Category: Coaching

Create the Ideal Conditions for Coaching and Professional Growth

CoachingPublished onUpdated on7 Comments on Create the Ideal Conditions for Coaching and Professional Growth

In this post, I want to share some reflections about coaching and how we create the best possible conditions for professional growth.

Below I have shared nine different aspects of successful coaching that play a critical role. Many of these ideas also apply to quality learning experiences and might serve as powerful provocations to consider.

If you are after a planning guide to support your coaching programme – download a copy of my resource. All of the provocations and ideas in the post are included.

[joli-toc]

Choice

One of the downsides of the “roll out” of coaching or large scale implementations in schools and organisations are that it forces people to participate when they are not ready. When people make an active choice to participate, they signal they are ready for the challenge that coaching has to offer.

Our advocacy for coaching might mean we want everyone to have access to it. Which is entirely understandable; it can have a high impact. But, that does not mean it needs to be forced on anyone.

I imagine that many of you have had bad coaching experiences simply because it was something you had to do.

When you remove the choice, you also remove a fundamental aspect of self-awareness. This awareness is something everyone I coach has in common. Do you have similar reflections?

You reach a point where you want the challenge. The benefit from the accountability from coaching is clear.

Critically you choose to continue their professional learning, growth and development with coaching, nobody else.

Are you ready for the challenge of coaching? What dispositions signal you are ready?

Commitment to Coaching

In my opinion, coaching is different when it is short term. Long term commitment changes the dynamic of the experience. We work together to grapple with some of your most significant professional development challenges. This problem solving takes time.

Longer commitments also allow for trusting relationships to form and develop. I commit to you and your professional growth; you commit to coaching, the process and the regular sessions. We commit to the partnership needed for success.

Contracting

An extension to the idea of commitment, contracting is all about establishing the appropriate expectations and what coaching means for us both. During my coaching, this is done in a few simple ways.

Below I have listed some examples:

  1. We establish a medium-term or long-term commitment within the coaching partnership.
  2. It is all agreed within a formal written contract.
  3. Regular time is set aside every fortnight for coaching sessions. These are organised in advance.
  4. We agree to a set of protocols and expectations for each session which focuses on high-quality dialogue and collaboration.
  5. In the first session, we share ideas about the roles and responsibilities we have in our coaching partnership.

The Challenge of Coaching

In the first coaching session with me, we spend some time reflecting on a set of provocations I put to you in advance. One of the questions is, “What do you hope coaching will be?”. The most common response I have received is the hope that coaching ‘challenges me”.

Challenge is unique to everyone. You might be seeking an alternative perspective on the challenges you face in your leadership team. Or perhaps you want to increase your self-awareness to help you see your strengths and those traits that need your attention. The challenge might come from the mirror I hold up and the behaviours that I observe.

Whatever it is for you, coaching needs to be challenging. Yes, you want the safety of a trusting professional relationship. Of course, you want psychological safety to be able to share emerging ideas or perspectives. But you also will gain from an independent viewpoint and calm, honesty about your professional growth. You don’t need more platitudes about your success; you need supportive coaching to strive for your next step.

Sometimes that honesty can be uncomfortable and a little jarring, but you will know it is coming from a place of genuine support and commitment.

coaching two women sitting on a couch chatting
Photo by Cliff Booth on Pexels.com

Download a copy of my planning guide to support your coaching programme. All of the provocations and ideas in the post are included.

Coaching Consistency

New positive habits and behaviours are an essential outcome of coaching. We want to identify negative assumptions we are making, detrimental behaviours that we should reduce, and seek positive change. Consistency is key. Regular sessions that we both rely upon offer a safe and reliable structure to your professional growth.

I often look to regular one-hour coaching sessions every fortnight, which is an effective, consistent pattern for education clients. It allows enough time to apply the new ideas and mental models. Or to reflect and observe our regular daily practise as part of our coaching cycle.

It is not just about timing, though. We also rely upon the consistent expectations and the level of accountability that each coaching session has. I hold you to what you said you would act upon. Those small steps between each session are essential. That is, you get better, and they accumulate over six months or a year to significant change. We celebrate, debrief and explore those actions in a consistent way every session.

Coaching Conditions

We both play a role in creating the right conditions for quality dialogue to flourish. It is not just my job, and it is not just yours. There is a collective responsibility to contribute to the conditions for professional growth and dialogue that supports you.

Collective responsibility means different things for different people. For some of us, it is about focus and being present. To ensure a coaching session is not interrupted or compromised by competing agendas. For others, it is about remaining open to the challenge of learning and hearing another perspective. We both play a role in creating the ideal conditions for coaching dialogue and collaboration.

I often think of it as creating a space for you to step into. Step out of your daily routine into a world that operates under different conditions, an environment intentionally tuned to your needs. A space that is safe yet challenges you. A space that is trusting yet honest and direct. A coaching space that holds you accountable but also provokes new thinking and generates inspiration.

Cognitive Toolkit

Coaching creates the space to explore new cognitive tools. One of the main ways we do this is by focusing on a range of mental models and thinking structures during each session. These mental models provoke thinking and offer different perspectives to the challenges we explore together.

A key goal of my coaching is to help you develop your cognitive toolkit. I am equipping you with a more diverse set of mental models you can use to navigate your face challenges. At the end of each session, we stop and reflect on the mental models we have referenced or used together.

Collaborate

If we are in a coaching partnership, it is highly collaborative. We create something together. That “something” is new ideas, new thinking, perspectives, solutions and potential paths that support your professional growth.

That is an excellent question. I have some ideas already, but before I share them, what do you think?

I use an expectation that we are both ready to generate, share, and explore new ideas without judgment. When we lose track of where the ideas come from or start a train of thought, we know we are exploring in a dialogic way – a collaboration.

