Coaching Teaching/Training Professionals
(Part two: Key stages in the process of coaching)
IN part one of this series, I outlined key psychological aspects of the coaching process, especially the need to manage and mitigate Interference (limiting beliefs, emotions, anxiety) in one’s mind. Also, the importance of building a relationship of trust and credibility between the coach and the coached was emphasised. In this column, I frame the main stages of coaching and the significant factors to negotiate through this process.
Essentially, while the terminology may vary, the following represent broad interrelated stages that may be reiterated over time, depending on outcomes and perceptions:
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Planning Stage.
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Action Stage.
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Reflection Stage.
The planning and action stages
This can vary in how it arises. For example, in coaching clients (and this is generic – not just for teaching professionals), you may have had some prior experience with them, which has resulted in some preconceptions about you that may or may not be favourable and based on very idiosyncratic data.
Irrespective of prior encounters, I am always mindful of my presence – voice, tone and manner – to mitigate negative perceptions, as the initial focus is always on helping clients to feel as comfortable as possible in this relationship with me. The goal is to establish trust and rapport to explore through questioning their framing of the situation. Once this is established, I then identify what information, practices and resources – also stories – may help them reframe in ways to become productively active for meeting their goals, as well as self-directedness in their future learning. If this is attained, helping them develop ways to enhance practice becomes more of a technical issue rather than an interpersonal one. If a client is not comfortable with you, and trust is not there, there will be no rapport, and the coaching encounter may be benign and unproductive.
Two related focal points can then be meaningfully worked on. Firstly, the framing of personal goals that clients see as meaningful and useful to their professional learning development. As their coach, you can help them to identify challenging but achievable targets. Clients must understand what is involved, and what resources they may need, and finally must commit to the actions they have identified as necessary for goal attainment. Secondly, as coaching involves learning, key aspects of the learning process need to be fully understood by clients. For example, the jargon that is specific to what is being learned must be made explicit and clear so that both coach and those being coached have an accurate internal representation of the things (understanding, skill, mindset) to be developed/improved. For example, in tennis, putting ‘slice on the ball’ refers to a specific technique that creates deception on the movement of the ball when bouncing. This requires understanding the technique, its purpose in different game situations and, of course, the skilful application of putting slice on the ball.
Of course, we don’t want jargon for jargon’s sake, but essential terminology that captures key aspects of the learning process will facilitate rather than hinder collaborative learning and professional development. For example, when I coach (train or mentor) teachers, I ensure that we have a common understanding of such terms a ‘cognitive overload’, ‘task and process feedback’, ‘retrieval, spaced and deliberate practice’, ‘interleaving’, ‘mental models’, ‘types of thinking’ – and what is important about these terms in the context of teaching practices and student learning.
The importance of an explicit content-specific language is what makes possible the diagnosis and predictive capability of learning events from a more objective base. In the context of coaching, as Downey (2003) summarised:
…language is what allows the client to be self-generating, and the practice that makes it possible for the client to be a long-term excellent performer.
I therefore ensure that clients can clearly articulate what they need to do and how they intend to go about this action. Of course, I will support and provide feedback as necessary, but we must have clarity and commitment on both sides. Finally, in this stage, working collaboratively with clients, it is necessary to identity specific key success indicators for the action to be taken, and the evidence sources to be collected for verification of its success (or otherwise). For example, in the cases of teachers who have been sent to me for consistent poor feedback scores, I avoid any judgments on their teaching but ask if I can observe one of their lessons as a starting point. Observation provides authentic performance evidence from which to analyse and evaluate practices in terms of key criteria of good teaching (such as attainment, engagement, core principles of learning). This typically becomes the process, and the evidence base, for meaningful appraisal and future progress.
Reflection stage
It is useful to conduct this stage as soon as possible after the observation of performance(s) and with any other evidence sources from the action stage (such as collection and analysis of student feedback, peer observation data), though ensuring that clients have had sufficient time to do their own reflective practice. Appraisal is based on all the evidence sources available and performance criteria established prior. If the planning stage has been effective, both in terms of technical understanding and trust, this stage should prove less challenging and problematic (but not always).
In the process of evaluating performance and the provision of specific feedback for clients, I firstly invite their analysis, inferences and interpretations, and evaluation of agreed performance events (for example, teaching sessions). This becomes the basis for dialogue to make appraisal decisions and determine the most useful future action to attain desired outcomes.
In many coaching situations, coaches are likely to possess high-level competence in the technical areas they are coaching, whether it be soccer, singing or teaching. However, they may not have been the very best, and in coaching the more psychological aspects of human performance, may have little knowledge of the technical field. For example, the famous success coach Anthony Robbins coached Andre Agassi, who subsequently achieved major success in the grand slam tournaments. Robbins is no great tennis player, but it wasn’t Andre’s tennis that needed coaching; rather it was essential psychological processes operating in the inner game that needed to be developed/enhanced, and he can certainly coach these.
In the final column in this series, the focus is on the essential interpersonal and intrapersonal skills of highly effective coaching, and what differentiates the top coaches from the rest, and why they earn such big bucks.
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Dennis Sale worked in the Singapore education system for 25 years as adviser, researcher and examiner. He coached over 15,000 teaching professionals and provided 100+ consultancies in the Asian region. Visit dennissale.com.
