Developing a School Leadership Coaching Team

Charlotte Randall

Through private invitation, the Dubai English Speaking School (DESS) was asked to present at the 'What Works' Leadership event on April 16^th 2013 at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) in Dubai.  The Headteacher, Mr David Hammond, along with myself, jointly delivered a presentation that focused on the success of introducing the ILM Level 3 Award in Coaching accreditation into the professional development programme of our senior and middle leaders.

The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) is a regulatory authority of the Government of Dubai and is responsible for the growth, direction and quality of private education and learning in Dubai.  'What Works' was established by the KHDA, as an invitation only event, to provide a forum for collaborative learning within Dubai’s private education sector. Their vision, to bring schools together to share best practice and develop professional relationships based on underlying values that put the pupils at the heart of learning.

By taking the approach of training all members of the leadership team (teaching and non-teaching) on a rolling programme due to complete in 2014, we have started to build capacity and capability across the organisation for increasing performance at all levels. This is being achieved through individual coaching sessions, performance management conversations and the integration of the coaching dialogue into the core of the organisation.

Areas that have been developed as a result of enhancing the schools professional development opportunities with an accredited leadership coaching team are:

Leadership and Management:

• Team collegiality, motivation, challenge
• Behavioural changes at leadership level to get the best from the team
• Raising the profile of leadership roles through addressing staff performance

Career/Role Development:

• Linked to the above leadership and management points but also….
• Career progression within the organisation (long term and short term goals linked to teaching and learning)
• Understand my role within the organisation

Teaching and Learning:

• Develop teaching and learning strategies
• Developing in key areas such as formative and summative assessment

Time Management:

• Using the Time Management Matrix to support colleagues through pressure points in the term
• How to deal with stress and panic

Project Management:

• Building a rationale and action plan towards implementing a project

Change Management:

• Supporting colleagues to adapt to change within the working environment
• Transition out of the organisation and succession planning

Raising the profile of a department:

• Developing skills and practical actions to raise the profile of the department/subject area

It was a privilege to have been invited to the 'What Works' event and be able to share the good practice, commitment and hard work of my colleagues at DESS to ensure that as an organisation we are always moving forward.

During the presentation, visual harvesting or graphic recording was used to collect the content of the talk in real-time, the result of which can be seen in the photo below.

Charlotte Randall

Read more about the coaching programme the British School of Coaching are implementing at Dubai English Speaking School here



 

When Coaches Shouldn't Coach

Judith Barton is Director of Coaching at the British School of Coaching and has been coaching and developing senior leaders in government and private sectors for 23 years.

Business coaching is a set of knowledge, understanding and skills which can be applied generically – i.e. it can be applicable to any business or work setting in the private, public or voluntary sectors.  Business coaching is focussed on facilitating the development of management and leadership skills: coachees may be operating at any level, ranging from  newly appointed team leaders to seasoned CEOs.  I have coached senior executives in the public and private sectors: Colleagues in The Development Partnership have coached junior, middle and senior managers, again in both private and public sectors.   

Alumni of the British School of Coaching work in middle management and senior executive levels in the charitable, public and private sectors, working in fields as diverse as animal welfare, health care, education and food production. So, a business coach can practice anywhere! 
 

However, I firmly belief that there are circumstances when coaches should not coach.  For example, a coachee may demonstrate signs of psychological or mental health issues such as depression or anxiety, or may reveal non-work circumstances which are impacting on their mental health, such as a recent bereavement.  These and similar circumstances are likely to impact on work performance (e.g. ability to concentrate and maintain focus, decisiveness, ability to empathise with colleagues or team members).

A coach may be able to support a coachee to focus on work issues in these circumstances but should not and must not try to become a ‘counsellor’ or ‘therapist’ unless additionally qualified in these fields.  Trying to maintain a pretence of supporting people with mental health issues is potentially dangerous for the coachee: it will also create anxiety in the coach who feels ‘out of her (or his) depth’ and is unsure of whether the interventions are appropriate or relevant.  

