In this #coachbetter episode, Kim wraps up season 6 and highlights one of key themes from this season of #coachbetter – the value of developing a coaching mindset among all staff members as you work towards building a coaching culture.

This episode highlights one of the key themes from this season of #coachbetter (and a lot of my work this year) – the value of developing a coaching mindset among all staff members as you work towards building a coaching culture. In fact, I dig a lot deeper into this topic in one of the #coachbetter QuickTips from this season, so if you like today’s episode, you’re going to love that one too!

This has been a topic present in many of this season’s #coachbetter episodes, as well conversations with clients, and a big focus in a lot of my in-person work this year! 

So, if there are any episodes you missed, this episode is a great way to capture some of the key takeaways (and you can use it as a guide to go back to listen to any episodes that resonate with you).

If you’re looking forward to listening to more podcasts during the school holidays, keep your ears (and eyes) peeled for our annual Summer Playlist of all of our most popular episodes this season, as well as the Refresh Your Coaching Practice summer series that begins next week!

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Show Notes

No matter where you are in your coaching journey – whether you’re just curious about coaching, or you’ve been coaching for years, building a coaching culture takes so much more than just hiring coaches.

We need all of our school stakeholders: from teachers, to leaders, to support staff to understand the value and purpose of coaching. Everyone in our school community needs to understand what coaching is, what it isn’t, and how it works, for them to believe in, and invest their time in actually being coached.

If we really want to build a culture of coaching in our schools, we can’t do it alone.

This year, I have been invited to do quite a bit of in-person work with schools on cultivating a coaching mindset among all staff – and that work is really resonating with the educators I’ve been fortunate to work with this year.

From in-person workshops at schools, to regional events like the NESA Fall Leadership Conference and the EARCOS Teacher’s Conference, to virtual webinars, workshops and courses; educators and leaders around the world are becoming more and more curious about what coaching means and how they can embrace a coaching mindset.

And this is so exciting!

Because the more we engage our colleagues in not only understanding the power of coaching, but actually learning coaching skills, the more successful our coaching culture will become!

In fact, in one of our early episodes this season we talked about the AAICIS Landscape Study of Instructional Coaching in International Schools and clarity about the coaching program is the most significant factor in coaching success. If you want your coaching program to be clear for all of your stakeholders, helping teachers and leaders understanding what coaching is, and isn’t, is a key part of that. 

It’s important to note that the more we engage our colleagues in not only understanding the power of coaching, but also in learning coaching skills, we will be able to work better together. And we know from the research on collective efficacy (Donohoo & Hattie) , when we work better together, student learning improves.

So as we wrap up this season of the #coachbetter podcast, I would like to highlight two key reasons why you – no matter where you are in your coaching journey right now – might want to consider supporting all stakeholders in your school community in cultivating a coaching mindset. And I’ll thread together some of my favorite quotes from this season so you can go back and listen to each of those full episodes (if you’re interested).

Ok, let’s jump in with number 1

1: Coaching Helps Us Work Better Together:

Regardless of your role in your school, concrete coaching skills can help you become a better listener, communicator, and collaborator. Whether or not your school has a formal coaching program, developing a coaching mindset can help you build better relationships – with your colleagues, school leaders, students and families right now.

If you’re a teacher, you can use coaching skills with your teaching colleagues, and your students and their families. 

If you’re a middle leader, you can use coaching skills to build a more  cohesive and collaborative team

If you’re a senior leader, you can use coaching skills with all stakeholders that you interact with – you can even bring these skills to the non-academic staff in your community

If you’re a coach, helping others embrace a coaching mindset is a pathway to introducing the value and benefits of coaching to your whole school community!

As we know from Jenni Donohoo’s work (I’ll link to her book in the show notes), collective efficacy is the number 1 factor influencing student achievement. It’s more than double the effect of prior achievement and more than triple the effect of home environment and parental involvement.

Collective Efficacy is “when teachers believe that together they and their colleagues can impact student achievement.”

Donohoo says: “Team members’ confidence in each other’s abilities and their belief in the impact of the team’s work are key elements that set successful school teams apart.”

Donohoo further highlights 6 enabling conditions for collective efficacy, two of which are very relevant to this conversation:

• Teachers knowledge about one another’s work and
• A cohesive staff

You know what helps with both of these? Coaching!

We can build collective efficacy by building trust, setting shared goals, learning together, communicating and collaboration.

You know what helps with all of these? Coaching!

When we think about improving student learning, so much of it is about teachers working better together.

A powerful way we can all work better together is to embrace a coaching mindset.

As Leigh Miller said in episode 250: “The key is to build a coaching culture – where teachers trust one another, are open, want to improve and learn from one another. The culture is much more important than the person. We can be coaches to one another.” 

To be able to peer coach, we have to build coaching skills among all faculty members. All of our staff members deserve the chance to learn and practice coaching skills, to see the different ways that we can have conversations that center another person, that focus on listening, respect and valuing our coaching partner, to create space for others to thoughtfully reflect on their own practice.

