Recognizing Who Holds the Reins

This post is part four in a series on Emotional Intelligence in coaching. The first post suggested practices that support an optimistic attitude. The second describes how empathy establishes an interpersonal connection that makes coaching possible.  Last week’s post talks about awareness and responsiveness to formal organizational structures.  In this post I’ll consider how being alert to less-formalized roles within your school (or school system) also impacts coaching efforts.

Understanding the organization of your school helps you effectively navigate your coaching role. Schools have formal organizational structures and informal ones that represent day-to-day interactions.  Awareness of both types of organizational structures helps you make the most of how your role fits within these structures. 

At the top of the formal organizational pyramid for a school is the principal.  Hopefully, your relationship with this leader is a comfortable one.  A principal-coach agreement can codify the relationship so that there’s no misunderstanding. If there are assistant principals, stop and think about how that person’s assigned duties impact your work.  Does the AP schedule PLC meetings?  Does she determine team leads or department  heads?  Now might be a good time for you to provide input about such decisions.

Other members of the formalized school structure also have influence.  For example, formal team leaders exert a lot of influence on the culture of the team.  Do members of the team feel their time together is productive?  If not, perhaps working with the team leader on agendas and discussion protocols (link) would improve the team’s function.  Teams that meet regularly and productively are primed for group coaching. 

Are there informal leaders within teams?  These might be go-to teachers who are recognized for their expertise. Their teammates may turn to them for informal coaching.  When you acknowledging this role, you can use it to your benefit. For example, asking for that teacher’s opinion (either individually or during a group discussion) demonstrates that you are in sync with team dynamics and not too proud to consult other experts.

Another type of informal leader within teams is the one who holds emotional power.  This person may or may not be an instructional expert, but she sets the tone for meetings by her very presence.  I vividly remember working with such a teacher during my first year of coaching.  Marjorie, a member of the fifth-grade team, was not the formal team leader, but she was a tone-setter for the team.  Making sure she was on my side made a big difference in my success.  I knew some of her instructional strengths, and I asked her if other teachers could observe her using these strategies.  I also knew she prided herself on being an excellent proofreader, so I sometimes sent documents her way before printing or sharing.  As Marjorie warmed to the idea of coaching, so did other teachers on her team and throughout the school. It was important to have her on my side.  Having this organizational insight made a difference in my coaching.

Developing and attending to emotional intelligence decreases frustration and increases coaching impact.  As the school year ends and you begin planning and dreaming about next year, consider knowledge you have of your school’s organization that can smooth the way for your work. Noticing who holds the reins for various aspects of your school’s operation helps you skillfully manage power dynamics to support your coaching role.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

Using video to support critical thinking:

https://www.commonsense.org/education/teaching-strategies/thinking-critically-about-video

The importance of defining your coaching role with administration:

https://blog.teachboost.com/establishing-my-coaching-role-with-the-school-leadership-team

Tips for moving into a coaching role:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2015/07/01/transition-from-teacher-to-coach

Things teachers can do now to be ready for the next school year (are there some where you could appropriately lend a hand?)

https://easyteachingtools.com/2016/04/get-organized-for-next-school-yeara.html

6 Ways to recharge this summer:

https://educationcloset.com/2018/07/01/6-ways-to-recharge-in-the-summer/

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Organizational Awareness and Your Emotional Intelligence Quotient

School systems have two organizational structures: the formal one that is included on the charts and the informal one that is represented in everyday relationships and interactions.  Awareness of both of these organizational structures improves your effectiveness as a coach. 

Formal organizational leaders (administrators including principals, APs, and superintendents) hold the purse strings for allocation of not just money, but also time.  Depending on the administrator’s leadership style, they may be the solo decision-maker about many aspects that effect teachers and students. Decisions about staffing, scheduling, and curriculum many be made by those in formal leadership positions – or they may be jointly made with teachers and support staff (and sometimes student input).  Even when administrators take sole responsibility for decision-making, others within the organization have influence. Knowing who those people are – or being one of those people – increases your impact.  This week’s post talks about the importance of giving attention to formal organizational structures, especially as the end of the school year approaches.

Organizational awareness is an emotional intelligence skill that enables you to understand how you and your role relate to the school and district system. Some coaching roles are school-bound; others are district-level positions. It’s important to know who makes decisions about your position and to keep those people in the know about the goals you achieve. Often, coaching positions can be done away with when staff allocation decisions are difficult. This is unlikely to happen, however, if decision-makers are well aware of the direct impact coaches are having on student achievement and if they have heard vivid stories to back up that data.  If this hasn’t been an ongoing process for you, the end of the school year is an opportune time for you to report. 

