The Art of Coaching

by Elena Aguilar

  “James, could I ask you something?” I said when we were sitting back in his office. “I'm wondering what it's like for you, as an African American man, to see this suspension data and those three boys sitting in the corner. What does that feel like?”

  James dropped his head into his hands. He was silent for several minutes and then looked up at me, his eyes wet. “I think if I go into the feelings I might not come out. I might not be able to do my job. Those boys are me, my brothers, my dad, my childhood friends. I feel powerless. I'd rather just focus on vocabulary instruction.”

  “I hear the pain you're in,” I said. “I see it in your face when we go into those classrooms.”

  “It eats away at me,” he said. “But what can I do?”

  “You say you'd rather focus on instruction, but you can't. You're focused on the ways teachers interact with their students and you mull over this suspension data for hours, as you should. You're right—those kids can't learn if they're constantly being kicked out of class. I think you might want to do something.”

  For the following five months, James shifted the school's focus to explore teacher-student relationships, ways of managing behavior, and alternatives to suspension. While he acknowledged emotions that he wanted to work out, our coaching focused on his responses as a leader to the data he was gathering. What he needed from me as a coach was not to help him process the feelings, but to have listened deeply, collecting his stories along the way, and then to raise the emotional experience as one that may have been blocking him from taking action that would make a significant difference. Simply by bringing that to the surface, James was able to take action in a way that was empowered and clear and that allowed him to be effective.

  Listening as a Vehicle for Whole-School Transformation

  Margaret Wheatley is a visionary leader, writer, and activist whose work deeply moves me. In her book Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future (2009), she encourages us to take the time to sit together, listen to each other, worry, and dream together. She calls on us to talk to people we know, those we don't know, and those we never talk to.

  I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again … Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard, and we each listen well.

  Margaret Wheatley (2009, p. 7)

  There are many people working in our education system who have suffered—both as adults and children. In order for us to move forward, many wounds need healing. Wheatley suggests that being heard is deeply healing, because listening creates relationships: “Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation always causes more suffering” (2009, p. 94).

  Think about the school where you work: Which groups of people have not been heard, perhaps ever? As coaches, we are uniquely positioned to bring listening into our schools as a vehicle for transformation. First, we need to refine our own abilities to listen, then we can invite others in to be heard. Frequently, when our clients experience deep listening and the kind of reflection and change that is possible as a result, they are inspired to create a similar experience for those with whom they work. We can coach individuals to listen to others—to listen to their students, to parents, and to colleagues. We can also create conditions within organizations and teams for people to speak and be heard; coaches can facilitate this process. This is why listening is the core, elemental, foundational skill for a coach to practice: with this skill, we can connect with others and foster healing and transformation.

  Using Dyads to Practice Listening

  Administrators: dyads can have a powerful impact on people's work together. They can be used to open meetings, to help educators integrate what they hear in meetings, and to close and reflect on meetings.

  Teachers and administrators often ask me to share tips on how to listen well; they suspect that the communication techniques I use in coaching could be very useful in their work as leaders. This request for support moves us into the stage of the coaching dance where we are instructive and learning alongside our client. I share lists of question stems and language that can reflect listening, we practice these in role-plays, and I observe their conversations and give them feedback on their listening.

  In addition to coaching individuals, coaches in schools often work with teams of teachers, administrators, and staff. Sometimes coaches are asked to lead or facilitate this work, giving us an opportunity to directly affect how a group of individuals interact with each other. If we are invited into the process in this way, we can introduce listening structures that can become routines for a team—this establishes the possibility of making sustainable change.

  Dyads are a listening structure that is fairly easy to set up, takes minimal time, and can yield profound results. Dyads are a form of “constructivist listening,” a kind of listening described by professor Julian Weissglass in which the speaker constructs his own understandings of self and emotions. Weissglass insists that schools must attend to the feelings of the adults who work in them—that without helping teachers, administrators, and parents work through their feelings about education and change, we won't make the kinds of changes we are striving for (1990, p. 352).

  A dyad is a formal structure in which two people take turns agreeing to listen to each other for a fixed amount of time. The talker has the opportunity to talk about her feelings, thoughts, and experiences; the listener does not interrupt, paraphrase, analyze, give advice, or break in with his own stories. The premise is that people can solve their own problems, and the role of a listener is to hold a space for that to happen. Often a facilitator will offer a prompt for the dyad, but the time belongs to the speaker, so the speaker can go off topic if she pleases.