In that same episode, Leigh said: “Some coaching models are very expert based or subject based, and the tendency is to look to that person as a consultant. Teachers are in this position because they’re capable and they have the answers already, it’s just a matter of helping them get to the answer through questioning.”

When we share the skill of coaching, and we provide time and space for all stakeholders to understand a coaching mindset, we’re creating a community that respects each other and makes time for reflective practice.

If you want to unpack the skills that I’ve been teaching at these workshops, make sure to watch the QuickTips episode from this season: 5 Domains of a Coaching Mindset. We also have a longer free workshop about the same topic, which leads into a brand new course we just started offering this year: Cultivating a Coaching Mindset.

Ultimately what we’re doing when we start cultivating a coaching mindset amongst all staff is that we’re building a coaching culture – one that can provide even more time for coaches to work deeply with their coaching partners while peers have thoughtful reflective conversations more sporadically (I’ll get to more on that in my second point in just a moment).

Before I jump into point 2 I want to highlight a few more great quotes from this past season.

In episode 254, Steve Barkley points out that “Coaching is not an isolated activity, but a culture embedded in the school.” The way you make coaching part of the culture is that you teach all community members about coaching – it’s not something that remains exclusively the domain of the instructional coaches. It’s something we share widely so everyone can benefit.

As Steve said in that same episode: “The coach needs to become the coach of coaching. You will never have sufficient coaching in a school if the instructional coach is the only person doing the coaching. You get multiple teachers working together coaching each other and you start another group.” 

The reality is that it’s very unlikely for schools to have enough coaches to be working one:one with every teacher in the school, so the only way that we can begin to truly spread that culture through every interaction is to equip all of our colleagues with coaching skills too.

This doesn’t dilute your coaching practice or expertise – in fact, it enhances it. As one of my The Coach graduates, also featured in this season of the podcast, Kelly Esposito (episode 252) says, coaches need to “grow your coaching arms” – which leads me right into my second reason why we all need to work to cultivate a coaching mindset among all stakeholders in our community.

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Show Notes continued…

2: To Grow Your Coaching Arms

When all stakeholders embrace a coaching mindset, we can expand coaching experiences beyond what a team of instructional coaches can do – allowing coaches to focus on deeper coaching cycles, and peers to support each other in more “coaching light” conversations.

As coaches, we know our time is limited. What if we could, as Kelly says, “grow our coaching arms” so that other community members can also have coaching conversations. In most cases these would likely be more like “coaching light” or sporadic conversations, but they can still be powerful reflective opportunities for teachers.

In fact, this learning might prompt other educators to deepen their interest in coaching too. Another one of my The Coach Graduates, Lana Yashchyna, was featured on a case study episode this season, and she says: “When I was coached as a classroom teacher, I never felt so safe and so supported in my teaching life, in my career. That’s when I realized, this is exactly how I want to feel, and how I want my colleagues to feel: safe, secure, eager to learn, eager to grow, eager to bring it into the classroom. After being coached I thought, I want to take this culture everywhere I go, if I leave this school.” Because of that experience, and her interest in coaching, she focused on building a coaching culture in her new school while she was a full time classroom teacher during her time in The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program. To hear her story, listen to episode 268.

Just like Lana, one of my Getting Started as an Instructional Coach graduates, Brenda Lee said on her Case Study episode this year that “As a teacher, you’re under such pressure to make sure you’re hitting the mark and ticking the boxes, but is that really allowing you to be the best teacher you can be? Coaching allows for so much freedom of self-reflection and processing, allowing people to see how valuable they are and what they know is powerful.” The more opportunities that teachers have to be part of coaching conversations, the more opportunities there are for educators to recognize their value and to recognize the value of coaching. 

One thing I’ve noticed in my work this year is that when teachers have the opportunity to learn concrete coaching skills, it’s often an eye-opening experience. Coaching is not easy. Facilitating a conversation where you are focused on your own listening, asking the next best question, holding your own thoughts and ideas aside and prioritizing your coaching partner. This is a skill we, as coaches, have worked hard to build. 

It’s not something you can build or learn in just an instant. Sometimes educators (and even leaders) have the perception that coaching is just another type of conversation. Unpacking these skills and really diving into the technique, strategies and practices it takes to be successful as a coach is really important for our colleagues to get a peek behind the curtain, so to speak, and to see just how challenging this work is. Understanding that often has the result of recognition of the value of trained coaches who know how to have these conversations. In many cases this results in even more interest in being coached by the instructional coach, who has a deeper skill set – and this is the outcome we’re looking for!

By sharing the skills of coaching with a wider audience within our wider school community, we’re actually helping our colleagues understand how hard it is to do the job as a coach. And when they understand that this job actually takes a skill set, experience and practice, they will be more likely to engage in that process not only with the coach but also hopefully with their peer coaching partner. Basically we’re building a fuller understanding of what it takes to have a coaching conversation. And once we know what’s possible, we might be more willing to give it a try.

