Cultivating a Coaching Mindset: Three Strategies for K-12 Education Leaders

If there’s one myth we’d love to do away with, it’s the school or district leader as a lone superhero: the one responsible for every facet of instructional leadership, teacher and staff professional development, budgeting and operations, parent relationships, and much more. 

The truth is, this kind of command-and-control leadership no longer works in education—if it ever did. As a result, we’re starting to see the role of education leaders shifting, too. Principals and superintendents now see coaching as one of the essential parts of their jobs. According to author and education coach Elena Aguilar, coaching can “build will, skill, knowledge, and capacity because it can go where no other professional development has gone before—into the intellect, behaviors, practices, beliefs, values, and feelings of an educator.” 

Coaching creates a relationship where teachers, staff, and aspiring leaders feel cared for, and can access and implement new knowledge as a result—new knowledge that can improve school culture, increase teacher and staff retention, and elevate teacher practice and by extension, student outcomes. 

In addition, a coaching approach also helps develop leadership capacity within a school or district. Leaders naturally see leadership in others, and coaching is a way for you to help your team expand their knowledge and capacity—both individually and with each other. We’ve outlined three strategies to help you solidify your own coaching mindset:

Leaders naturally see leadership in others, and coaching is a way for you to help your team expand their knowledge and capacity—both individually and with each other. 

Strengthen your active listening (and empathy) skills

The main ingredient of coaching is connection. Your teachers, staff, and future leaders want to know that you’re invested in their ideas and concerns—and one of the best ways to connect with your team is through active listening.

Active listening is the process of going beyond the words that someone is saying to understand the meaning and intent behind them. In the words of psychologist Sabrina Romanoff, it requires “decentering from one’s fixed position to be fully present with another.”

Nicole Furlonge, professor and director of the Klingenstein Center at the Teachers College, Columbia University, refers to this type of skillful listening as “listening leadership.” “Listening is a prioritized skill and capacity,” she says. “It positions leaders to grapple with what it means to center inquiry in their practice, what it means to tune into all the constituents for whom they’re responsible.” She goes on to say that the act of listening “signals to other people how you’re entering that space and gives you a way to actively be alive in that space as you make sense of things, as you connect with others.”

The main ingredient of coaching is connection. Your teachers, staff, and future leaders want to know that you’re invested in their ideas and concerns—and one of the best ways to connect with your team is through active listening. 

There are several techniques to improve active listening—maintaining eye contact, noticing non-verbal cues, paraphrasing and reflecting back on what’s been said, and practicing curiosity and asking open-ended questions. In Elena Aguilar’s opinion, the key to active listening is empathy. “It’s not so much about the exact words that you use as a listener, it’s about the feeling behind them. It’s about who you are being when you use them.” 

When someone truly listens to us, it’s a tangible feeling. We feel heard, seen, and acknowledged. Being an active, empathetic listener can help those on your teams feel more comfortable sharing information and challenges with you—which can make it easier to find solutions and improve together.  

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Embrace both “coaching” and “feedback”

Giving feedback is a necessary part of your role as a school or district leader. It’s essential for your teachers, staff, and aspiring leaders to not only improve their skills and level up their confidence, but to also improve student learning. Feedback is central to fueling a growth-mindset school culture. 

It’s also important to remember that feedback and coaching are different actions. Feedback is more immediate and reactive, with the goal of enhancing performance in the short-term. Coaching, in contrast, is a long-term effort. It’s about guiding those you work with to get curious about their actions and help them think through what the next best action looks like.

For example, perhaps there’s a teacher on your team who excels at analyzing classroom data, but struggles to use those insights to improve classroom instruction. If you’re giving this teacher feedback, you might suggest actions they could take, or share resources for them to learn more. Coaching, on the other hand, is working with them to uncover the root cause of the obstacle, brainstorming next steps, and helping them develop an action plan. It’s not about telling; it’s about showing the person being coached that they might have their own answers.

Here are a few general coaching questions and prompts to consider: 

• What’s the desired outcome of this conversation?
• Can you tell me more about your challenge?
• What solutions have you experimented with when it comes to this situation? 
• What other strategies have you tried, and what other strategies might work?
• What have you learned from this experience? 
• Do you have any thoughts about what you might like to do next? 
• Tell me about your best-case scenario. What does that look like? 

That doesn’t mean that feedback doesn’t have a place in your coaching mindset or efforts. Effective personal and professional development relies on a combination of both. In fact, feedback can inform coaching strategies with the patterns they reveal, and vice versa.

Also: don’t forget about yourself in the feedback equation. Your coaching is most impactful when you’re able to receive feedback on your efforts. This feedback will not only help you make improvements and adjustments over time, but will also be valuable in personalizing feedback for specific members of your team.

Set aside time for self-reflection

Not only do we have to engage in consistent practice to become better coaches—we also have to hold the mirror up to ourselves and engage in regular self-reflection. The key here, leadership coach Jennifer Porter says, is to engage  in “conscious consideration and analysis of beliefs and actions for the purpose of learning.” It’s about careful thought—not scrutiny. 

Self-reflection, as well as self-awareness, are both important steps of the coaching process that often get overlooked, because they can feel uncomfortable.

Why is reflection so critical? A few reasons. First, it gives your brain an opportunity to pause amid the day-to-day and sort through observations and experiences, consider multiple interpretations of those experiences, and create meaning. This meaning then becomes learning—and learning becomes action. Second, because coaching helps us develop our own solutions to challenges, it gives us more ownership in that learning. 

Self-reflection, as well as self-awareness, are both important steps of the coaching process that often get overlooked, because they can feel uncomfortable. This kind of reflection requires us to slow down, to approach situations with curiosity, and to stay in the “messy middle” for a bit instead of leaping into action.

To get more comfortable with self-reflection and make it a regular part of your own coaching approach, Porter suggests a few actions:

• Identify the questions you’d like to ask yourself. At New Leaders, we value the power of self-reflection and have organized a framework of five personal leadership actions with guided questions to prompt your reflective thinking. Take a look at the questions here. 
• Choose the self-reflection process that’s right for you. Writing the answers to your questions isn’t the only way to process them. Perhaps it’s talking with a colleague or a leadership coach instead, or recording your thoughts. 
• Schedule time, and start small. There’s no magic number when it comes to self-reflection time. Even if you only have 10 minutes available per day, schedule it and stick to it. 

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A strong coaching mindset is the first step to a “coaching culture”

Strengthening your coaching mindset is part of a larger goal: to develop your school or district’s next leaders, and to make coaching a foundational part of your school or district culture. 

Educational consultant Steve Barkley says it best when he says, “At its core, a coaching culture in a school embodies a commitment to growth, collaboration, and personalized professional development. It requires understanding coaching as a process that goes beyond mere skill development to unleashing potential by guiding individuals to explore and expand their capabilities.”

Coaching your teachers, staff, and future leaders to explore and expand their capabilities is a flywheel that drives much of what we want to actively cultivate in our schools and districts: creating places of innovative, continuous improvement that help our students—and the adults—grow and flourish.