Written by David Porritt, Director of Karen Ardley Associates

Over the last few years, we’ve been thinking about the opportunities and benefits that creating a culture of coaching brings to our schools. We’ve heard some amazing speakers at previous COBIS conferences and engaged in a range of workshops about the topic. But, despite this enthusiasm the use of coaching as a tool for professional growth it is still someway short of ubiquitous in schools.

But what is coaching anyway and does it actually help?

The working assumption that coaching practitioners make is that the coach requires knowledge and expertise in the coaching process, not the coachee's area of expertise. What coaches do is to utilise appropriate tools and coaching models, based on their ongoing assessment of the coachee’s needs, coupled to the topics the coachee brings to the coaching conversation. Consequently, the coach’s role is to focus on the coachee’s agenda, support the coachee’s self-actualisation, foster self-knowledge, develop fresh insight and fortify multiple pathways that lead to lasting, sustainable change.

As the coach and coachee develop a relationship of trust, the opportunity for a supportive but challenging conversation emerges. As a result, the coachee is able to move beyond their ‘current state of equilibrium’, in a place of safety, security and certainty. Here, in this safe space, the coachee can experience shifts in the perspectives they hold concerning context and self. Coaching works therefore, by being a process that supports coachee reflection on life experiences, and because the coachee’s engagement is with the self in a supported conversation, they have the opportunity to identify ways to take greater responsibility and ownership for their own actions, feeling and thoughts.

In my recently completed Doctoral research I wanted to understand more about the benefits coachees experience but also whether there were any benefits for colleagues and leaders who take on the role of coach? Was it all one-way traffic? Specifically, I wanted to explore the effect that being a coach has on school leaders’ leadership, learning, self-efficacy and professional agency. To undertake the research, I used Albert Bandura’s theories of self-efficacy and agency by exploring the coaching experiences of school leaders in International schools, many of whom work in schools in our COBIS network. Bandura is a psychologist who developed theories of learning that I must confess I had not previously explored. As a educator I found that they made sense to me, particularly given the nature of my research in social settings, which is where his theories of social modelling take place.

I found that leaders who become coaches and using the coaching skills they learn is one of the most powerful self-sustaining mechanisms they can adopt as leaders. I noticed, for example, that along with elevated levels of self-awareness, school leaders who coach experience the benefits of generativity, and increased knowledge, understanding and skills in coaching and leadership. Furthermore, school leaders who coach appear to develop increasingly patient listening, more profound reflexivity, increased abilities in posing resonant and relevant questions, enhanced attentiveness to others’ needs, greater empathy in building rapport and trust, and increase their own capacity to foster emotionally safe environments in which their colleagues can thrive.

Given that human flourishing is known to be a prerequisite of ones underlying ability to affect sustainable change and appears to be an outcome of becoming a coach – or at least adopting a coaching approach – coaching can, therefore, make a positive difference in our organisations. But, that’s not all. Becoming a coach has significant benefits for ourselves as leaders as we promote and foster change and improvement in our colleagues. Coaching, it turns out, contributes to the increased levels of self-efficacy belief which we experience in our professional lives and this increase in our self-efficaciousness acts as both a catalyst and a reinforcing mechanism for our agency.

David’s workshop at the COBIS conference will explore some of the reasons why coaching helps coachees, examine where it fits into a cycle of change and how using coaching as a tool to support change and the development of others appears to sustain leaders in their own leadership work. Don’t miss out – book your ticket here.