I saw how much this principal worked, how hard she tried; my heart softened. “Of course,” I said. “I can help you identify the things you are doing which are leading toward your goals. I see a lot of things you're doing well. I can share my observations with you.” I am grateful that this principal called my attention to this; I became much more effective with her when I coached from a supportive stance. Furthermore, once she felt supported I was able to use other approaches that deepened our coaching work.
Coaches often witness clients go through painful realizations, take huge risks and sometimes fail, and make difficult changes to their behaviors. From the supportive stance we provide confirmation, offer encouragement, and help our client maintain focus and motivation. We intend to build the client's self-esteem and self-confidence, help clients notice and experience their moments of success, and encourage risk-taking to promote further learning.
This is a critical role for a coach to play. It's not just about making another person feel good about himself (which is valid in its own right) but also about helping the client see all the micromovements toward meeting the goals he laid out in the work plan. Most likely, they are happening regularly but it is very hard to see daily growth because it's often so small. Our job as coaches is to identify all the little positive behavioral changes and draw attention to them. By acknowledging the behaviors that will lead to large-scale success, there is more of a likelihood that the client will repeat those behaviors.
The coach's main role deals with expanding the ability to see contexts, rather than supplying content. The person being coached then sees new ways to utilize existing skills.
Julio Olalla (Bloom, Castagna, Warren, and Moir, 2005, p. 4)
For this reason, when we make supportive comments, we must be very specific. For example, rather than saying, “You did great leading that meeting!” a coach might say, “The opening activity you led got everyone involved and grounded. They were all talking to each other as you'd asked. You closed that activity and reviewed the agenda for the afternoon and everyone was looking at you; many were nodding their heads … These are all indicators that you're on the path toward meeting your goals. How did it feel to you?”
Supportive questions or statements sound like the following:
noticed how when you … the students really … (To identify something that worked and why)
It sounds like you have a number of ideas to try out! It'll be exciting to see which works best for you!
What did you do to make the lesson so successful?
I'm interested in learning (or hearing) more about …
Your commitment is really inspiring to me.
It sounds like you handled that in a very confident way.
You did a great job at that meeting when you …
I'm confident that you'll be successful.
Tips for Using a Supportive Approach
Be authentic.
Be specific.
Highlight micromovements of growth.
Common Challenges and Helpful Responses
Challenge: My client is always emotionally distraught and wants me to be a therapist. We can't get to the work.
The Lens of Emotional Intelligence. There's a fine line that a coach needs to explore—that between supporting the client to release emotions and moving into the work of creating the future, which is the point of coaching. The tricky thing is that no teacher can analyze student work immediately after emerging from an emotionally draining day. It's not unusual for coaches to think, “Wait. I'm not a therapist!” as a client talks and talks.
You might start by considering whether the issues raised by the client are ones that should be addressed by a therapist. Sometimes when we're asking confronting or cathartic questions, painful life experiences might come up. It is important that if they do, or if we think that our client could benefit from mental health attention we address it.
We also need to consider whether the conversation is actually releasing emotions. What is being said? Is it complaining and venting? Is the client trying to sort through her feelings? Is she looking for your sympathy? A coach can say that releasing emotions is useful and guide the client to notice and name the feelings and find a way for them to sit on the side while we get into the work that will help the client meet her goals.
It can be useful to set up some agreements with a client who tends to need time for processing emotions. You can get to this by sharing your observation that a lot of time seems to be spent on the emotional experiences and you're wondering about how the client will meet her goals. Does she want to agree, for example, to spend a set amount of time, say fifteen minutes, each week “releasing emotions” and then getting into the work?
While we can try to make agreements with our client, and we can try to structure our conversation so that we're supporting our client to release emotions, we may have clients who seem to use us as a therapist. As long as they aren't experiencing serious mental health issues, we also need to be OK with this. If this is where our client is at, then we need to accept her.
I'm surprised by how many times I've told myself: You need to just be OK with wherever she's at, accept her and don't make her wrong—and with time, my client has moved into a reflective, open, and transformational learning place. However, I've later recognized that had I not allowed her to move on her timeframe, she might not have moved at all.
Challenge: The teacher I'm coaching just wants me to give her positive feedback. She whines about how everyone is so critical of her teaching and just wants me to tell her things she's done well. Am I really just supposed to stroke her ego?
The Lens of Emotional Intelligence and the Lens of Adult Learning. Maybe you'll need to just give her positive feedback for a while. What's wrong with that anyway? If your client is in a place where she feels under attack, unappreciated, and insecure, then that's where she's at. You're not going to get any traction if you start sounding like her critics. So give her authentic positive feedback and help her expand the areas where she's effective. These are the kinds of supportive interventions that she is asking for and needs—trust her.
