Excellent use of my time.
It is important that we live what we do. I have a coaching role at school and love working with staff. There is no better joy than talking a person through a dilemma and supporting them to work towards a solution. However, often people do not have time to sign up, they have a million other things on their radar and this slips to the bottom of the pile. No matter how much we discuss its practical importance, it becomes another add-on. This frustrated me, as I was (and still am) trying to work out how we could further embed coaching into the fabric of the school.
Then I thought, why do I not engage in coaching conversations myself? Why am I putting coaching to the bottom of my list? The answer is time and value. Even though I know the benefits and the value, I am not putting it at the top of my list. How can I expect others to do so, if I do not?
So I decided to engage in a coaching conversation with John, a very talented teacher here at school, who has also undergone the Cognitive Coach training. I was hit with two dilemmas:
What do I need to discuss? I wanted it to be authentic and, at first, I felt it needed to be grand. This is the issue facing so many of us. We feel the coaching conversation must be about a grand idea or massive change, otherwise it is not worth while, otherwise I am wasting John’s time. It took a LOT of soul searching and considering for me to realise, this is simply, not the case. In the end I decided that the most pressing issue I currently faced was:
The essays written in my class, I was at a loss on how to structure essay writing to help them synthesis the information that they had found out. We had built scaffolding and support material, but it was not not helping! The initial drafts often lacked depth and the research undertaken was not used to support their arguments
How could I book a slot on an already busy timetable? This was the hardest part, I felt an immense sense of guilt at booking a slot. I wondered, “is my problem worthy enough of using someones precious free time?”. Even though John had said book anytime you want, when it came to it, I found this exceptionally hard. It got me thinking, this must be how staff feel trying to find a free spot to work with me. It is daunting!
I booked a time and we had a coaching conversation and it was marvelous! Some excellent questioning and listening helped me work through the jumble in my head and I stumbled upon a super simple strategy to try. Something that I have used before, but have never thought of in this context. Perfect outcome from a coaching conversation.
More importantly by following this process I understood some of the stumbling blocks others might feel when engaging in the coaching conversations. So what next for me? Well firstly I need to implement the essay change in the next project - we will see if it makes the changes I am hoping for. Secondly I need to book in more coaching conversation, when I feel I need it, with other people. Thirdly, share and highlight all the good work and hope by opening up conversations we get more uptake in coaching in the school. As an aside we have started to block in coaching session times that are drop in, in a hope they help people feel less intimidated by crazy timetables - only time will tell on this initiative!
