strategic in their practice; to established coaches leveraging their coaching experience to lead.
You can them all on our coachbetter website at coachbetter.tv/workshops
If you’re curious right now, you have questions, please reach out. You can leave a comment below, join our #coachbetter Facebook group, or find us on social media at Eduro Learning and send me a DM. I’d love to support you on your coaching journey. See you next time!
Connect with us!
Subscribe to the podcast iTunes |Spotify|Stitcher
Follow us on social media: Instagram |LinkedIn
Join our #coachbetter Facebook group
Recent Comments