How often does this happen in your school: A teacher goes to another teacher with a problem with the students or problem with another colleague, or any other of the number of other things they may be talking about. That conversation turns into a venting session, gossip, maybe even slander, but in the end the person with the problem still has a problem.
What if the conversation was changed?
What if instead of asking more questions to get more juicy gossip or sharing their experience or trying to one-up the other person with even a better story... What if the listeners responded with, “I hear you, so what are you going to do now?”
That simple change in response can have the power of changing the culture of your school in the one that is a culture of coaching.
Coaching is a different type of conversation that focus, is on committed listening, powerful speaking in questions, and reflective feedback. (Gross & Reily, 2018) The focus stays on the speaker. As a committed listener, you listen with the intent to hear the essence of the conversation. You value silence and give a speaker an opportunity to continue speaking. You listen without the intent of solving a problem with but with the intent to hear. When speaking, questions are powerful and thoughtful. Questions have a positive intent assuming that the speaker is doing their best and we want to help them see what they're doing. In giving feedback, the feedback is reflective. This means the speaker is ultimately given themselves feedback because as a listener we are asking clarifying questions, offering value statements to acknowledge the speaker and we ask questions of possibilities and curiosity that allows the speaker to reflect on what they said and come up with their owns solutions.
You see the great thing about coaching is it frees us as listeners to not have to solve the problem. The solution comes from the speaker. Our whole goal is to listen and reflect back to the speaker what we hear and help them continue in their process. Keeping a mindset of possibility and curiosity as listeners, we can help our colleagues find their own solutions within themselves. This is an empowering process that can radically shift the culture within our schools.
Creating a culture of coaching doesn't happen accidentally. It takes intentionality to develop the capacity of you are people to have the confidence to engage in the coaching process. It takes practice. It takes continued development. It takes an environment where risk and failure are seen as part of the learning process and where celebration happens quick and often as we see people engaging the work and finding success.
If you want to change our schools, we need to change the conversations. This does not mean that I can't go to my colleague and feel like I can't unload on them with a problem I am facing. But what it does mean is my colleague will likely turn the problem back on me and help me figure out what I'm going to do next. This may take more work and efforts, but at the end of that conversation, I'll feel much better than I would if I was still holding onto my problem. Now I walk away from the conversation with a solution hand; a solution that I developed myself. That is a powerful place to be and a powerful way to change your school.
*Gross Cheliotes, L. M. and Reily, M. F. (2018). Coaching Conversations: Transforming your School One Conversation at a TIme. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
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