To hear what peer coaching this looks and sounds like in practice, make sure to listen to the episode with Lindsay Manzella and John Stephany, Bringing a Coaching Perspective to co-Teaching, where they share their unique approach to co-teaching through peer coaching. On that episode, John said: “Having a coaching mindset with co-teaching is key. I’ve had a lot of training, but no one has ever taught me how to work with another adult in the room. The coaching mindset makes our collaborative time more effective because she’s thinking about how to improve our delivery of curriculum, but I’m thinking that I can get feedback on areas where I want to grow – without worry about evaluation from an administrator.” 

This is exactly the kind of dynamic that’s going to help us build collective efficacy. It’s the opportunity for us to work better together by developing a coaching mindset so we can improve student learning.

This peer coaching culture, this opportunity to interact with each other in a new way, can also push our coaching program to the next level, because when we are able to empower our colleagues to have some of those sporadic or coaching light conversations, it means that we can spend more time focused on the deep work of coaching cycles. The more time coaches can spend in ongoing coaching cycles, the more likely we will have a significant impact on student learning.

Growing your coaching arms is going to have so many different ripple effects.

1. It’s going to help teaching colleagues work better together (when we work better together we can improve student learning).
2. It’s going to help you as the instructional coach do more deep work in instructional coaching cycles because you can spread the incidental coaching conversations to peers.
3. It’s going to help you build a coaching culture because you’ll have more people who understand what coaching is and what it isn’t, to help them opt into coaching.

So if you’re thinking about how to grow your “coaching arms” this year, or you’re curious about growing your coaching arms, so you can focus on deeper work with your coaching partners, you might be interested in encouraging a team of teachers and leaders to join next year’s cohort of Cultivating a Coaching Mindset. The course is designed specifically for classroom and specialist teachers as well as leaders at all levels to unpack the 5 Domains of a Coaching MIndset that every educator can use in their practice immediately. The global cohort runs in the spring, but if you have a group of more than 9 participants, we can run a private cohort at any time of year for you. 

There are so many different ways we can work towards building a coaching culture – and empowering your colleagues to dive into coaching skills and strategies is one way to build momentum!

3: Preview to Next Season

This was just one of the key themes of this season, there was so much more on the podcast that is worth listening to, if you missed it. And next season is shaping up to be just as good!

On season seven, you’ll hear:

• more fabulous case study episodes featuring coaches and educators at all stages of their journey.
• a heartwarming episode with a coach and her coaching partner which really clarifies the power of coaching from a teacher perspective
• a whole-school case study highlighting the development of a school-wide coaching program from the leadership and coaches point of view
• how we can bring hope through challenging times in our work as coaches
• many strategies for being intentionally inclusive in our coaching practice
• the ways that coaches and leaders can build strong partnerships 

And so much more!

But before all of that, you’ll hear our annual Refresh Your Coaching Practice series all summer. Episodes begin next week, and highlight a different powerful coaching skill each week for the whole summer! There’s even a workbook to support you, if you like to do some learning during the summer. Find it at https://coachbetter.tv/refresh

Ready to Learn More about How to Create a Coaching Culture?

If any of this is sounding interesting to you, and you’re ready to take the next step in your coaching journey, let’s work together to make it happen!

There are three key ways we can work together: in a course, in a private mentoring package, or through work directly with your school.

If you’re interested in a course, our global cohorts will help you take the next step in your coaching practice: 

• as an educator or leader ready to learn about a coaching mindset in Cultivating a Coaching mindset, or 
• a brand new or aspiring coach in Getting Started as an Instructional Coach, or 
• a current coach or educator ready to build a thriving coaching program in The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program, or as 
• a coach who’s ready to lead in Coaches as Leaders.

Find all the details about all of our courses for coaches at coachbetter.tv/learn and select the course that’s just right for your current experience level.

All of our courses are high-touch, personal support throughout the whole process – with real time global cohort calls and Office Hours to actually have a conversation about your learning!

Global cohorts open once a year – so set your calendar now so you’re ready when the next cohort opens!

Find all the details for each course at coachbetter.tv/learn 

If you’re not sure which course is right for you, watch one of our free workshops for instructional coaches, designed for your experience level so you can take the next step in your learning right now – and uncover which course is right for you!

To learn more about these options, we have four FREE workshops to share with you today.

Find them at: coachbetter.tv/learn 

Wherever you are in your coaching journey we can support you!

If you’d rather have more personal support, we can do that in a private mentoring package or by working directly with your school. If you’re on my email list, hit reply to any of my emails and let’s start a conversation to see how we can work together to create a thriving coaching culture in your school setting!

References

Donohoo, Jenni. (2017). Collective Efficacy: How Educators’ Beliefs Impact Student Learning. Corwin. 

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