How do school and college leaders implement coaching successfully?
I had the privilege this week of returning to a further education setting to work with the college leaders. Again, our focus was on embedding coaching strategies across the team before considering sharing the concepts and methods with the wider staff population.
Developing 'coaching' as a strategy ...
This group of leaders have really embraced coaching as a way forward and is on a trajectory toward implementing a coaching culture throughout the organisation. It was fantastic to see them uncovering various ways of coaching that work for them. The
Hi Ross, have you worked with any organisations looking to implement coaching across all staff? Understandably the focus seems to be on the teachers and so typically involves cycles of observation and feedback. This doesn’t feel like it would be suitable for leadership / pastoral / support / professional services staff. Would you advocate different coaching approaches for different groups or a more responsive approach?
Hello Chris – that’s a good question. I have worked in some schools who start first with teaching staff and then how the methods can be used with support staff come after. Some do it well, others don’t do it at all. Where I’ve seen coaching work really well is in ‘structured’ conversations within line mamnagement and appraisal systems, but this defaults to being a hierarchial tool rather than a fixed relationship/partnership on a specific project. Where this can be resolved is with organisational coaches (who work a specific brief across all staff) in a coaching capacity
Hi Ross
Are you free for a call of what this might look like and how it can be developed and built across
As you mentioned in your previous reply, it would start as with teaching staff and then grown. I would really value a talk or any schools/contacts that have successfully embedding coaching across an institution
Thank you
Sure. Send me an email and we can sort out a time. Have lots of school case studies.