At some point, once she's developed some trust in you, she'll be ready to expand her reflective capacities. All people want to get better at whatever they're doing—if you don't see this, or it takes a long time to see this, it's because there's a really hurt, scared person in front of you. Be patient and kind. Keep your eye open for entry points and indicators that she might be ready to reflect on areas for growth, but don't push.
The challenge for coaches in schools is that we're always straddling two realities: our clients have their own histories, experiences, needs, challenges and issues. We have to meet them where they're at and the going can be slow. On the other side is the daily reality that our students experience: the children in our education system need reflective educators who are ready and willing to grow and meet their needs. As painful as it can be for coaches to recognize this discrepancy between current realities, it is what it is. We will only make it worse by forcing our adults to move where they're not yet ready or able to move. We really have no choice but to meet people where they are and trudge onwards, keeping the faith that we can move.
Chapter 10
Facilitative Coaching Activities
Read this when:
You've had many conversations with your client and you feel like you should do something with him
Your client responds well to facilitative coaching conversations and you want to engage her in activities that will continue to help her learn
You want to engage your client in activities that might release emotions
Engaging Clients in Learning Activities
If you asked a hundred educators who have never worked with a coach what they think a coach does, the majority will say something along the lines of: “A coach observes a teacher delivering instruction and gives her feedback.” Some might add that a coach helps a teacher plan lessons or lends a sympathetic ear when times ar
e rough. This image of a coach is not wrong, it's just limited. There are many things that a coach working in schools can do with a client. This chapter begins to explore some of these learning activities (Chapter Twelve also suggests coaching activities).
How might a coach determine which activity to engage a client in? So much of coaching is done in our heads: it is an invisible process by which we consider a pile of information through a number of frameworks, stay focused on the end goal, and take into account our current reality. When we suspect that by engaging our client in a learning activity she might move closer to her goals, then we can suggest an activity and discuss what the client might gain from it. Other times a client might put forth an idea: “I really want to observe another teacher,” or “It would help if you could model the lesson.” In these moments, we welcome the initiative and discuss what she might gain; we want to make sure that the activity will align with the goals, and furthermore, that the client has the skills, abilities, and capacities necessary to engage in it. Everything done in coaching needs to be intentional.
Scaffolding the Learning
Early in my experience coaching school leaders, I felt frustrated with Isabel, a principal I was assigned to coach. I debriefed these challenges with Kristina, my manager and a master coach. “She has set some realistic goals that could impact her school deeply,” I said, “but she can't seem to do anything to get there. She says she wants to do data conferences, but then she does them and they're a disaster. She wanted to do a professional development (PD) session with teachers on formative assessment, but she was unprepared and didn't seem to know what she was talking about. I don't know what to do with her!”
Kristina listened carefully and then started doodling all over her notepad. “You have to create a scaffold,” she said as she drew a building under construction and a scaffold along the side. “Huh?” I said. “She's building a new skill set,” Kristina explained. “It's your job to build the scaffold, take apart the skill set into manageable pieces and help her acquire each one. Then you need to gradually release the responsibility. When the building is done, the scaffold comes down.”
This notion, I realized, had been the missing element in my coaching. I had neglected to break down the learning that my clients needed to do, to build a scaffold alongside their emerging skills, or to intentionally design a plan for the gradual release of responsibility. Seeing Kristina's scribbled sketch prompted an epiphany that transformed my coaching.
In Chapter Seven, I described the stage of the work plan where a coach needs to think through the scaffold she'll construct for her client. The coach applies her knowledge of the skill set that her client wants to build and needs to identify the chunks of learning that the client needs to do. With each chunk, the coach needs to consider where the client's skills are at the time—she needs to know where the client lies in relation to where she wants to go and what her zone of proximal development is. What I realized was that with Isabel, I was often coaching outside of her ZPD and I hadn't articulated the continuum of learning and skill development that would lead her to reach her goals.
When we're engaging clients in learning activities such as those described in this chapter and Chapter Twelve, we need to apply this framework: we need to have articulated the sequence of skills—to “chunk” the learning, we need to have a strong understanding of her ZPD, and we need to have a plan for the gradual release of responsibility. It is within this framework that we identify the coaching activities that will move our client's learning.
Facilitative Coaching Activities
I've divided up coaching activities by whether they are facilitative in nature—they pull the client toward learning, or directive—the coach pushes the client toward learning. To some extent, this is a false distinction because all coaching activities can be experienced as facilitative and/or directive, but many activities fall more on one or another side of this divide. It's useful for a coach to think about activities in this way in order to be aware of whether she's falling into a comfort zone of activities. For example, I love doing role-plays with clients but need to be mindful that I'm also engaging clients in activities that allow them to get more direct and concrete feedback. The following activities are not listed in any particular order.
