What does best practice for coaching look like in an education context?

Interestingly, there are no guidelines. Jim Knight offers up a powerful framework with his impact cycles and instructional coaching model, and GROWTH coaching is a powerful pathway for coaching. Internationally recognised and used across all sectors. Yet nothing quite fits ‘ like a glove” in the NZ context.

Coaching intelligence is the fusion of all of the best research and thinking around coaching. Instructional Coaching (Jim Knight), Coaching Leadership (Jan Robertson), Co-active Coaching (Henry and Karen Kimsey-House, and Laura Whitworth) GROWTH coaching (John Whitmore), Humble Leadership (Edgar Schein) and Conversational Intelligence (Judith Glaser) to name a few. Blending and synthesising the best parts to create a methodology that ‘fits’ the education context and allows educational leaders to have transformational conversations that catalyse shifts to create coherence.

The coaching intelligence methodology creates the chemistry needed to transform education.

Coaching Intelligence focuses on the being and doing in a coaching conversation. Whether you are a no coaching school, a growth coaching school or a school using Jim Knights Impact Cycles, we provide the conversational expertise that transforms how you think about and approach the coaching conversation. We bring a knowledge of the neuroscience of coaching, the true art of inspiration and how to bring agility to the way leaders coach. It is all in the coaching approach and the actions, supported by a well-framed, understood and aligned purpose for coaching.

Leaders can use the coaching intelligence methodology to:

Build relationships and trust
Support people awareness. Awareness of their actions and their impact on others
Hold a mirror up to enable others to learn and grow
Surface the Invisibles and gain understanding
Have suspenseful difficult conversations
Help others see themselves and how they show up

This results in leaders who can:

exercise leadership with increased confidence and capability
address performance management issues constructively
enhance levels of motivation and commitment
support the development of others more effectively
provide difficult feedback while maintaining positive relationships
facilitate higher standards and results

Yet, it is no surprise that relationships and trust sit at the heart of the coaching intelligence methodology.

That is why the work I do focuses on building the connections needed to have transformational coaching conversations and building deep levels of trust that support the necessary courage and creativity that lead to inspirational education outcomes.

Relationships And Trust Sit At The Heart Of The Coaching Intelligence Methodology.

The Coaching Intelligence Relationship

The ground conditions necessary for sustainable and transformative change in all coaching relationships, whether formal or informal, come from the act of consciously creating the coaching relationship: relationships that are collaborative, cooperative, co-created, active, and engaged and that yield action steps and learning.

What my research tells us

In my interviews with teachers and leaders who have participated in coaching training, the biggest challenge they express is building relationships with the level of trust needed for an exceptional coaching conversation. An interesting challenge to have when the coaching conversation starts and finishes with relationship and trust.

Everyone I have interviewed speaks of their confusion when the coaching conversation feels awkward, unauthentic and downright wrong. Yet, many leaders express they have an excellent collegial relationship with those they coach. They get along just fine daily. However, in the coaching context, interviewees describe a difference in how the conversation feels.

This comes as no surprise to me. The kind of relationship needed to coach effectively is not your typical collegial friendship. Even besties would find a coaching conversation feels wrong. Becoming good friends with someone is not what's required in a coaching relationship. Neither is the typical personable level relationships that form in highly functional teams. Instead, the coaching context is unique, as is every coaching conversation.

The coaching relationship needs to grow on multiple layers of understanding enabled by an authentic curiosity and knowledge of the other persons' reality, context, beliefs, and values.

Coaching Intelligence Creates a Unique, Empowered Relationship For Change.

The coaching Intelligence relationship provides a new way to be in a relationship while being in conversation—a way to understand and apply a basic understanding of how these skills can support more effective results, transformative change, and healthier relationships locally and globally.

The coaching Intelligence relationship explores the compelling way that being in a relationship shows up in conversation and how a conversation is more than words. Coaching Intelligence is not so much a methodology as it is a relationship. A particular kind of relationship. Yes, there are skills to learn and various tools are available. However, the real art of effective coaching comes from the coach's ability to work within the context of the relationship.

It starts with an awareness that every client is in a unique life and work situation, with individual goals and desire for change, unique abilities, interests, and even unique habits of self-sabotage.

Coaching Intelligence is inherently dynamic; that is one of the fundamental qualities of coaching and a reason for its power as a medium for change. Coaching Intelligence is personal; coaching Intelligence creates a unique, empowered relationship for change.

The Six Principles Of Coaching Intelligence

Where relationships and trust reside, actions that nurture their growth need to occur, the six principles are the elements that underpin the methodology. They are what catalyse the positive impact of the Coaching Intelligence methodology. Walking in the shoes of these six principles brings the Coaching Intelligence methodology to life. These six things are big, complex things that take time to engage with, and it takes time and self-discovery as a coach, to breathe life into each one. That is what makes mastering these six things critical for any leader looking to grow their coaching capability.

The six principles of coaching intelligence are:

Partnership
Trust
Presence
Listening
Awareness
Growth

Over the summer series, I will be unpacking each of these individually. We will explore each in the context of Coaching Intelligence and how we can begin to grow our understanding of each one. Like anything in this kind of work, the exploration starts with yourself; then, you can see how it relates and works with others. All work begins in ourselves before we can take it with any amount of success to others.

Until next week

Be courageous and try something new.

You are doing great.

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