Coaching is everywhere in education, right? All the main educational bodies, from unions to commercial organisations, are talking about the power of coaching. The guru of instructional coaching, Jim Knight, has even been made a lord. But when we survey the head teachers we work with, we find out that the vast majority of them don’t have a coach, and have had very little experience of being coached. I wrote a blog post looking at why head teachers deserve regular coaching – it is worth a read alongside this one.
Let’s look at why this is. And then look at the benefits for heads of engaging in coaching.
What are the obstacles for heads to engaging in coaching?
The most obvious one is time. Busy heads may feel that they don’t have the time to devote to coaching. And if they did have the time, then they would probably devote it to supporting other people, rather than on their professional development.
As with time, so with money. There are limited funds in schools, and most heads would think twice about spending money on their own development, rather than for the funds to be used for other purposes.
And there are other reasons:
Finding coaches
There is no official register of education coaches, which mean that heads have to scramble around looking for coaches. They will ask friends and colleagues, or simply look online. The results are less than satisfactory, and it is likely that they won’t find their ideal coach – even though there are very good educational coaches available.
Negativity bias
There is still a narrative in the education sector that coaching is for underperformance, or for people struggling with their roles. Almost all of the approaches we get from schools who want to purchase coaching for someone in their leadership teams is of this type. This is slowly changing with some great initiatives, but there is a way to go. I explore this topic in more depth in a blog post I wrote on coaching for everyone – the case for making it available across the board.
Poor experience or reputation of coaching
Although there are many very good and strong educational coaches, there are also plenty of people offering mediocre quality coaching. This is not surprising – we are not seeing large scale investment in coach training within the education sector, so many coaches are underskilled and under qualified
All of these are enough of a barrier to put many heads off from coaching, and to think of other ways to focus on their professional development. However, it is worth finding ways to overcome these and to using coaching well. Let’s look at what this might mean.
Challenges of the job
All roles in education are challenging, and the head has the ultimate responsibility for the smooth running of the school. The role is becoming increasingly hard year on year, and the NAHT and other professional associations report on the many and various challenges that heads face in their roles. The wellbeing crisis, budget cuts, societal expectations, poverty and social exclusion, high expectations from parents, changes to curriculum and technology…..
Who does the head talk to?
Most heads have good support networks, including their leadership team, their governing body, fellow heads, and friends and family. And even if these networks are strong, there are some things that it isn’t right or fair for the head to share with them. The head can’t burden their leadership team with all of their worries, or show too much vulnerability to their governing board. And however good a listener the person at the kitchen table is, it’s not their job to hear all the worries, and indeed all the excitements that the head may have. So a coach can be the ideal neutral partner to talk these things through with.
Short and long programmes
One of the concerns that some heads have is that they will have to commit to a never ending cycle of coaching, in a similar way that people commit to long term therapy. But that’s not what most educational coaches advocate. We offer two programmes – that we call a short programme and a full programme:
– Short programme: 3-4 monthly sessions, over a similar period
– Full programme: 6-8 monthly sessions, over one academic year
With an average length of an hour, this is not a long time commitment. And we do encourage our heads not to have rolling contracts, but to end the coaching after their programme. They can, of course, return to it at another point. Having a neat, timebound coaching programme gives a good focus, some bookending and a way of encouraging heads to use the coaching for maximum benefit.
When heads engage in coaching
In our team, we have coached hundreds of heads. Each one brings different issues, and uses coaches slightly differently. Some heads use coaching to get them through a challenging month, an upcoming inspection, a stressful moment. Other heads use coaching as ways of working out their strategic plans, an upcoming exciting project or an aspect of their vision. Pretty well all heads use coaching to look at their own leadership approach, their strengths, and ways to develop and change.
Over the course of a programme, heads change, as do most coachees. Beliefs change. Sense of self can change. And then the actions and outputs start to change.
Considering the pull on a head’s time and headspace, it is hugely impressive to see them engaging in coaching. And for the same reason, it is hugely important that they have some sort of outlet to deal with all their challenges.
Final thoughts
There are some very good initiatives supporting heads to access coaching. Some examples include:
– RS Academics is inviting all of their successful candidates for head teacher appointments to sign up for coaching
– The NPQH and NPQEL programmes are including 1:1 coaching for heads within their programmes
– IAPS is training serving heads to be coaches, so that they can offer coaching to new heads within their network
– And many individual schools and small MATS are organising coaching for their heads
If you are a head, or you support a head, is now the time for you to engage in coaching? The benefits are clear to see, for the head and therefore for the whole school.
Happy coaching,
Charlie