As you report in formal and informal ways to administrators, ensure that your impact is understood by connecting your efforts with the goals of the larger systems that govern your role.  Is there a goal to improve high-school students’ graduation rates?  Demonstrate how your work with teachers on highly-engaging instruction supports that goal.  Is there a desire to increase teacher retention?  Describe how your work supporting novice teachers contributes to that cause.

You put your organizational awareness to good use by reporting to those with influence in your organization.  Matching your message to their mission will ensure that you continue to have the opportunity for impact in years to come.  

This week, you might want to take a look at:

5 end-of-year tasks for instructional coaches:

http://buzzingwithmsb.blogspot.com/2017/05/5-end-of-year-tasks-for-instructional.html

What are you and the teachers you work with willing to shift to empower students?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYBJQ5rIFjA

Questions to support teacher and student reflection:

http://kanelandcoaches.edublogs.org/2019/05/06/end-of-the-year-reflection/

End the year by sharing a book about documenting memories and encouraging your students to do so:

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/closing-the-year-and-making-space-to-remember/

A podcast on instructional coaches and principals as partners:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-zf3nj-711551

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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Coaching with Empathy

One of the keys to effective coaching is establishing trust. Once trust has been established, the conversation shifts and deeper topics arise.  In fact, when more challenging questions or problems surface, it might be a signal that trust has been established.  That’s a good sign!  Now you can really get somewhere!  But this trusting relationship may mean things are going to get tricky.  Problems will be shared that don’t have quick, easy solutions. 

When your mentee trusts you, challenges that she brings up might be emotionally charged – things she has felt recurring frustrated with.  Don’t miss the emotions that are wrapped up in the situation.  If you are blind to the emotions, they will trip you up.  When a teacher shares a challenge, she is likely looking as much for empathy as for a solution. The two can go hand in hand.

Empathy means we can truly understand and share the teacher’s feelings about a situation.  Our mentees will benefit if we can tap into our own emotional experience as well as our professional knowledge.  It takes humility to fess up to having been in a similar situation, but that vulnerability enhances the connection and increases the effectiveness of coaching.

When facing a challenge, teachers may feel that they are in this alone. Everyone else has it together, no one else has had a student like this, no one else has struggled in teaching this concept or using this teaching approach. Your mentee may be looking for validation that it is okay to struggle, that it is okay to try something and fail. In truth, good teachers often fail, because they are willing to take a risk and try something new.  Maybe something that puts a lot of control in the hands of students, which has no guarantees of success!  Demonstrating empathy means saying, “I know this feels like shaky ground.  I’ve been there.  It will be worth it.” 

Once emotions have been addressed, the more rational parts of our brains kick into gear.  After making an emotional connection, the teacher you are coaching will be more ready to problem-solve. 

So how do we demonstrate empathy without taking over the conversation with our own story?  Here are a few ideas:

1.    Emphasize that your coaching conversation is a safe place.  “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”  This recognition gives a teacher the go-ahead to express feelings without fear of judgment.

2.    Mirror the emotion.  Initially, the teacher may recognize empathy when you mirror the emotion in non-verbal ways, through intonation, facial expression, and body language.  I’ve found that when I initially match these features, I can later help the teacher relax as I adjust my own non-verbal emotional cues.

3.    Name the emotion.  Listening with your heart helps you recognize how your teacher friend is feeling.  Your response might sound like, “That must be so frustrating (or other emotion) for you!”  I memorized a helpful mantra from Cognitive Coaching: “So you’re feeling  _____________, because ____________.  But what you want is ____________, and you’re looking for a way to make that happen.”  This response works when the teacher is ready to move toward solutions.   

4.    Along with naming the emotion, you might briefly share your own similar experience. Empathy comes from being able to relate. Without shifting the focus away from the teacher’s concern, you can briefly relate your own experience using the 3 F’s: Feel, Felt, and Found.  “You’re feeling _____________. I have felt that way when ___________.  What I found was _______________.”  Don’t compare their problem to yours (mine problem was bigger!), just connect with the emotion, and perhaps share how the emotion resolved. I often save the 3^rd “F” for later, but if you feel the teacher would benefit from hearing the resolution or a recommendation, offer it.

