Wellbeing, managing workload, and avoiding burn-out are hot topics in schools. The continual pressure to produce improved outcomes despite tighter budgets and changing cohorts adds to the demands we place on our teachers and leaders every day.
The dreadful statistics showing that tens of thousands of teachers are leaving the profession every year speak for themselves. Consequently, many schools are looking at different ways to support their staff to thrive at work.
One strategy that has a part to play is seeking the support of external professional coaches. However, in my experience, many schools and their staff are still unsure about what the benefits of coaching can be and what exactly is talked about behind those closed doors.
Every professional coach will have their own approach and expertise – but I will share my insights below having coached a variety of school leaders and teachers in different schools over the last five years.
What are the benefits of coaching?
School leaders are so busy doing their job that they barely have time to pause and think about what they are doing. As a result, the most cited benefit of coaching by the school leaders I work with is the value of having dedicated time in their working week to “off-load” in a safe confidential space, where they can think, reflect, and be challenged to consider alternative viewpoints or solutions to the challenges they are facing.
The reflective space that coaching provides gives leaders and teachers greater confidence, clarity, and certainty in their roles.
That said, the biggest impact of coaching is usually on personal wellbeing and morale – coaching can significantly impact people’s mood, mindset, attitudes, and beliefs, which invariably is the butterfly effect to improving team morale and school culture.
The big advantage of one-to-one coaching is that the support is both confidential and tailored to an individual’s needs: I can work with several leaders in the same school on the same day and have completely different conversations with each one.
It is therefore unsurprising that the question I get asked most frequently is what do people really talk about in coaching?
What do people talk about in coaching?
The easiest way to answer that question is to ask some questions of you. Consider this:
- If you had one hour in the working week that was just for you and you were the priority, what would you talk about?
- What is the one issue that if you could solve or improve it would have the biggest impact on your personal and professional life?
- What is the thing that you can’t switch off from, that niggles or that keeps you awake at night?
It is those issues that are in your head right now that people talk about in coaching. Now consider this:
- If that issue was solved, how would that make you feel and what impact would that have for you personally and professionally?
- How might resolving that issue also benefit your team, your students, the organisation, or maybe even your family?
- Imagine if every member of staff in your school had access to bespoke support that empowered them to solve those issues – what impact would that have for that member of staff, but also for their colleagues, the students, and even the headteacher or governors?
Your issue might be unique to you. However, there are definite themes that come up time and time again in coaching. You might want to consider if any of these themes resonate with you or your colleagues.
Theme 1: Wellbeing
Staff always tend to address issues that are having an immediate impact on their wellbeing first. This makes sense if you are familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – as many teaching staff will be.
We know that students need to feel safe and well before they can learn and develop, and it is the same with staff and their effectiveness at work.
For some staff, the challenges are work-based – perhaps a tricky relationship with a colleague or a general feeling of overwhelm. For others it might be a personal issue that is either distracting them, affecting their mood, or impacting their performance.
I tend to take a more holistic approach when supporting staff, as for most teaching professionals work does not finish when they exit the school gate nor do their personal issues disappear when they arrive at school in the morning.
Theme 2: Workload
Managing workload is a hot topic and something I love to support staff with, because the results are so noticeable and can be quite quick to achieve.
While many schools are already doing a lot to put strategies in place to reduce workload for staff, that often does not address individual bad habits, unhelpful thinking, or an inability to prioritise or delegate.
Coaching raises awareness of the main issues contributing to an individual’s high workload and empowers staff to take responsibility and tackle some of the areas that are within their control to help create a sustainable working practice.
Theme 3: Leadership challenges
New leaders usually want to gain clarity around their role and their responsibilities, to understand what the limit of their authority is and understand what degree of autonomy they have.
They often experience feelings of imposter syndrome and want to feel more confident in their new role and be more certain about the decisions they are making. New leaders often have challenges around priority focus and overwhelm and some struggle with changed relationship and dynamics with colleagues.
Developing leaders, meanwhile, often want to reflect on issues such as how to:
- Have a difficult conversation with a member of staff.
- Give more effective feedback
- Hold members of staff to account.
- Improve buy-in from their team.
- Consider strategies to get the best out of their team.
And experienced leaders have a higher level of responsibility and accountability and as a result often need to make difficult decisions. Coupled with this, as staff rise through the ranks, life can become lonelier towards the top as the pool of people they can talk with openly at work diminishes.
Coaching provides a confidential sounding board and a safe space for them to off-load and share the emotional load on a regular basis. Experienced and competent leaders may not need a life raft, but they often benefit from having someone sitting in the boat with them.
Theme 4: Relationships
Staff sometimes use coaching to improve a difficult relationship with a colleague – this can be especially helpful if there are pockets of “challenging” work environments starting to emerge.
A difficult work relationship or a toxic work environment is usually a very strong catalyst for someone wanting to leave their job. Relationships can often be improved with better communication and strategies to increase trust.
On a more positive note, staff often want to strengthen their working relationship with a line manager, colleagues or develop stronger relationships and networks across the school or trust. Wellbeing at work is strongly influenced by a sense of connection and belonging and the most content members of staff that I have worked with tend to be those with good work friends and a strong support network at work.
Theme 5: Career development
One of the major advantages of coaching is that staff have time to explore how they want their career to progress, helping them to make informed decisions about their next steps rather than blindly applying for the next promotion on offer.
Staff have time to consider what is important to them, what puts fire into their soul professionally, and how they want to work going forwards, to fit with their wider personal and family situation.
Not every member of staff wants or is motivated by a promotion. Many just want to readjust what they are currently doing so they have more time to focus on what inspires them at work and at home. Whatever their goal, coaching can begin to remove some of the barriers (real or perceived) so that all staff can achieve a sustainable career that they love.
Final considerations
- What systems and support do your school have in place to support its staff – both professionally and for their own wellbeing?
- Are there adequate opportunities during the school day for staff to connect and support each other?
- Is there a suitable location for staff to meet and support each other personally and professionally in the school?
- Are your staff aware of the wellbeing support services they can access for free (for example, Education Support, the Samaritans or your own school or trust counselling service)?
- Do line managers know where to signpost their team if they are struggling?
- Has your school signed up to the Department for Education’s Wellbeing Charter to show staff that you take their wellbeing seriously? Use this to open a conversation with staff about their wellbeing and mental health, to create a staff wellbeing strategy, and to develop a wellbeing-focused culture.
- Would the school benefit from supporting their staff and developing their own coaching culture by employing an external coach to empower their staff to thrive at work?
- Helen Webb is an accredited executive coach based in Leicester. She supports and develops school leaders so they can avoid burn-out, drive school improvement and get the best out of their team and themselves. Helen has more than 20 years’ experience in education as a science teacher, lead practitioner, PGCE and ECT mentor, ECF Lead and ECT induction tutor. She is a regular contributor to SecEd – find her previous articles via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/helen-webb. You can follow her @helenfwebb or find out more about her coaching services at https://helenwebbcoaching.co.uk/
Further information & resources
- DfE: Wellbeing Charter: www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter
- Education Support UK: www.educationsupport.org.uk
- Samaritans: www.samaritans.org