Coaching Through Fear: Five Questions to Reduce Educators' Anxiety and Resistance
Including a free download of all ten questions
These questions come from a set in my new playbook, 10 Actions for Supporting Teaching and Learning. It’s a companion to Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. You can download a free one-page PDF of all ten questions for your instructional leadership toolbox at the end of this article.
Earlier this week, I partnered with a school’s instructional leadership team as they prepared for next year.
They wanted to have clear rules for how students would receive reading intervention support. We had already determined thresholds for the screeners. Interventions were identified. All we needed now was a system for placing students.
Sensing a need for direction, I asked if I could put an idea on the table. “What if this team initially placed students in interventions, then presented that plan to each teacher team for feedback?” My goal was to streamline this process, make it more efficient, and take some of the bias out of the decision-making.
Members of the leadership team looked at each other, some with smiles, unsure how to respond.
I could empathize with their hesitation. I recall making a similar shift in my last school. We worried that teachers would see this as losing the opportunity to advocate for their kids to receive support. But the previous approach wasn’t based on data as much as on who was the loudest and most assertive voice.
When we encounter situations like this, where a colleague is feeling fear about a change, I have found it helpful to have some thoughtful questions in my toolbox. The best questions in a coaching conversation where anxiety or resistance is high:
move educators out of their current state of fear,
help them see the situation from another perspective, and
give them options and confidence for how they might proceed.
Here are five questions I have found useful for navigating through fear.
1. “How does your goal help the school move toward our collective vision?”
Sometimes teachers select a professional learning goal that is unrelated to the school's priority. There is the possibility that they are avoiding growing in an area of their practice that needs attention.
A traditional leadership response is to simply insist that all goals align with school priorities. There’s little effort to understand the teacher’s thinking.
Leading like a coach, we demonstrate trust by posing a question that assumes the teacher can align their goal with where the school is going. It gives them an opportunity to own their learning while still being accountable to the school culture.
2. “What is safe enough to try?” (Kim and Gonzales-Black, 2018)
Sometimes a teacher struggles to commit to a goal, feeling it is too big. For example, they may want all of their students to be proficient readers by the end of the school year, but are worried about students who are multiple grade levels behind.
We often try to solve the problem for them, to offer advice. But when we do that, we deprive the teacher of solving (and owning) their own challenge.
By asking “What is safe enough to try?”, we help the teacher select a smaller and more manageable objective within their goal. They can look at it as an experiment instead of a huge commitment.
3. “How can I help, and where do you need the most help?” (Routman, 2014)
Similar to #2, a teacher or team may feel overwhelmed. The difference is they cannot decide what to work on due to too many competing needs.
And just as “What is safe enough to try?” reduces change to a next step in improvement, “How can I help?” invites the teacher or team to locate the specific way in which you can support them to grow and achieve their goal.
4. “When you faced situations like this before, what were some of the strategies that worked for you?” (Costa, Garmston, and Zimmerman, 2014)
In another situation, a teacher may feel stuck with a new instructional strategy. For example, they have tried to involve their students in co-organizing the classroom library. But the students demonstrated apathy in the process.
In the past, I would try to offer suggestions for how they might engage their students more fully in the process. Yet that deprives the teacher of the opportunity to solve this problem.
By guiding them to consider how they were successful in similar situations in the past, teachers can arrive at solutions on their own. They become more confident and independent.
5. “What if this could be easy?” (McKeown, 2021)
New literacy curriculum programs are being acquired across districts. Some teachers will express frustration with a new curriculum and fondness for the old one.
Reminding them that this is a school board-approved resource doesn’t change their perception of the situation. They may feel overwhelmed and unsure where to begin.
Asking teachers “What if this could be easy?” may help them identify an entry point for getting started. For instance, reading the standards and learning targets would support their understanding of the goal for a lesson.
Anxiety and resistance, products of fear, can halt improvement efforts. Questions like these can help educators see possibilities in their present challenges. Embracing collaborative inquiry as a coach empowers teachers as students of their own practice.
Great post, Matt. As I read the questions I began to realize that with some tinkering teachers could use versions of them with students. Suppose teachers guide students to set learning goals keeping in mind what the coach did with them when they felt fear of failure and resistance to change…Seems to me that you’ve hit on a key topic to improve a whole school one classroom at a time by reducing resistance and encouraging baby steps. Nice work!