Visualization and Guided Imagery
Administrators: visualization is a powerful exercise to engage a staff in at the start of a school year.
Visualization and guided imagery are powerful tools to engage adults and children in learning. There is growing research on the way that visualization actually changes brain chemistry to make us happier and even healthier. Guided imagery can help people gain insight into an issue, shift their thinking and perspective, deepen and anchor their learning, feel more empowered, increase their motivation, and change their target behavior (Schwarz and Davidson, 2008, p. 133). What we imagine, we can bring to fruition, and imagining is inspiring and motivating.
In Chapter Eleven, I describe Daniela, a principal who wanted her staff's respect, but was afraid to stand in front of them during meetings. When she shared this with me, I suggested we try a guided imagery exercise. She agreed and after leading her through a short relaxation exercise, I guided her in imagining a different scenario than the one that was her current reality. “Imagine yourself walking into a staff meeting,” I said, “and standing in front of your teachers. They are looking at you, several are smiling slightly. You are feeling calm, confident, and self-assured. You know exactly what you'll say, you look around the room and make eye contact with each one. They are listening to you, their complete attention is on you. As you explain the day's agenda, you see heads nodding. You are standing tall and you feel powerful.” I continued guiding this imagery, and then, while she still experienced the image with her eyes closed, I asked her to describe how she felt—physically and emotionally.
When she opened her eyes, she burst into tears. “That's what I want it to be like,” she said. “I want to feel like that every week, not small and scared like now.” Reflecting on the guided imagery exercise, the principal noted that it had been like watching a movie in her mind, but that now that she'd seen this possibility somewhere—even just in her mind—she felt one step closer to the reality. “But it'll probably be years before I can actually do that,” she said. However, only three weeks later, after a couple of role-plays and other coaching activities, this principal walked into a staff meeting and spoke to her teachers from the front and center. The result was as she'd envisioned—the staff gave her their complete attention, she spoke clearly and concisely, she smiled and looked at everyone.
Visualization exercises can also be used with an entire staff. They are particularly helpful to envision a change that a group of people want to make. Visualizations are distinct from guided imagery as they are more facilitative in nature. The prompt might be: “Imagine yourself walking into your classroom next year. What does it look like? What do you see? Where are you when the students arrive? How do you interact with them? What do they say to you?” Whereas guided imagery is directed by the coach, for example: “I want you to imagine that your students are arriving and you greet each one by name and smile at each one.” Both approaches can be very useful. Deciding which will most help a client learn is another moment when the coach uses her judgment.
Visualization draws on the imagination and the senses, which is where the deepest learning takes place. Naparstek, a noted researcher in this field informs us that, “Imagery works because the body doesn't altogether distinguish between images and real events” (Naparstek, 1994, p. 209). When we guide someone through a mental experience, when they can see themselves in their mind's eye accomplishing a goal, parts of their body feel that they've already done it. When they move into the physical reality and need to accomplish the same task, it's already been done once before—even only in the imagination.
Guided imagery exercises can be found online and on my website.
Role-Playing
Administrators:
role-playing can be done by teachers when exploring how to address issues that arise with students or parents.
Role-playing is similar to what many of us do when we call a friend and talk something over—we practice, play with the words and build our confidence. We encourage our clients to have scary, honest, and courageous conversations, but we want to make sure they can have them successfully. Role-playing gives clients an opportunity to test their skills in a safe environment before attempting them elsewhere.
I often suggest a role-play when a client speaks about an interaction that didn't reach the outcomes he had hoped. Perhaps it went poorly, or he lost his nerve, or he felt that the recipient didn't hear what he'd really wanted to say. “Let's role-play!” I say, enthusiastically. I love role-plays.
First, we identify the situation to address, as well as the skills the client would like to practice. I always ask the client what role he would like me to play: “Do you want to be the teacher and I can be the parent, or the other way around? What would help you most?” Usually I play the “other person” so that the client can practice the skills he's developing but sometimes it can help for the client to see a coach model the skills. We can also enact the same role-play a few times, alternating roles, and revising and refining what we've said.
Before role-playing, we make agreements about when and how often the client will get feedback. “We can go for eight minutes and then stop and reflect, or we can stop after each time you say something, or we can go until you feel stuck and then discuss the role-play. What would you like to try?” Generally, don't role-play for more than ten minutes—it's too long.
The Art of Coaching Page 22