  Another essential element in a dyad is confidentiality. The listener does not talk about what she has heard, ever—not with other people nor with the speaker herself, because feelings change, and we might feel different about what we say five minutes after we say it. What is said stays encapsulated within that moment of time and space.

  Dyads can be a part of a regular team meeting, often placed at the beginning of a meeting to allow participants to process anything they are coming in with and transition to the intended work. A two- or three-minute dyad can be effective at doing this, and it takes very little time. While the primary purpose for a dyad is to create some space for someone to speak and be heard, they also serve to bring people together as we listen to each other. Dyads are a fairly easy structure for coaches to implement in the schools they work in. However, to make them truly effective, I highly recommend reading the work of Julian Weissglass. Dyads are just one of a number of structures that he suggests can help groups of people listen to each other. More information about dyads can be found online and on my website.

  Questioning in Transformational Coaching

  Some coaching models offer lists of questions that coaches can use. Lists of questions are useful, and you'll find some in Appendix B of this book, but they must be used intentionally and with awareness. A coach needs to know when to use a particular kind of question and when another would be more appropriate or effective. Questions are technical tools; the art of coaching is about applying judgment and discretion and about making intentional decisions after careful listening and analysis. Chapters Nine and Eleven explore different kinds of conversational and questioning approaches, but first, here is a quick overview of clarifying and probing questions, the two most general categories of questions that we use.

  Clarifying Questions

  Clarifying questions elicit details, specifics, clarification, or examples. A coach can ask clarifying questions for different purposes. First, consider who needs clarity. Does the coach need more information so that she can understand a situation that the client is describing? Would the information help her determine the appropriate stance to take? Or is the purpose of asking a clarifying question to provoke t
he client to articulate an event, his thinking, or his experience? It's important to consider who needs the clarity, because often when a coach wants to ask a clarifying question, it's for her own purpose. Sometimes this is critical; other times it's not necessary. For example, if a client is describing a painful experience and his emotions are tumbling out and he's talking in a nonlinear way, a coach shouldn't interrupt with a question like, “How many people did you say were in the room again?” As with everything else that a coach says, we want to be intentional with our clarifying questions.

  Clarifying Questions

  Would you tell me a little more about … ?

  Let me see if I understand …

  I'd be interested in hearing more about …

  It would help me understand if you'd give me an example of …

  So, are you saying (or suggesting) that … ?

  Tell me what you mean when you …

  Tell me how that idea is like (or different from) …

  To what extent were you … ?

  I'm curious to know more about …

  I'm intrigued by … I'm interested in … I wonder …

  When did this happen? Where were you? How long did it take? Who was there?

  As you read over these questions, perhaps you thought some of them were of the “probing” variety or that they suggested an interest in more than just factual information. Questions can be offered and received in different ways.

  Probing Questions

  The purpose of asking a probing question is to help a client uncover thinking or beliefs—not necessarily to find an immediate answer or solution. The great majority of the questions we ask in coaching should be probing questions, given that, at its broadest, our work is to help another person deepen reflective capacities and become more self-aware. Therefore, a probing question is for the client, not the coach.

  A probing question also should never contain a hidden suggestion that we want our client to get to. For example, let's say you observed your teacher-client deliver a lesson that left many students confused. Perhaps, given your instructional expertise, you suspect that the reason for the confusion was the teacher's directions. They were rushed, only communicated orally, and she didn't check for understanding. You might be tempted to say, “I think they were lost because you …” But that would be handing the answers directly to the teacher, and she could shut down because she's being told what she did wrong, and this isn't coaching. So perhaps you frame a question such as, “What did you notice about the way you gave directions?” This is a leading-probing question, a question that is directing the teacher toward the answer you think she should give.

  Perhaps this dilemma could be explored by starting with a question like, “What did you hope would happen in today's lesson?” And then, “Tell me about what actually happened from your perspective?” And then, “What do you think your students understood about what you expected to happen?” And perhaps finally, if the teacher doesn't get here by herself, “Can you describe how you expressed your expectations for this lesson? What did you notice about how your students understood those directions?”

  Probing questions take many different forms. Chapters Nine and Eleven explore how probing questions can be framed through different coaching stances.

  As coaches pay more attention to our questioning strategies, we might notice that some of our questions don't yield the kinds of responses we hope for: some could even be “questioning mistakes,” as coach and author Tony Stoltzfus (2008) describes. If we ask too many why questions, we can make a client feel defensive. At times we may ask rambling questions, layering one question on top of another as we work through the phrasing. Or we might become aware that we interrupt clients and try to finish their thoughts. A description of common questioning mistakes and how to address them is available on my website.

