LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE
LEADERS AS COACHES
School business professionals as coaching leaders School business professionals lead services, organisations - and even systems - but, primarily, we lead people writes DAVID CARNE, executive business manager
W
hether we lead one member of staff, or thousands, we achieve effectiveness through others. A school or trust will have support staff from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, all of whom need to be working towards the mission and objectives of the organisation. SBPs want our staff to be highly engaged and high performing; to achieve this, as leaders, we have the opportunity to invest time developing those in our teams who wish to grow and supporting those who, for whatever reason, are not reaching their full potential or performing at their best. One potential way of doing this is by adopting a coaching leadership style. Coaching leadership is distinct from more traditional, directive, leadership, where we tend to tell people what they
14
September 2022
need to do to perform. It is collaborative and supportive in nature and primarily focused on the employee’s needs. The leader and employee work together to identify appropriate goals and find ways for the employee to achieve them. Coaching can be used to address a huge range of issues such as developing new skills, modifying behavioural styles, improving relationships and building confidence. If done correctly, it can also transform an employee’s mindset, improve their ability to identify solutions for themselves and raise their selfawareness. Coaching can be highly effective for staff who have ‘blind spots’ to behaviours and patterns of thinking which get in their way. There are, of course, occasions where coaching is not appropriate and a more directive style of leadership is necessary or more
traditional training is appropriate; coaching works best where staff have a desire to improve, but do not know how. Coaching leadership is about asking questions that build insight through a mix of support and challenge. These questions tend to be non-judgemental and open, rather than closed and rhetorical. In essence, coaching is a guided conversation, focused on supporting an individual to identify and work towards achieving a specific goal. HOW TO HAVE A COACHING CONVERSATION… There are numerous coaching models, but one simple one is the GROW model which was developed by John Whitmore in his book, Coaching for Performance. Goal: the coaching conversation starts by identifying the goal, fleshing it out, getting more specific, exploring what it