Dialogue and Coaching

Ultimately everything contributes to the quality of dialogue that we share. [I also wanted to break the “everything starts with a C”] This is something I actively pursue when coaching. I strive to create the conditions where we share ideas, questions, thoughts and ponderings – where we make new meaning together through talk.

Dialogue aligns with creativity. Through our talk, we create new, original ideas that have value to your professional practice. When we are free to express ourselves in this way, we move away from analysing the problem or feeling isolated to resolve it, we collaborate and develop new ideas.

I coach teachers and school leaders across Australia. It is always a privilege to be a coach and a vital member of a professional support network.

If you are interested in finding out more about how I could support your professional growth with coaching, I have a few places available; please email me at tom@dialogiclearning.com.

Download a free Coaching Planner

To conclude this article on the Conditions for effective coaching, download my planning template and kickstart your programme design. Simply use the form below.

How to Build Better Relationships

Coaching, Dialogue, Featured, Leadership, LearningPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on How to Build Better Relationships

I stumbled on this post from Jamie Portman about building better relationships. He, in turn, was re-sharing a document from L30 Relational Systems that outlines 33 ideas to think about when valuing relationships.

Jamie shared a couple of ideas that resonated and thought I would do the same. Here is what sticks out to me.

11. The language we use creates the reality we experience + 12. The language we use to describe an experience often becomes the experience.

 I am always conscious of the language that we are using. It can make ideas accessible to everyone or put up a barrier. Paying attention to the different types of language we use and how much of it is shared is an essential step towards changing a culture.

Watch your thoughts
Original words by Frank Outlaw – Image by Lori Deschene

27. Most people don’t listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply (Covey)

This is from Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You can see an excerpt here where he talks about empathic listening.

When another person speaks, we’re usually “listening” at one of four levels. We may be ignoring another person, not really listening at all. We may practice pretending. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Right.” We may practice selective listening, hearing only certain parts of the conversation. We often do this when we’re listening to the constant chatter of a preschool child. Or we may even practice attentive listening, paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said. But very few of us ever practice the fifth level, the highest form of listening, empathic listening.

An excerpt from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) by Stephen R. Covey.

Empathic listening is something we can all get better at. I have from continual practice – centre on the speaker, active presenteeism, use their words back to them.

28. Speak only if it improves the silence (Gandhi)

We have so few opportunities to reflect and think in our busy lives. Thinking time is a scarce commodity – especially in discussion and dialogue. I try and build in individual thinking time to most developmental activities ahead of group sharing – it always helps.

Another robust protocol inline with this is the idea of WAIT or Why Am I Talking? A potent reminder about the value we may or may not be adding to the talk.

One of my favourite maxims and something I wrote down when I started Dialogic Learning is to 

“Listen twice as much as you talk.”

One of the strengths of this and the Why Am I Talking? protocol is that it encourages us to carefully reflect on what we are sharing and think about our thinking.

Any habits and protocols that encourage us to slow down a little are precious at improving the quality of our dialogue and discussion — in turn, improving the quality of our relationships.

18. There are always three truths, my truth, your truth and the truth

When I read this, I think about the time I have considered someone else’s perspective or attempted to challenge assumptions about the way things are. Seeking a shared truth is so important in relationships.

I might consider an idea relatively non-threatening, but someone else will bring their lense and bias to it – perhaps feeling anxiety and fear. 

Their perception is their truth.

This connects with our need to increase our empathy quotient (another type of EQ, perhaps) if we are to build better relationships. First of all, we have to be aware that the person we are with sees what we see differently. Then perhaps we can find a way to share the truth with them.

When we see the world through the power of relationships it:

allows us to see the people around us not as enemies or as mere instruments to our success, but as allies in our journey. We are human beings, not “human resources”.

Paolo Gallo – Why positive relationships at work matter more than you think

Have a look at the full list and let me know in the comments below, what resonates with you the most.

Featured image by Andrea Tummons

Practised Non-Judgementalism

Coaching, DialoguePublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Practised Non-Judgementalism

Last year I spent time with Dr Neil Hopkin the Principal of The British International School in Shanghai.

Within a plethora of expertise, he has been coaching for decades and I got the chance to absorb some wisdom about his approach to coaching. This is an area of continued growth for me, as I start to wrap some solid ideas around years of experience.

Neil spoke about the imperative of “practised non-judgmentalism” and how a coach uses this as the basis for their disposition. This resonated strongly with me and has been a phrase I keep coming back to.

It is always a privilege to be in a coaching space with teams or individuals. The idea of practised non-judgmentalism signals to me the importance of taking an open disposition to what you might experience together.

If I were to pre-empt an idea or a course of action, or to offer a judgement too soon, that might close off a story or a trail of thought. There is a strong association between judgement and closure.

But if my demeanour and default disposition are non-judgmental than we remain open to potential ideas, we stay open to new pathways and we allow stories to be shared more freely.

Another benefit for the listener in taking this approach is clarity. It would be clear what I would have to do. I would sit with you and simply focus my effort on understanding and listening. My energy and thoughts are not taken up grappling with a judgement – as that imposes on your story.

I think this benefits from being intentional, explicitly stated and practised. Our brains will naturally drift to judgement if we don’t.

The reason non-judgment is used is because left alone, the brain will automatically judge things as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, important or unimportant, urgent or non-urgent and so on. This happens so fast that our experiences are automatically colored right when we get to them, so mindfulness is about being aware of that and taking a fresh perspective.

(Taken from What Is Non-Judgmental Awareness, Anyway? by Elisha Goldstein)

Another benefit is that this approach, practised non-judgmentalism, requires us to also practise being present. We cannot be drawn to other things, we focus on the interaction we are in and our own listening.

#28daysofwriting

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash