In this #coachbetter episode Kim talks with Reem Labib Tyson, experienced teacher, instructional coach, principal, and district administrator; now CEO and Founder of EDspired Coaching and Consulting where she primarily works with leaders as an executive coach. Reem’s extensive background and experience in so many different contexts gives a powerful lens to view coaching from multiple perspectives. And the focus of their conversation today is so important for coaches and leaders at all levels of experience!

In this episode they talk about…

How coaches can use mindfulness and a human-centered approach to slow down the pace of a very busy school day
How to coach the person not the problem
How and why leaders benefit from coaching, too
How coaches and leaders can find presence, joy and novelty in their work

This episode highlights a key aspect of coaching that can help all coaches – new and experienced coaches alike – think a little bit differently about the way we can create space for our coaching partner and focus on the person, not the problem.

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Reem @

🌐 EDspired website

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Show Notes

Please tell us about your journey as an educator

Started my education journey as a classroom teacher, school principal, worked on the district level; then tripped & fell into ed consulting in 2010. Found myself doing school improvement work, enjoyed being in different schools, enjoyed being able to connect people to each other. Leadership coaching, school improvement. In 2020 earned my certificate of executive coaching. Most clients are in education or non-profit.

It feels like we are constantly being asked to do more, faster. How can coaching help slow down the pace of a school?

Schools, inherently are just fast. There’s urgency, no time to be still. There’s a lot of mindfulness that’s being purposefully pushed into schools. There is space to pause and slow down in a way that doesn’t feel like wasting time. Before I meet with people, I ask how they’re feeling, do you need something to take care of yourself so you can be present for the conversation.

Oftentimes coaching conversations are so focused on the outcome, so asking open ended questions can help us slow down. What do you want from this conversation, what do you want for yourself. Sometimes coaching is directive and there’s an opportunity to do some guidance. There’s other opportunities for pure coaching, what does that person need, how can you support them to get there?

Making time to ask what people need in the conversation. Starting with the person first.

You can’t get lost in coaching, sometimes things just have to get done. It’s in the smaller conversations, within the questioning, that we can reflect. There’s a lot of opportunity for leaders to model coaching skills.

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Show Notes continued…

How can leaders embrace a coaching mindset in their work? How might that look different from the work of instructional coaches?

Everything is future focused: taking someone from where they are, helping them figure out where they’re going. You also can’t just ask questions because it can be very frustrating, because people might not know where the questions are leading. With instructional coaching, there’s a lot of opportunity for questioning to think about the work that has been done, to plan for the work forward.

As a leader, there’s an opportunity to coach the person, not the problem. We’re always moving so quickly in schools. Instead of focusing on being so quick to solve people’s problems, when we slow down, and support the person, now they can then support themselves later and support others. We can help build capacity versus solving the problem most of the time, so the person is better prepared for the long run

To me that’s the differentiator between people say they coach people; a lot of the work is thought partnership;

How do I coach this person if I can’t solve that problem? A lot of it is agreeing about what you want in this conversation today, what would make the conversation successful, holding space and slowing down enough so the other person can figure out the salutation. They just need to slow down and process out loud and then we put the pieces back in whatever order feels right for right now, and then you commit to what you wanna do next.

People often try to solve the problem, but people don’t always want that, sometimes they just want to be heard, you can ask your coaching partner

As a leader, and leadership coach, how do leaders benefit from coaching?

Coaching is a gift you didn’t know that you needed. A mentor is more on the tactical side. If you want someone to help you figure out your leadership, that’s what coaching can do. Coaching also gets a bad rap because people think of it as developmental. The clients I love working with are going to get there with or without me, it’s just about how quickly they get there.

To me, coaching is about how you’re showing up in the world.

One of my clients wanted to build capacity in his team, and at the same time wanted to have his hands in everything. Part of coaching is also noticing what the person said they wanted, and what you’re seeing because you’ve seen those patterns. Oftentimes leaders don’t pause to celebrate their wins. So part of having a coach, someone to help you, to celebrate yourself and to see your progress.

How can leaders (and perhaps informal leaders like coaches) can find presence, joy, and novelty in their work?

If we’re not pausing to notice when there are wins then we’re not finding joy or being present in the moment. Saying something nice to yourself, putting it somewhere so you can find it later. I try to provide my clients with strategies to keep it simple, for example like a mood tracker. She would get so hung up on having a bad day she wasn’t noticing how many good days there were.

Novelty: how do you bring something different to your work. I was doing a coaching engagement where I brought a bucket with fidgets, lollipops. It’s about finding small moments where people get excited about stuff.

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Coaching the Person, Not the Problem with Reem Labib Tyson [295]