What is Coaching?

One day, a young bonobo was left at the edge of a creek deep in the Congo basin, frightened and afraid as he watched his troop cross the water. His friend called across the creek “don’t be afraid to cross, just go for it!” His older brother and mentor shouted “this is how I did it; just keep your head above the water and kick your feet.” His auntie, a bit of a therapist (and perhaps a Cognitive Coach!) said “tell me all about your fear of the creek.” The matriarch of the troop, a natural Blended Coach, said “watch me”, and swam back across the creek to the young bonobo. “Get on my back,” she said. “Half-way across,  I want you to get off of my back, and keep going on your own. I will be there to make sure you are holding your head and limbs correctly, and I am sure that you will make it to the other side.”

As this parable is meant to illustrate, there are many ways we may help others to achieve their goals. We can read articles to advise us on creek crossing, find YouTube videos of the same, or take a water safety class at a local community college. When it comes to taking on complex new challenges, whether in the jungle, on the golf course or in the boardroom, there seems to be a place for the matriarch’s approach, an approach that some might call coaching.

Of late, “coaching” has become de rigueur as a strategy for leadership professional development. Do a Google search under the terms “education leadership coaching” and you will get over a million hits, and at least a dozen sponsored links.  In our work supporting school leaders, we have worked with multiple coaching resources and models in order to arrive at an approach that produces positive outcomes, an approach that has been embraced by many organizations in the United States and beyond.

Let’s start with our generic definition of coaching: Coaching is the practice of an individual helping another individual or group to develop the internal capacity to clarify, set, and successfully pursue goals.

We suggest that effective coaching includes the following elements:

• The coach constructs a relationship based upon trust and permission.
• The coach serves as a different observer of the coachee and the context.
• The coach and coachee recognize that problems and needs are valued learning opportunities.
• The coach must be prepared to apply a variety of coaching skills and strategies as appropriate to the context and needs of the coachee.
• The coach is fully present for and committed to the coachee.
• The coach provides emotional support to the coachee.
• The coach maintains a fundamental commitment to the professional goals agreed to by the coachee, and appropriately pushes the coachee to attain them.

Furthermore, while the words “coach” and “mentor” are often used interchangeably, we suggest that a clear distinction should be made between coaching and mentoring. In essence, mentoring is an informal, generally unstructured process. All of us need mentors, folks who have been around the block, friends and colleagues who are there to advise, support and encourage us. Our bonobo friend has a mentor, his older brother who says  “this is how I did it; just keep your head above the water and kick your feet.”

But to be a coach is to reach beyond the mentor role, guided by clear goals, a defined skill set, and formal responsibilities for which the coach has been trained and compensated. To be a coach is to be accountable for your work and for the progress of your coachee.

There are many models of coaching out there in the K-12 universe. Having studied and experimented with some of these models, we have arrived at the Blended Coaching, a model which we believe is well matched to the needs of educational leaders and their coaches.

Blended Coaching is built upon the premise that success as a school leader hangs on our ways of doing, and our ways of being. Effective coaches work in both domains.

But to be a coach is to reach beyond the mentor role, guided by clear goals, a defined skill set, and formal responsibilities for which the coach has been trained and compensated. To be a coach is to be accountable for your work and for the progress of your coachee.

Ways of doing are the bodies of professional knowledge and skill that are essential to our work. How do we interpret student assessment data? What are the essential elements of a secondary class schedule?

Ways of being are the elements of character that even the most experienced and knowledgeable leaders must draw upon if they are to lead. These fall into domains of emotional intelligence, core beliefs, social commitments, and communication and relationship skills.

We represent Blended Coaching on a mobiüs strip as a way of suggesting that “ways of being” and “ways of doing” are linked, and that coaches must be prepared to address both.  And, (unlike some coaching models out there) we suggest that coaches should skillfully draw upon a variety of approaches, depending upon the needs and context of coachees. Sometimes we are teachers, sometimes consultants, sometimes collaborators. Sometimes we help our coachees to prepare to get out into the creek, then get them out into the water on their own, so that we can watch them paddle and help them to reflect upon their experience once they get to the other side.

As we continue with this blog series, we will flesh out this model we call Blended Coaching, and hopefully demonstrate ways in which the model can contribute to the development of successful school leaders and supervisors.