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:
- We establish a medium-term or long-term commitment within the coaching partnership.
- It is all agreed within a formal written contract.
- Regular time is set aside every fortnight for coaching sessions. These are organised in advance.
- We agree to a set of protocols and expectations for each session which focuses on high-quality dialogue and collaboration.
- 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.
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.
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To conclude this article on the Conditions for effective coaching, download my planning template and kickstart your programme design. Simply use the form below.
Yeah, such good words! I agree with every word
Sovereignty is everything for me in a coaching relationship. Choosing to be there as an active and willing contributor.
Willingness to do the work, including the hard things
Clarity through dialogue and contemplation, including what to do when you have no clue at all (embracing the dissonance of this)
Designing for the skids. What to when the wheels come? Practicing compassion
Defining clear boundaries to prevent energy leaks.
Would add a layer to the cognitive toolkit by working on developing intuition and embodied cognition.
Coaching is about transformation. Transitioning between form and dialogue is alchemical in that aspect if the crucible of dialogue is rock solid. Clear boundaries need to be defined to prevent energy leaks.
You have covered most of this above.
Thanks Richard for taking the time to comment on the blog – it feels a bit nostalgic to have people commenting on my blog post!
Yes to adaptation. I would also consider this to be an established principle of a successful approach – perhaps we might describe it as responsive coaching. There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than jumping through the acronymic hoops of a coaching template or script, in total disregard for the situation.
I want to have just enough structure to rely upon and commit to, but the freedom to drop it all and deal with what is in front of me. A coaching collaboration benefits from that sort of responsiveness. We have to see and accept people for where they are, not through a fixed lens or process.
Thanks for the comment Lisa – yes ownership is critical. How have you been involved in coaching?
Hi Tom, I really enjoyed reading this blog. I like how you gently reference the importance of making the active choice to participate. I agree that the purpose of coaching is for it to be collaborative and that the coachee ultimately has ownership of the discussion. As always, you are adept at nailing the key points you would like to get across! I will be saving this one in my favourites
Tom – love the 6 C’s and a D! I would add an ‘A’ for Adaptation. I particularly liked the attention you pay to coercion – frocing people to participate. Coercion dogs so much education, and can prevent an authentic learning culture from developing. In my PhD supervision, which I would claim is coaching, I help students make a detailed, calculated, spreadsheet plan from first steps to champagne, using SMART targets. But how are they to judge what is achievable when they are inexperienced? How can they respond to changing life circumstances? How long does it take to collect data, analyse results, write a chapter? So I assure them from the outset that when we meet, we will record how long it is taking and review all the dates in the plan – the spreadsheet helps to see the impact in changes arising from current tasks or from re-estimated targets as the whole problem becomes clearer. This feedback loop is the kind of adaptation I mean – based on dialogue and agreement with me at regular intervals. But the adaptation isn’t just about time estimates, it is also about scope and direction – if the whole thing looks like exceeding the university’s time limits, we can change the study. I believe that adaptation like this, from the outset, is reassuring and allows students to take risks. Not everyone takes to it, but some do.