Communicating the Bigger Picture
Guest Post by James Piggott
James Piggott is the Deputy Director of Learning and Innovation at Whitgift School in London UK. James shares with us his thought process as he prepares to facilitate The Anatomy for the first time with his colleagues.
The first lesson I ever taught students at Whitgift was terrifying—I had endless doubts in my ability, and many questions about how to keep students engaged and convince them of the value of my subject. (In an entirely ridiculous development, I also managed to slice open the front of my trousers fifteen minutes in. The remainder of the lesson had me strategically holding handouts over the compromised area…) In the four years since, thankfully, my lessons have been somewhat more successful.
However, doubts and questions similar to that very first lesson have started to appear again. This time they don’t relate to teaching Theology and Philosophy to secondary school students. This time the ‘lesson’ is my first time facilitating a coaching course and the ‘students’ are my colleagues who want to train in coaching.
When I consider the issue, I keep returning to one question more than any other—how can I show colleagues the ‘bigger picture’ of coaching in the space of only a few hours?
Put another way—how and when can I convince my colleagues of the value of incorporating coaching into education?
My answers have come from reflecting on the following questions:
What obstacles might you face when trying to demonstrate the value of coaching to colleagues?
What values might colleagues already hold?
What do you value about coaching in education?
When and how during a course might you tell the attendees of the value of coaching?
A list of obstacles comes all too easily—indifferent colleagues, attendees who are ideologically opposed to coaching, my inability to deliver each section of the course meaningfully, my failure to model coaching questions accurately to show the effect they can have. The list could go on for a while. However, just saying them out loud helps me see that these obstacles are entirely unrealistic—not because I won’t make mistakes in my first facilitation, because of who my colleagues are and what values they likely hold.
You do not become a teacher for the paycheque.
Perhaps this is overly idealistic, however teachers are often those who know that they want to work with people. They value building relationships with students and they want to ensure that what they do is of the greatest benefit to those in their care. When phrased like this, the parallels between coaches and teachers becomes clear. At the heart of coaching is the partnership between two people—both coach and coachee play an equally important role. In addition, coaches should build this partnership in a transparent manner and hold the unwavering belief that the coachee is whole and capable. Coaches want to ask the right set of questions or take the coachee through an impactful exercise. Replace ‘coach’ with ‘teacher’ and ‘coachee’ with ‘student’ in the previous three sentences—they do not lose their truth.
On this basis, a first solution emerges. I can show attendees the value of coaching by demonstrating that it puts their underlying values into action. In fact, taking them through the Forms of Help Spectrum and undertaking a demonstration of coaching could also show how it enables them to realise those values more effectively.
I can also imagine being asked about my own view on the value of coaching. If I were to reduce it to one sentence it would be this: coaching enables teachers to more meaningfully engage with their students and empowers students to solve problems in a way the best meets their circumstances.
Two further solutions now emerge. Firstly, I need to talk about my own experiences in education. Taking a coaching approach has enabled me to deal with academic and pastoral issues which I have never experienced personally. Those underlying principles of never imposing advice and ‘meeting the coachee where they’re at’ are invaluable—the coachee is not taken to a ready-made solution, instead the issue to explored on their own terms. Secondly, I need to show that coaching conversations offer a whole extra range of tools to promote reflection and solutions in a coachee. Every teacher has had a conversation with a student that hasn’t gone the way they might have wanted—start with an attendee example of this and then consider how effective coaching questioning might have changed the course of that conversation.
Finally, when and how do I bring this all up during my first facilitation? This was the question worrying me before, however now the answer seems clearer—a series of well-chosen questions have taken me from a seemingly difficult problem into a set of solutions that are achievable, effective and play to my strengths. It’s almost like I’ve been through a coaching session…
My answer to this final question is that I will not be telling the attendees the value of coaching in education—I will demonstrate it to them. Not just in the way I lead the facilitation, but also in the real-life examples I share and the exercises we undertake together. I need to give them the opportunity to reach their own conclusion on their own terms. In coaching you do not tell the coachee what to think, so why would you do this when training new coaches?