How does coaching play a vital role in shaping special schools, their leaders and communities?
NASS has partnered with Glass House Leadership Lab to create a coaching offer for NASS member schools aimed at empowering leaders, strengthening teams and delivering lasting benefits to school communities.
In this guest blog for NASS, Dr Matt Silver, CEO of The Glass House Leadership Lab, explores the importance of space, dialogue and sense-making in leadership development. He shares evidence that investing in coaching is essential for the future of special schools.
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Values are a fascinating foundation of human, community and system design. Whilst often spoken about, values are rarely embodied by education. This is not because we do not want to, but because we rarely understand the nuance of what they mean.
Our definition of a value is an embedded emotional response that triggers a thought or action (as opposed to a belief, which is a thought that triggers an emotional response). Combined, values and beliefs are what construct our lens, the unique perspective with which we see, interpret and choose to engage with the world. Our approach at The Glass House Leadership Lab is to explore and sense make our unique perspectives so that we can see where it serves us, where it may be useful to make a change and what are the underlying levers of change. Of course, this not only applies to us as leaders, but the community and organisation we lead.
When asked to write for NASS on the value of coaching for special education, I thought it would be useful to frame some questions to you as leaders and practitioners so that you might identify with the value add from coaching as individuals, communities and organisations.
Space
How can you use space to shift state to be open to the challenge and growth essential for expanding your practices and your organisation’s potential?
It is most likely that the response I get will be varied and this represents the first key aspect of high-quality coaching; whatever the answer is, it is not wrong. Coaching should provide a safe space to be truly heard and know that you will not be judged. This can be a rare thing in education. At times it can feel like we simply can’t have some conversations with colleagues and need a professional space to share and make sense of our thoughts and feelings.
Dialogue
Which holds more value to you - peer to peer enquiry or the deep insight into the patterns you or your community present with?
Secondly, it provides a space for professional dialogue with peers. Our coaches are not simply ‘trained’ as coaches, but they are developed practicing as leaders in the profession. They understand the nuance of human development and therefore can relate to colleagues' challenges, identifying the underlying patterns and deeper causes rather than what we often deal with as symptoms.
The most successful teams we have seen in education have engaged with an external coach because it not only brings a fresh perspective to their team, but also a neutral facilitator for strategic discussions and productive conflict. Having a ‘sandbox’ to practice in allows transition into normal team behaviour and shared language into cultural norms.
Sense Making
How much value would you gain from understanding one’s own energy, values, beliefs and behaviours as well as that of those around you?
Thirdly, frameworks for developing yourself and your community allows you to become conscious of how one influences the other and the systems that both create. How you are showing up as a leader influences the climate of the organisation and how this builds the future culture that your young people and colleagues are shaped by on their journey through your setting. This culture not only shapes behaviour but also the decision-making behind the systems and processes you design and how the energy and performance of an organisation can be raised and sustained. This is simply a must if we are to stand any chance of retaining and influencing a workforce that can create a culture that contributes to something bigger than themselves. Growth at any level should reverberate to benefit those around them and be conscious if it is not. Our human development approach means that is not just leaders that will benefit, it gives us deeper insight into our learners and what can accelerate their development.
Which value add resonates with you the most?
What could you achieve if you knew what your team members and wider community values too?
Without this insight you are unable to understand the drivers of others, align them within a shared vision and foster the energy and intrinsic motivation to engage with growth and change. With the system pressures and rapid change that we face, the ability of a leader to not only enhance but expand the capability of their workforce and have a deeper insight into their learners is essential if we are to sustain wave after wave of challenge and evolve through them.
Yet in a profession with astonishing attrition that costs up to 50% of a salary to replace and retrain, often neglect for understanding and supporting its leaders and their professional colleagues leaves them facing change, challenge and pressure that can build a sense of isolation and disillusion. The subsequent impact on their physiological, emotional and psychological state, is simply untenable and all the energy they have put into enhancing the lives of others is often lost or subdued. So when we demonstrate the 100% retention of 45 Head Teachers over four years in the case study in our recently published book Reinventing Education: Beyond the Knowledge Economy we begin to see that coaching has unique value at an individual level but with a shared value on return on investment.
Having led special education and charity organisations for two decades and seeing the transformational impact of coaching for myself and my colleagues, I can’t help but argue that it is essential. This is why The Glass House Leadership Lab was formed. We know the system is not fit for purpose and we know the biggest challenge to change is pre-existing mindsets that limit the potential of our profession and learners. The change we might have hoped for may not always come from central government which means the potential to innovate will be from the ground up. Leaders hold the potential for change. But to foster this belief and navigate the journey, leaders must understand their own lens and how they bring others with different perspectives with them to build a community and system that goes above and beyond the polarised views on inclusion and diversity, to one that values unity.
This is our mission for our partnership with NASS to create an incredible coaching offer. If you are called to truly change education, it must start with you and how you value and understand yourself and others.
If this has stirred some enquiry, we invite you to reach out and explore how we can work alongside you, your team and your setting in taking your next step.
If you are working in a NASS member school or organisation and would like to find out more about the coaching offer with The Glass House Leadership Lab, please get in touch: info@glasshouselab.com.