Empathy is different from sympathy, which might feel like a pity party. Empathy is willingness to walk alongside someone in their struggles. Empathy establishes an interpersonal connection that makes coaching possible. Expressing empathy helps the teacher begin to think creatively about solutions. Once empathy for emotions is felt, the teacher will be more ready to turn to action.  To bring out the best in others, begin with empathy.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

Building emotional literacy (pre-K, but important for older students, too):

https://www.teachingchannel.org/video/pre-k-lesson-emotional-literacy

Reasons and resources for teaching empathy:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/empathy-classroom-why-should-i-care-lauren-owen

Ideas for end-of-year learning:

https://www.middleweb.com/29647/make-end-of-year-learning-meaningful-fun/

The research is in – learning is social:

https://www.edutopia.org/video/what-social-brain

This podcast with Jim Burke considers, “How can we teach our students better?”:

http://talkswithteachers.com/89-jim-burke-english-companion/

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

Keep on the Sunny Side

How’s your emotional intelligence?  Your “EIQ” is an important coaching tool because people have confidence in mentors with strong emotional intelligence.*  Because of this impact, we’ll spend the next few blog posts exploring aspects of emotional intelligence, taking a close look at ourselves.

One facet of emotional intelligence is self-management.  Being able to manage our own emotions is a step toward recognizing and responding to the emotions of others. And if we want others to listen to and have trust in us, we need to be in tune with how they are thinking and feeling.  That’s the logic chain for starting here in our talk about emotional intelligence. Disciplining our own emotions makes us better coaches.

Let’s drill down even further to think about a specific emotion: our degree of optimism.  Having a positive attitude improves relationships and increases chances of success.  What’s your outlook on life?  Do you tend to see the glass as half full or half empty?  Where are you on the pessimist/optimist continuum?  What’s your optimism quotient?  This is something that can certainly vary from day to day and situation to situation, and it is something over which we can have control, even though it sometimes requires us to retrain our brains.  Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, famously said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Optimism is an attitude, not a situation, and there are things we can do to cultivate that attitude.  Let’s consider a few:

Smile.  Smiling provides an instant attitude adjustment. It actually gives you a chemical boost that improves your outlook.  To bring an honest smile to your face, think of a happy memory.  When you catch the ends of your mouth turning down, use a different set of muscles – pull those corners up!  Try it right now and see.  Can you feel how the shape of your face is linked to your attitude?

Feed your brain positive messages.  A smile is a quick fix, but our brains need ongoing support to maintain a positive outlook.  We can nourish our brains frequently with a photo that makes us smile or by pinning an inspiring quote to the computer screen.  For a boost of positive energy, we can listen to a song with an encouraging message, to music that uplifts.  For sustained nourishment, we can read a book or watch a movie that has a hopeful outcome. Filling your brain with positivity will make optimism a more natural state for your brain.

Replace negative thoughts.  Maintaining optimism requires vigilance.   When you catch yourself with a negative thought, put your brain on pause for long enough to reframe the message you are telling yourself.  How can you see that situation differently?  By being more aware of the valence of our thoughts and intentionally flipping the switch when negative notions creep in, we retrain our brains toward positivity.  Optimism becomes our modus operandi.

Focus on the good in yourself and others.  As coaches, we sometimes have a tendency to dig for the deficits – the things that need changing.  But it certainly helps our attitude if we first find the good in a situation. If that situation is a lesson you’ve just observed, building on what went right can be a powerful coaching tool.  It also strengthens relationships and improves your own attitude.  As we find the good in people and situations and choose to make that our focus, our outlook and attitude tend toward positivity.

Keeping on the sunny side of life is good for you personally and good for your work as a coach.  It’s an aspect of personal emotional intelligence that needs continuous nourishment.  Educators have a job that requires emotional energy.  As a leader, it’s important that you keep your optimism quotient high!

*Chun, J. U., Litzky, B. E., Sosik, J. J., Bechtold, D. C., & Godshalk, V. M. (2010). Emotional intelligence and trust in formal mentoring programs. Group & Organization Management, 35(4), 421-455.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

This oldie-but-goodie about being optimistic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qEhj-rQSAU

Coaching Bingo to spice up your end-of-year repertoire:

https://blog.teachboost.com/how-to-build-and-advance-partnerships-bingo

Ideas for wrapping up the school year:

https://www.middleweb.com/34768/keep-students-engaged-until-summer-begins/

Recognizing the miracles we work (and their limits) at the end of the year: 

https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2019/04/30/for-teachers-of-children-living-in-poverty.html

How to program your brain for positivity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmx_35rQIRg

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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