Perhaps the most important conversation that you’ll ever have with your coachee is the first one

Perhaps the most important conversation that you’ll ever have with your coachee is the first one.

The first conversation is crucial because it’s where bonds are first formed which will become the bedrock for your work together in future (connect), and it’s also where you set shared expectations for what the coaching process will look like moving forwards (clarify)

As I’ve written before, managing expectations within coaching is the first step to avoiding offence or resentment that can sometimes creep in during coaching conversations.

The initial conversation in a coaching relationship is often referred to as a ‘contracting' conversation. But I don’t really like that term. I feel that a much nicer and more descriptive name is a ‘connect and clarify conversation’.

But how can we ensure that we both connect and clarify? This blog provides a template to get you started.

Connect

The connect part of your conversation should take around 15 minutes and should be focussed on you asking questions that help you to understand your coachee’s motivations, what drives them, and to help them to feel seen and heard. Here are a few questions that you might find useful

  • What made you get into teaching in the first place?
  • Imagine that in 10 years down the track someone bumps into one of the students who you’re teaching this year and asks, ‘What do you remember about your teacher Ms./Mr. XXX?’, what would you want them to say?
  • What’s your most treasured memory from your teaching so far?
  • What do you feel are your three greatest strengths as a teacher
  • Complete this sentence: This year in my teaching, I hope to…
  • Why is it important to you to improve as a teacher?
  • What’s important to you outside of teaching?

There’s no magic in the above questions, nor in the ‘connect’ phase of the conversation more generally. All that’s important is that you connect at the level of values and beliefs, move beyond the often superficial conversations of the staffroom, and begin to build the relational ballast that will act as a valuable source of stablilisation in the conversations to come.1  

Clarify

The point of the clarify phase is to set realistic expectations about the coaching journey ahead.

There are three elements of truly effective coaching that they may feel a little aversion to at first. These three essential elements are:

  • The use of video
  • The selection and suggestion of a next step by the coach for the coachee (more on that here)
  • The emphasis on rehearsal

Each of these components contributes to effective coaching, but each can be seen as intimidating too. In the following, I outline how to introduce each of these components and give some ideas of how to explain the ‘why’ of each. Explaining the why will help your coachee to see the value in each element of this coaching approach.

Script

Note: You may find it helpful to have the following dot points written out on a pice of paper to scaffold the following conversation, both for yourself, and as signposts for your coachee

I’d now love for us to take some time to clarify our expectations around what coaching could look like for us working together. This is really important because I’m keen for you to feel really supported right throughout this process and, for that to happen, it’s important that we avoid any unnecessary surprises.

The rigorous approach to coaching that I use has three essential elements that really make it work and make it much more powerful than other coaching methodologies you might have experienced before. When some people hear about these three essential elements they can feel a little apprehensive or nervous. So as I describe them, I’d love for you to suspend judgement for a few minutes to make space for you to listen deeply to the ‘why’ behind each of these essential elements. Then, at the end, you can tell me if it sounds like this coaching approach is for you. Are you up for that? (At which point they say, ‘Yes’… hopefully!)

Great. These three essential elements are the use of video, step suggestion, and rehearsal(dot point these three points on a sheet of paper to reduce the working memory burden on your coachee).

Let’s talk about video first. When I do a classroom visit, I will aways video record at the same time. This is really valuable for three main reasons. The first reason why video is really valuable is that the classroom is a super busy place, there’s so much going on and we can only ever focus on one thing at a time. By having a video record of what happens in the classroom, we’re both able to go back and see things that we mightn’t have seen first time round. This is invaluable in helping us to refine what Charlotte Wolff calls ‘teacher vision’,2our ability to focus on the most relevant parts of the classroom at the most crucial times.

The second reason why video is really valuable is that it helps both coach and coachee to form a shared understanding of the lesson. The perspective from the front and the back of the class can be very different, so by having a recording of what has happened, we can watch it back together and help each other to come to a fuller understanding of the various events of the lesson.

The third reason why video is valuable is that I will be using it to plan our coaching conversations and identify my step suggestions for your consideration. Each time I suggest a step to you, I’ll try to justify that step suggestion based upon a pivotal piece of evidence from the lesson. That evidence might be a quote or a work sample, but it will often be a timestamp from the video.

In summary, video is really powerful in coaching because it helps us to both improve our teacher vision, it helps us to form a shared understanding of the lesson, and it helps me to identify and share a pivotal piece of evidence for you in our coaching conversations. Does it sound to you like video could help us to improve the rigor and impact of coaching together?

Excellent, the next thing I wanted us to clarify is the idea of ‘step suggestion’.

To make the best use of our precious time together I’m going to come to each of our coaching conversations having done my homework. What this will look like is, after each classroom visit, I’m going to go away, review my notes, re-watch the classroom video, and think deeply about which action step might be most likely to support you to make the progress that you’re keen to make with your teaching.