  Common Challenges and Helpful Responses

  Challenge: When I'm coaching, my head starts swimming with all this information about questioning and listening. The client stops talking and I don't know what to say. I can't figure out the right response.

  Lens of Adult Learning. As a new coach, I experienced this kind of thing often. There'd be long awkward pauses as I tried to figure out the best question to ask and the conversation stalled. What we need to learn is that there's no perfect question. Find a couple of prompts that feel comfortable and keep moving the conversation forward: “Tell me more” usually works. You'll also want to find coach-colleagues with whom you can role-play coaching conversations. This dilemma surfaces your learning needs.

  Challenge: Sometimes a client says something that I really disagree with or that I find offensive. Then I don't want to paraphrase or ask probing questions; I just want to say what I think. Is this ever OK for me to do?

  Lens of Emotional Intelligence. Looking through the lens of emotional intelligence, you might consider how “just saying what you think” will affect the relationship with your client, how you can manage your own uncomfortable emotions, and how you try to appeal to a listener. From your position as a coach, if you just speak your truth, how will the client receive it? What possibilities could close down because you've moved out of the coaching role and into that of an individual? What's the point of just saying what you think? Are you wanting the client to agree with you and see what you're saying, or perhaps are you wanting to shut your client down?

  As coaches, we often hear disturbing opinions. Because we show up as nonjudgmental listeners, people share all kinds of thoughts and feelings. We have to learn how to manage the emotions that come up for us and then learn skillful ways to respond.

  I coached a principal who, after getting to know and trust me, shared her feelings about the growing Arab community in her school. “I don't like anything about them,” she confessed as she launched into a tirade against their religious practices, the way they dress, how they treat women, their attitudes about school, even the way they smelled. “And how do I know they aren't forming terrorist cells right here in Oakland?” she concluded.

  I was shocked and offended, but I recognized that I could affect her thinking only if I stayed engaged in my stance as a coach in the conversation she'd opened. I decided to see what could happen if I used an inquiry lens. First, I asked for permission: “Would it be OK if we explored some of these feelings?” She agreed. I used a lot of sentence prompts that began with “I'm curious about … ? Can you tell me more about … ? What led you to believe that? How did you learn about … ? What might be another way to look at …? ” We also discussed what the effect had been for her when other people held certain beliefs about her gender and ethnicity. We spent months unraveling these beliefs—the principal repeatedly made provocative statements, which I suspected was her way of initiating a conversation that she wanted to have. I chose to believe that underneath her bigotry was fear, misunderstanding, and a good, caring person who wanted to sort out these feelings.

  As we explored her beliefs, I invited her to learn more about the Arab community. I looked for every possible entry point to help her find connections and appreciation—I knew she liked lamb, for example, so we ate at a local Yemeni restaurant that was owned by parents of her students. She loved the meal and admitted that she'd never tried their food. We read a biography of a female Muslim activist to get insight on women's experience in that culture. At the end of the year, I coached the principal in hosting an event for the Arab community to share their stories and culture because the tension and misunderstandings between different cultural groups was increasing throughout the neighborhood. As dozens of parents from all ethnicities thanked her for organizing the evening, she turned to me and said, “I know I had some prejudices about the Arabs, but I think I'm changing. Thanks for being patient with me.”

  There had been numerous times when this principal had made statements that I wanted to shoot down, but I knew that I had to stay in a coaching relationship with her to have any hope of helping her grow. This is a common dilemma that coaches face, but it
also presents an opportunity that may not open elsewhere when a coach can learn to manage her emotions and find ways to engage in conversations that can shift beliefs.

  Chapter 9

  Facilitative Coaching Conversations

  Read this when:

  You need strategies to gently elicit a client's thinking or help a client release emotions

  You feel stuck in your coaching and want different ways of engaging in conversation with a client

  Coaching Conversations

  When I first started coaching, I had a hard time describing what I did with clients. “We just talk,” I'd say, “Mostly, we have conversations.” While it's true that coaching happens in conversations, there's a lot that's gone on in order to arrive at the conversation, a lot that a coach does during the conversation, and a lot to do after a conversation. For a coach, the conversations themselves can be cognitively, emotionally, and even physically exhausting, because a lot happens in conversation. As our intention is to impact behavior, beliefs, and being, it is our job to artfully guide a coaching conversation in a way that produces results in these areas. It is at this point, during a conversation, that we'll apply different kinds of questioning strategies. Chapters Nine and Eleven deconstruct the coaching conversation in order to illuminate the dozens of moves that a coach makes when in dialogue with a client.