In #coachbetter episode Kim talks with Iain Henderson, Director of The Bridge at Wellington College. This is a peek into a conversation they had for Iain’s podcast that we’re excited to share with you here. 

Iain and Kim have been having ongoing conversations about how coaching is implemented differently in different school settings and this conversation highlights a number of key topics that have come up many times, including:

• the importance of agency in the coaching process
• embracing a coach-like approach in any interaction 
• what we hope are the goals or outcomes from the coaching process
• how we design coaching relationships and avoid “coaching-by-stealth”
• the impact of different types of coaching models – like:
  • what happens when we mandate coaching, and
  • the repercussions of aligning coaching with evaluation
• coaching in the age of AI

This conversation explores the deep power of coaching as adult development to support the flourishing of all educators in our schools. If you are interested in why coaching is so powerful – and some very important constraints to the coaching process that can make or break your program – this episode is for you!

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Bonus! Watch the Spotlight Version on YouTube!

Show Notes

Iain: I think there’s a lot of talk at the moment about how education is changing and AI this, and automated learning that, and all of the other things. I think there’s something really fundamental about the human to human interaction that is coaching that is hugely powerful. At the same time, when you, when you look at all of the massive volume of educational research that’s out there, they’re so incredibly varied, you can almost find an example of a piece of research to back up any assertion that you have. It might not be particularly robust research, but there’s gonna be a piece of research out there. Because there’s such a range of different contexts and ideas and research methodologies, there’s almost nothing that all educational researchers agree on. Except that thinking hard causes learning, that seems to be pretty much universal when, when people think hard, the residue of hard thought is learning. Learning is what’s left over when you’ve been thinking hard. It strikes me the best way to help people think is to ask them.

Iain: which really kind of brings coaching rights to the fore of what needs to be included in modern education. As education grows and evolves, we need to bring the skills of coaching into those human interactions much more than we currently do in order to make sure that we make people think. It barely needs any research. It’s pretty much intuitive. But we definitely know from recent research that if you outsource thinking to AI, you get a cognitive debt that gets bigger and bigger over time. And that’s gonna be the temptation and perhaps the tendency for lots of people that I’m gonna get the AI to do the thinking for me now, getting AI to do all of the drudgery, all of the kind of repetitive work that might be research and summarizing and analyzing that sort of thing. Fine. AI is brilliant at that. AI is terrible at thinking. And it’s terrible at making decisions. I think that there’s something there for me as we embark on an era where hopefully the kind of basic purpose, the fundamental point of education is gonna be reestablished as we grow people. Our goal is to help people live a flourishing life and, and to go into the world and live a flourishing life. It feels to me like coaching’s an essential part of that. And I absolutely, I wonder what happens to you as I say that

Kim: I couldn’t agree more. When you mentioned AI, my thought that came to mind when you were talking about it is that I feel like there’s an ever increasing pressure to do more with less, and that’s giving us less time to think.And to me, I think that makes coaching even more important because we need more opportunities to slow down. We need more opportunities to reflect, need more opportunities to process instead of allowing ourselves to just be bowled over by the tsunami of expectations that now AI is here, you can do 10 times more things than you used to do before. No, that is the wrong, that’s the wrong message to take away from that.

And then you’re talking about allowing ourselves to flourish and being human centered and finding those human ways of being with each other. When we’re looking for a meaningful life, it is that feeling of belonging, of doing something that’s important to you, doing something that makes a difference. And I think most, if not all, educators are in education for that very reason. And if we can’t create a space where I feel like I belong because you care, you listen, you make space for me, my growth is as important as somebody else’s, then what am I doing here? Because it’s certainly not for the pay. It’s certainly not for the glory. You know what I mean? I’m here because it’s meaningful to me. And the way we make things meaningful is by feeling like we belong, feeling like we’re part of this community that cares and wants to do better. And I think coaching, I believe coaching is the key for that.

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Show Notes continued…

Iain: Yeah. I absolutely agree with that. And I love that you said that. The issues that the sector has as a whole, and this is as evident in any country that I’ve engaged with people, is that we are losing good teachers. Education is losing good people, and exit surveys and other bits of research showed pretty much a consistent picture across all of those countries that are losing people. It’s about a lack of agency. It’s about the deprofessionalization or deintellectualization of, of the profession. It’s about a lack of purpose. It can be about toxic leadership, it can be about workload, but both of which kind of contribute to those other things. But in very few cases is it “I don’t turn enough money.”

Iain: That is not to be ignored because teachers are often not as well paid as perhaps they really ought to be. But, ultimately, all of those things are about purpose. And then we talk about human flourishing being the purpose of education. We grow people. If the adults don’t flourish, how can the young people flourish? A big focus for us at the moment is how we can help reimagine teacher education. And by that I don’t mean just initial teacher education, I mean the ongoing growth of teachers through their career, right up to retirement. If we can help do that in a way which enables people to flourish and find meaning and purpose and fulfillment in what they do, then you’re gonna retain more good people. And of course, some people will leave teaching because it’s not the right thing for them. That’s okay. Not everyone has to get the perfect career decision first time round. But the more you do this, the more you’ve got a chance that the right people come into teaching, stay in teaching, are fulfilled by teaching, and therefore create an education system where more young people can flourish.

Kim: Yes. And I think one of the things that may keeps us stuck a little bit in education is, and I’m not saying this is wrong, I’m just saying there maybe we need to expand our thinking a little bit, is we are so focused on what we’re doing for students, that we really don’t pay enough attention to the adults. And what you are talking about is exactly what we need to just expand a tiny little bit in our minds. I’m not saying we aren’t there for students. I know that we’re there for students, but if we don’t pay attention to the adults in the room, they’re not gonna be able to give what is needed to those students in the first place. So all the things we know that are good for students, we can do those things for adults too. And that will allow exactly what you’re talking about, this flourishing, wanting to stay, teacher retention, teacher engagement, increased belonging, all these things. I think we both think that coaching is the secret . 

Iain: Yeah, absolutely. But that’s a secret. But I love, I love that you said that, and it reminds me of speaking to a head a long, long time ago when I first started teaching, who said, “Yeah, banging a head’s not that difficult. All I have to do is appoint good people and keep them happy.” A fairly simplistic boil down of what we’ve been talking about, but ultimately, if you can attract the right people into the profession in terms of their values are ideally suited to teaching to education in general, and you make sure that they, they feel fulfilled, that they belong, they feel connected, they have everything we’ve been talking about then maybe that is, a big part of it.

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