School Leadership and Coaching
I have been reflecting on leadership over the last couple of months and how coaching influences leaders and their actions, particularly when a new leader takes over in a school.
If you have reached out for coaching on being a school leader, you have fundamentally taken the time to understand yourself more. You may have wanted to notice what comes easily to you and what doesn’t and give consideration as to what that might be about for you. You may have become clearer on your blind spots and spent time noticing your responses to certain behaviours in yourself and others.
If you have taken time to train and develop your coaching skills as a school leader, you may have learnt and practised many coaching techniques and processes that can be practically applied across your whole school community. People relate to people, and within schools, the children and young people and staff that support them are the core focus.
School leaders need to ensure that their school delivers the best education to the children and young people they serve. There is considerable investment needed in the people around those children that you need to help you achieve this vision! In Viviane Robinson’s book, ‘Reduce Change to Increase Improvement’ she highlights:
“…for change to succeed, leaders need to focus as much, if not more, on understanding the practices they wish to change as on designing the alternatives they wish to introduce.”
It is important to remember to take the necessary time to learn about the history of a school, to understand what has gone on before and to connect with those who have been there before you. Coaching skills can play a big part in this process; listening to understand- not just to respond!
At the end of January, I was delighted to join my good friends and former boss, a retired head teacher, for his 70th birthday. He employed me as a senior teacher and then assistant head teacher in his school nearly 20 years ago. He is someone who I deeply respect, trust and admire. I think about his leadership style and the coaching skills and the impact these had on me. Regardless of all the different pressures that come with leading a school, he always had time to listen and to give me the space to do my best thinking which in turn nurtured my relentless ambition to do the best I could for the students and families I served.
School leadership is an incredibly important role in our society.
School leadership is an incredibly important role in our society and coaching is increasingly being recognised in the same light. Both, done authentically, have the potential for lifelong impressions on all who are fortunate enough to experience it!