The reason why it’s valuable for me to come to each of our coaching sessions with a step in mind is that this will also enable me to find and prepare a high-quality model for you of that particular strategy, meaning that we can much more effectively move from reflection, to the model, to rehearsal within our brief 30 minute chat. Essentially, by me having a step in mind, it will help me to best prepare for our coaching discussion.

Now, just because I come to each of our coaching conversations with a step suggestion, doesn’t mean that you need to accept my suggestion. I might say, ‘Let’s work on cold call’, and you might say, ‘Actually, I’m finding student behaviour a real challenge, can we find a step to work on there?’ And that’s totally fine. I’m never going to try to make you do something that you don’t think is a good use of time in your classroom, but it would be great if you’re willing to hear me out on each of the suggestions I make, because I will have always put a lot of thought into them. But the bottom line is, you ultimately choose choose(Write, ‘You choose’, under ‘Step suggestion’). It’s also worth me adding that you ever have ideas about steps you’d like to work on, I’m always open to your suggestions and an ideal time for that is either before or shortly after the classroom visit so that I can build it into the planning for our coaching conversation.

To inform your choice, there’s a really valuable question I’d love you to ask yourself each time I suggest a step. That is, ‘Is this step likely to move my teaching forward?’ (Write this under ‘step suggestion’ as you say it) If the answer is ‘yes’, then it’s probably worth working on. This is because the power of a coaching approach centred around small, bite-sized action steps and high frequency classroom visits is that it reduces the pressure on us to choose the absolutely perfect step any one week because over the course of a number of weeks, we can have confidence that the cumulative impact of all our steps selections is likely to be really positive.

So, that’s step suggestion. Keeping in mind that, you ultimately have the choice, that we’re aiming for a high-leverage step not the ultimate step each week, and that pre-preparing a step allows me to more thoroughly prepare for each of our coaching sessions together, how do you feel about me suggesting a step each coaching session?

The third and final essential element that I mentioned is rehearsal. This can be quite a foreign idea, but it’s based around the idea that teaching is a habit-based profession and therefore, in order to improve we need to engage in ‘repeated practice in realistic settings in order to overwrite and upgrade existing habits.’3

When it comes to rehearsal, we’ll be planning forward, that is, basing our rehearsal on the lesson to come. We’ll explicitly script exactly what you’re going to say in the lesson to carry out the step. And finally, we’ll engage in multiple rounds with feedback between each round. On average we’ll practice the step 4-5 times to help you to really begin to build the habit.

The idea of rehearsal can be quite foreign to people, so here’s a video of me conducting rehearsal with (name) to give you a taste of what it really looks like.

(Play video. If you don’t have one yet, make one! Coach a good friend or, coach a superior, or have someone coach you and capture it on tape).

What did you notice in that video?

(respond)

So, as you can see, rehearsal is really rigorous, but it can also be fun.

…

That’s the three essential ingredients of effective coaching: Video, step suggestions, and rehearsal. Is this something you’re interested in moving forwards with?

This script is just over 1200 words long. At 150 words per minute (the average talking pace) this would take 8 mins to deliver. Plus the video, as well as a bit of back and forth, it should fit in about 15 minutes.

Close with Vulnerability

Oh, and one more thing. It can be really powerful to wrap up the whole conversation with a bit of vulnerability, here's an example of such an honest invitation for feedback and signalling of a desire for growth yourself:

Just as you’re keen to develop your teaching this (year/semester/term), I’m really passionate about developing as a coach. I am by no means a perfect coach, but I am committed to supporting you to the absolute best of my ability. So, if there’s ever anything that you feel I could be doing better, please just let me know. I’m always open to feedback, and I’ll make sure I ask for it regularly too. Would you be happy to do that?

…

Reinforcing the message

At the start of your first three coaching conversations following this initial conversation, you should also have a mini connect and clarify conversation that involves a connection question as well as a re-statement of some of the essential elements of effective coaching.

Teacher’s lives are busy, and there’s a lot of information in this initial presentation of the essential elements of coaching. So it’s highly unlikely they’ll remember all those points you made first time.

Whip out your note and quickly recap before you jump into the coaching!

Conclusions

I hope you found the above sample script for a connect and clarify conversation helpful. Conducting such a conversation with your coachee will form an essential foundation for your subsequent work together.

Similar principles are, of course, relevant for any work with colleagues, coachees, and students.

Good luck connecting and clarifying! And if you’re keen on more practical and explicit advice on coaching, you might be interested in the upcoming Certificate in Coaching Leadership!

[1] Thanks to Dr. Mark Dowley for helping me to understand the importance of ‘connect’ conversations at the start of coaching relationships.

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11251-016-9367-z

[3] Hobbiss, M., Sims, S., & Allen, R. (2021). Habit formation limits growth in teacher effectiveness: A review of converging evidence from neuroscience and social science. Review of Education, 9(1), 3-23

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