"Have you earned the right to offer an idea?" Using coaching skills to build trust and support colleagues in self-directed learning.
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“As a coach, when is it okay to offer someone an idea?”
This question came up during a recent coaching network session I was hosting for colleagues.
This is also one of the most common questions I ask within my own coaching practice.
Especially with new teachers and educators feeling stuck, it’s tempting to just give them answers to their problems.
We do this with noble intentions. We don’t want to see someone struggle. We want to provide what we feel is best for the students in the classroom.
But if we are being 100% honest with ourselves, offering suggestions also serves us.
We have good ideas from professional reading and observing other classrooms; we can’t wait to share them.
We are impatient with the pace in which professional learning is progressing for a colleague.
When we offer ideas and the other person likes it, it’s an ego boost.
None of these intentions are by themselves poor practice.
Yet if we dig even deeper into our actions and go beneath the surface to closely examine our beliefs in these situations, we may arrive at a simple truth:
We don’t trust our colleagues to make the best decision.
I share this from experience. On a too-regular basis, I catch myself offering resources, strategies, and tools that a client is not necessarily asking for. Even when they thank me for the suggestion, I apologize for not first asking permission. Later I engage in self-critique of how I might have held a more trusting space for this person to come to their own ideas about how to teach or lead.
“Personal trust precedes professional trust and is its foundation.”
- Regie Routman, Read, Write, Lead: Breakthrough Strategies for Achieving Schoolwide Literacy Success (ASCD, 2014, p. 22)
When my colleague asked this question, I went to our whiteboard.
I drew out my current mental model of how trust works within professional conversations.
Below is a more detailed version of the model.
It’s a combination of two resources that formed the foundation for my most recent book on leading like a coach.
The six “Ps” inside the triangle plus the one beneath it are the seven collaborative norms described in Cognitive Coaching by Art Costa and Bob Garmston. They are the core coaching skills for support educators’ capacity for self-directed learning.
The personal trust/professional trust arrows represent a pathway for engaging in productive conversations with colleagues that support this learning. Regie Routman speaks clearly about the importance of trust in her book Read, Write, Lead.
Next is a rough summary of my explanation I shared with my fellow coaches.
“There is a time and place where we offer someone an idea. The question to ask ourselves before we do so is, ‘Have you earned the right to offer an idea?’. What I mean is, have we gotten to know them on a personal level? Have we been a full and active listener about their situation through pausing and paraphrasing? What questions have we asked to understand their context and challenge? If we arrive at the conclusion that our colleague cannot proceed without our advice only after engaging in interactions like these, then we can ask if they would like an idea.”
I don’t know if this was clear. Coaching can be a bit messy, similar to teaching.
What is clear is we are in the best position to support our colleagues become self-determining learners when we give them opportunities to arrive at the solution for themselves.
We do that by first focusing on personal trust - getting to know them as fellow human beings - and then assuming they have the capacity and potential for becoming self-directed learners and leaders.
Recommending for further reading
Regie Routman’s article “Creating a Culture of Trust” is a great primer for her larger work in schools, describe in Read, Write, Lead. The comments from the educators in the article, such as the following, speak for itself: “I’ve never worked harder in my life, but it’s the best and most important work I’ve ever done. And it’s not just the students who are thriving. I’m thriving as a learner too.”
A more concise version of Cognitive Coaching can be found in Costa's and Garmston’s Cognitive Capital. Along with Diane Zimmerman, the authors provide a strong focus on the collaborative norms/coaching skills mentioned previously. All leaders and teachers will find this book practical and useful in their practice.
The print version of my book, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.: Five Strategies for Supporting Teaching and Learning, is currently 20% off on Amazon. I offer a variety of transcripts of coaching conversations facilitated by me that use the skills to build both personal and professional trust with teachers.
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