We probably all heard the words: capacity, bandwidth, or even cognitive load. And we’ve probably all been in a situation where we feel like we don’t have the capacity to take on more, so we know what it feels like when we’re stretched too thin.
But, we don’t always think about these words or concepts in relation to instructional coaching.
Aside from just being “too busy”, there’s another layer to thinking about mental capacity or cognitive load when we reflect on our work as instructional coaches.
This topic comes up a lot in our work with The Coach participants too, because many of the challenges they struggle with are related to managing capacity – for themselves and for the people they support.
In fact, this topic also came up in a case study episode with Kim Porter because we had been talking about it with other coaches at the EARCOS Teachers Conference the year before.
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What do we mean by “mental load”?
In general, we’re talking about the usually invisible mental processing or managing that takes significant effort, but is not really noted or reflected in a job description. It’s the workload that others really don’t see, but it’s part of what makes us successful and effective as instructional coaches.
This topic comes up a lot when thinking about stay at home parents, and the extensive workload they carry, usually without payment or acknowledgement, one article from the BBC highlights three facets::
- cognitive labour – which is thinking about all the practical elements of household responsibilities, including organising playdates, shopping and planning activities.
- emotional labour, which is maintaining the family’s emotions; calming things down if the kids are acting up or worrying about how they are managing at school.
- the mental load is the intersection of the two: preparing, organising and anticipating everything, emotional and practical, that needs to get done to make life flow.
When you hear those three examples, I bet you can relate to those kinds of experiences as an instructional coach:
- Cognitive labor: thinking about all the different elements needed to make professional growth possible for so many different people at an individual level
- Emotional labor: consistently being a listening ear for educators who are often dealing with many stressful aspects of their job – meaning you are managing lots of emotions
- Mental load: managing all of those different elements together to keep professional growth moving forward.
The effect of a heavy “mental load”
When you have so much going on – and it’s all very “behind the scenes” in terms of your actual job description, this can add significant stress to your work.
And you might not even realize why.
You might find yourself…
- more tired than you would expect
- feeling like you’re not able to process new information
- struggling to take action
And you might even find yourself on the way to burnout
We’re sharing all of this because
- First, we want you to know that you’re not alone, and
- Second, we also want to unpack what this can look like so you can recognize it for yourself – and then take proactive action to help yourself.
The reality is, even though many instructional coaches are overachievers and want to be able to do all the things all the time, humans can only work with so much at a time
If you’ve ever had the experience of trying to learn another language – especially in an immersion setting – Think about how exhausting that is – even if you’re not doing anything physically exhausting!
For example, Diana once spent a month in Costa Rica to study Spanish. I was in class for full day & staying at a home with someone who only spoke Spanish, It was an amazing experience but I ended up physically exhausted at the end of the day even without any specific physical overload. You feel like you’re operating in slow motion because your brain can only process so much at one time
What it looks like in a coaching context
You might already be recognizing how this is affecting you as an instructional coach, but you might not have realized why.
You see, we usually define our work by our tasks or our roles, but we don’t always consider the mental effort, time and intention t it takes to be successful at those tasks.
For coaches, almost all of our work is filtered through another person – because we’re not in the classroom directly teaching students, the impact that we can have is indirect, because we’re working with the teacher to support their goals in improving student learning.
And of course, it’s not just teachers, coaches also work with leaders, parents, board members, teaching assistants, and support staff.
And in all of that work, it’s about relationships and being present.
Because we’re working primarily with individuals, they all have different goals, different stages of professional growth, and different needs.
This means we need to also be aware of their capacity, bandwidth or cognitive capacity.
How coaches can manage this with their colleagues
So, not only do coaches have to manage all the various tasks and responsibilities they have that are tangible and written in our job description.
We also need to keep in mind the cognitive load the people we work with are carrying
We need to be careful about…
- When we approach our coaching partners
- What and how much we share
- How we present a new idea or our support
Because we need to ensure our coaching partners have the capacity or bandwidth to be ready to learn, grow, and move forward.
And of course, we need to do the same with everyone we work with, including administrators.
We might want coaching to be their priority, but the reality is that they are overwhelmed with so many things, it’s not really fair to expect coaching to be the priority
So, as coaches, we’re keeping a huge number of variables in our minds, every time we interact with anyone else in the school community.
Because our work will only be successful if our relationships are.
Specifically, when we think about our work with teachers, we need to be aware of these aspects for teacher mental load:
- Awareness of the demands of the school at different times of the year (like report card season)
- How much teachers can take in at a time at certain times of the day – not overloading a professional learning session
- Understanding the dynamics of a team = being able to navigate a team conversation
- Student engagement in the classroom & what might be causing challenges
- Knowing your coaching partners well enough to know their life outside of school so you know when they might have capacity for something new
- Reluctance might not be disinterest, it might be a lack of capacity or bandwidth
What else might you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below!
If we’re unaware of these layers of our work, we can end up being reactive and focused on problem solving rather than being strategic and proactive (we have another video about shifting from reactive to proactive in your coaching role that we’ll link in the show notes for you).
We know that the structure of schools is likely not changing anytime soon, so, what can you do to help teachers who may be overloaded, that’s actually within your sphere of control?
You can relieve it and refocus:
- What are the priorities? What REALLY needs to happen?
- What can we take off their load / model
- How can we chunk things out or scaffold their learning?
- How can we make their goals more manageable?
- Are expectations and timelines realistic?
- Remind them that It’s ok to change the plan
It’s all interconnected – if you, as the coach, are struggling with overload, you can see how it may impact your effectiveness with teachers, and if the teachers are at capacity, they may struggle to support students.
So, given that we may be operating in a system that likely doesn’t take these factors into consideration, what can you, as a coach, do to try to manage this for yourself so you can be present for others?
How coaches can manage this for themselves
As coaches we can manage our own mental load by
- prioritizing for the person that we’re working with,
- prioritizing for our own self – what do we need to do to be present?
- prioritizing for the work that has to be done.
- creating boundaries for ourselves at home (maybe don’t do work after a certain time)
- What are our priorities – Revisit the goals
- Revisit our own expectations – are they realistic?
- When possible, Facilitating conversations with leadership about these challenges
On another episode of the podcast, Cindy Tisdel McPhee reminded us that “for people to opt in to work with a coach, the coach has to be present, the coach has to be available, the coach has to be perceived as being a person I can come to and they’re calm and collected and ready.” This is the space we’re trying to create for our coaching partners.
There’s no one right-way to manage all of these challenges, so the first step is being aware of why you might be feeling this way about your coaching partners and yourself. Hopefully this conversation has helped unpack why this could be happening and ways to address it – and a reminder that you are not alone!
YOU deserve support too!
So, to recap, we talked about:
- The hidden challenge of navigating your own, and others, capacity, bandwidth or cognitive load
- What this looks like in a coaching context
- How coaches can support their coaching partners in managing their own capacity, bandwidth or cognitive load
- How coaches can be aware and manage our own capacity, bandwidth or cognitive load
If this is something you’ve experienced, there’s a reason for it! If this is an area that you would like to explore more about, this is also part of the work Diana and I do with our clients in The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program, and in our private mentoring packages for coaches and educators. We’re here to support you too!
We’d love to hear about your experience – does this resonate with you? Have you experienced this? What’s worked (or not) for you? Let us know in the comments below! This is definitely an ongoing conversation, and we’ll be making more videos about similar topics, so let us know what might be valuable for you!
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Workshops for Instructional Coaches
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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.
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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!
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