Leadership Coaching For Team Results

There are numerous school level teams and committees that perform different functions in the school. There may be grade level teams, small schools teams, professional learning community teams, curriculum committees, school improvement committees, social committees, parent involvement committees, or union compliance committees. They usually have a wide range of functions which include but are not limited to making decisions about school operations, serving as the steering committee for various initiatives, or serving as the problem-solving arm for the school. They may make decisions about teaching and learning or about professional development for the school. They may plan social functions at the school. They may engage in professional learning, grant-writing or curriculum writing. They may serve to solve the problem of the traffic patterns on the parking lot at pick- up time. With so many different foci, it is understandable that initiatives become fragmented, and teachers and administrators that serve on various committees get burned out.

Leadership coaching skill development for the school team is one way to develop the staff into a cohesive community of leaders and learners. Often it is only the principal or the assistant who is introduced to the concept of coaching through professional development and are able to avail themselves of ongoing individual coaching. As a result of the coaching, the principal or assistant then begin to speak and listen differently. They form new habits of thinking about issues and problems. Ideally the entire team would have an opportunity to learn together about the tools and skills of coaching and then practice their knowledge through participation in group coaching circles with the assistance of a skilled coach. When the team can have this optimal experience, they can make huge gains in closing the gap between all that they know about how to have a great school and actually making it happen. Persons who engage in leadership coaching develop a language to deliberate more strategically on their goals and dreams for their work. They speak more powerfully and effectively with each other, with students and with parents. They listen to each other with a new ear, and they form habits of new mental models and tools to work in a more productive way with others. In the book, On Common Ground, (Dufour, 2005), the authors draw on the work of Pfeffer and Sutton to describe the barriers to action in organizations and how to overcome them (Pfeffer, 2000). School Team Coaching holds great promise to address these barriers in the following ways:

• To help schools get clarity about what actions to take
• To substitute action for planning
• To reduce the complexity of layers of team and committee work by all working together and speaking the same language
• To offset precedent (“that’s how we’ve always done it”)
• To minimize internal competition and foster cooperation
• To collaboratively design measurement systems to monitor progress
• To look inward rather than outward for solutions
• To focus on attitudes as a barrier to action
• To substitute knowledge gained by doing rather than by knowledge gained by formal training programs

It is our contention that leadership coaching is for the whole team. A team can be strengthened when the members speak the same language, listen to one another and bring the same protocols for communication to the table. Once the whole team participates in the coaching experience, they are all better equipped to solve their problems more strategically, to engage in planning for the future with greater robustness and have the kind of school they dream of and want.

By Diana Williams, Board Member

Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. (2000). The knowing-doing gap: How smart companies turn knowledge into action. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

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