A coach may not wish to acknowledge that issues are beyond their competence but ethically should be both open to acknowledge this as well as having the basic knowledge that will indicate when a coachee is moving away from purely work-related/performance issues to more deep-seated psychological issues.  To help identify when coachees are displaying , you may find it helpful to look up signs and symptoms of depression and anxiety, on websites such as http://www.nhs.uk – the ‘Health A-Z’ tab, or http://www.webmd.boots.com – the ‘Health topics A-Z’ tab.  These sites also provide information about treatments for specific conditions. You can also rely on your own intuition and insights into human behaviour gleaned from your coaching training and continuing professional development. 

Once you have determined that your coachee needs support which is outside your professional competence, you need to have some suggestions and advice for your coachee to access appropriate help and support.  The websites noted above can signpost you in the right direction.  In general, services are be provided through the NHS (in the UK); through private providers; or through charities.   

In the UK, the starting point for access to NHS help is your GP who may be able to provide support themselves (around half surgeries offer in-house counselling) or refer the client on to appropriate specialist input, ranging from counselling through psychological therapies. Clients who wish to access counselling or therapy from the NHS will probably have to join a waiting list, although access to ‘talking treatments’ should become easier as policy to improve access is implemented. In some areas, psychological therapies can be accessed by self-referral, but most require a referral from a GP. 

You may have colleagues within your own coaching practice who have relevant competencies such as Counselling or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy recognised qualifications. You may wish to develop your own list of independent providers – but you must should ensure that any individuals are appropriately trained and members of the relevant professional body. 

If you are going to suggest an alternative source of support, you need to be aware of the different therapies that are available and the types of issues that they are able to address.  In addition to the above sites, more information can be found from UK websites such as British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP); British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP); British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC): UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). There are charities which offer services for specific issues, such as Cruse for bereavement care; Mind for mental health problems; and Relate for relationship counselling. 

It may also be appropriate to advise your coachee to approach their Occupational Health Department, professional association or HR Department if work-related matters are contributing to personal difficulties. 

Judith is currently running the ILM Level 7 Certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring, and the ILM Level 2 Award in Mentoring for Young Learners as well as continuing her coaching practice with British School of Coaching.

Why Run a Coaching Practice?

Judith Barton, Director of Coaching, bsc

To me, running a coaching practice is similar to being in a legal or medical practice.  As a professional coach I am going on a journey with my clients enabling them to delve into their own resources so that they can develop a sense of their own potential and are supported to realise that potential through listening, questioning and challenging.  But in the end it is their own decision – as a coach it is not my place to provide guidance or advice but to draw out from clients their own understanding and enable them to make choices to develop their own careers and futures. 

 

Professional coaches are also practicing – practicing our skills, reviewing and reflecting on how each coaching session progressed and the interactions which took place.  Finally, a coach must create an accurate an accurate baseline. This sets out their strengths and areas for improvement and leads to a personal development plan to be actioned.  Once implemented, this plan is subject to review, reflection and further planning for improvement.  As part of this process, the coach must also recognise and celebrate their strengths and achievements. This leads me to four central tenets of running a coaching practice – which are: self-review supported by supervision, maintaining their skills base; keeping up to date with research and thinking about coaching practice; and ensuring that purchasers of coaching understand the concept of ‘coaching practice’. 

1: Self review supported by supervision is critical.  To be effective, review of practice should be carried out soon after each session is completed.  You will need to find your own balance between being to close to the interaction to be objective; and too far to be able to remember key points.  Self-review on its own however carries risks – that you will become overly self-critical or insufficiently self-aware.  In order to ensure some degree of distance and to avoid getting too drawn into feeling that you have to sort everything out on your own, the input of a supportive, challenging and knowledgeable coaching supervisor is an equally critical element of self-development.  You should choose a supervisor who understands your approach to coaching who is willing and able to be both supportive and challenging to question your assumptions and self-evaluation and provide a platform for continuous improvement of your practice. 

2: Coaches need to Coach – this may sound obvious but coaching is not something you can do once or twice a year whilst maintaining professional standards of competence. I feel that I need to be practicing my coaching skills at least twice per month. Coaching a number of people who have different issues to resolve, different learning styles and different interpersonal skills ensures that I can maintain a variety of coaching skills and the ability to deploy these skills in working with a range in types of client 

3: Keeping up with new thinking in coaching.   As a professional coach I can only provide a ‘state of the art’ coaching experience for clients if I spend time on a regular basis reading, evaluating and, where appropriate, working out how to use new techniques in my coaching practice.  I regularly read a number of journals – Coaching At Work, Edge, Management Today, Harvard Business Review – which keeping me up-to-date with not only coaching theory and practice but also management thinking.  As well as providing some coaching articles, the latter keep me up to date with the issues which may be facing my clients in their professional roles. In addition, I attend relevant conferences and CPD events.  For example, Association for Coaching conferences and Institute of Leadership and Management events can provide useful insights into developing my coaching practice and ensuring that my practice is evidence-based and leading edge. 

4: Purchasers of Coaching need to understand the concept of practice.  For those who purchase coaching, for themselves or members of their leadership or management teams, it is critical that they appreciate and seek out coaches who undertake regular supervision; who maintain their coaching practice, at the appropriate level of seniority, and who can demonstrate that they are up-to-date with the latest thinking and practical skills.  Purchasers have an in-depth understanding of what they are purchasing and what they hope to achieve for both individuals and the organisation.  I will be further sharing my thoughts on ‘Selecting the Right Coach’ in future blogs.

Judith Barton

Director of Coaching

British School of Coaching

"As we come up to our 19^th year, I wanted to share my experiences and thoughts on the practical, the essential and the humorous aspects of my coaching career so far.  I have learnt so much from the coaching successes, challenges and recognition of limitations along the way, as well as from coaching in what I call the ‘cultural cocktail’ of the Middle East."

Judith is currently delivering the ILM Level 7 Certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring as well as leading the British School of Coaching Practice.  Read more about this and the other courses BSC are running here.

BOOK REVIEW

LEADING & COACHING TEAMS TO SUCCESS- The Secret Life Of Teams

Phil Hayes  (2011) Open University Press, McGraw Hill Education 

The rear of the cover states “if you are a manager, coach or team leader and want to build a strong performing team of your own, then this book is for you!” I was pleasantly surprised to discover that these claims were borne out when the contents were explored. I think that this book can be used by a manager, a coach, a team leader, a trainer, a consultant or a facilitator, despite appealing to such a broad audience I found it accessible and contained aspects which I think could be used by all of the above, with value being added by the topics that the author covers.

The book is very much written from a practitioner’s perspective with the author drawing on over 20 years’ experience. What I particularly liked is the fact that as well as dealing with areas that had been successful, the author is prepared to share examples where things did not quite go according to plan, and explore reasons for those experiences and suggest how to avoid similar pitfalls in the future. I also found it a pleasant change for an author to share “what I tried to do” as a means of reviewing the exercises or approaches used. 

The book consists of 160 pages and is an accessible, “readable” publication with a good mixture of theory, case studies, tools and suggested further resource sources. The eight chapters are designed in such a way that they can be “dip sampled” at will, without necessarily losing context or meaning. That being said, once the sampling commences it will be difficult to resist the temptation to devour the rest of the contents. 

I found this book an excellent introduction to team related issues- be that leading teams, coaching teams or designing and delivering team training interventions. I particularly liked the way it deals with essential themes and skills that will be needed, providing excellent summaries of key principles, and providing additional resources for further research should the reader so desire. For example this is a book that covers coaching skills and theories with references to NLP and Gestalt models. It also explores when NOT to use the coaching approach, rather than simply reviewing the merits of a coaching approach. 

Two chapters of interest deal with high performing teams and poorly performing teams and sets out the different approaches that can be used – with the author’s ability to draw on extensive experience coming to the fore with the use of practical examples and shared experience. I also found the chapter on further resources for team leaders and coaches an excellent source of ideas and resource sources. The way the book deals with diversity and cultural matters is also a welcome source for contemplation. 

My only niggle is the fact that in Chapter 7,page 118,  the author explains a tool that he uses that involves ropes, belts and coloured links and states “please see references and contact details in Chapter 8” – frustratingly I was unable to locate the cross-reference!

In summary this is a book that I have no hesitation in recommending to managers or team leaders as I think the topics can be readily accessed and understood by all. I also found that it was a useful source for coaches, trainers, consultants and facilitators- the use of case studies, practical tools and exercises are excellent additional resources to draw upon. 

Martin Hill

Faculty Member

Programme Director for ILM 7 Coaching & Mentoring Courses

British School of Coaching

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