Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program Elena Aguilar. Elena is a writer, leader, teacher, coach, and podcaster, and is the founder and CEO of Bright Morning Consulting. an organization committed to helping individuals and organizations create the conditions for transformation. She has taught tens of thousands of folks how to have conversations that build a more just and equitable world. And Elena can be heard demonstrating these conversations on the Bright Morning podcast. Elena is a frequent contributor to Edutopia, ASCD's Educational Leadership, and Ed Week Teacher, and is the author of eight highly acclaimed books, including The Art of Coaching, The Art of Coaching Teams, Onward Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators, Coaching for Equity, and her new book, Arise, The Art of Transformational Coaching, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:59] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[01:02] SPEAKER_01:

Elena, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.

[01:04] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Justin. It's great to be back.

[01:06] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm excited to speak with you. I wonder if we could just jump right in and explain to our listeners a bit, what is transformational coaching? Because we've all heard of coaching. We've heard of various types of coaching, various flavors, but you use that term very intentionally, transformational coaching. Tell us about that.

[01:22] SPEAKER_00:

Well, yes, we've all heard about coaching and perhaps some of us have had a coach. And so it helps to surface The experiences that we've had with coaching and sort of what comes to mind when you think about particularly perhaps a teacher coach to contrast that with transformational coaching, which is the model that I teach about and write about. in which we address, we focus on and address what I call the three Bs, which are behaviors, beliefs, and ways of being. And so a traditional instructional coach often focuses pretty exclusively on a teacher's behaviors, their instructional practices, And a coach might come in and offer feedback or guide a teacher in lesson planning or analyzing data or something.

[02:18]

An instructional coach goes deeper by exploring and surfacing the beliefs that underlie the behaviors and the ways of being that are also below the behaviors or entwined with the behaviors. And so an instructional coach might say something like, I noticed that you gave students 15 minutes to do this, and then you asked them to do this and to do this. And an instructional coach might say, what are the beliefs that you're holding about student learning in that sequence of lesson design or something? Or if a teacher is saying, You know, my students don't turn in homework. I don't know what's going on. Everything I do just feels like it falls flat and I never get any homework.

[03:08]

And so a transformational coach might ask, what are the beliefs that you're holding about the role of homework? Or how have your beliefs shifted? Or what are you believing about your own capacity as an instructor? A transformational coach also acknowledges and welcomes emotions. Human beings have emotions. It is not a healthy thing for us to repress them and suppress them or to give them wild free reign over everything that we are doing and the way that we are showing up.

[03:46]

And we have emotions and we know that teachers experience a tremendous amount of emotions. And so instructional transformational coaches who work in schools with teachers, with leaders, also embrace the experience of emotions and help people process them so that we can serve the needs of children. But we center the human experience in all of its complexity and have a lot of resources and tools and strategies to incorporate that holistic view and holistic approach to developing skills.

[04:23] SPEAKER_01:

It certainly makes intuitive sense because the behaviors that we see don't come from nowhere, right? The behaviors that we see in the classroom in terms of instructional practice are anchored in those beliefs and those ways of being that we might not think to talk about, but we can't deny are real. And as people do that, what discomfort do they typically face in coaching people about their beliefs? Because I think to some extent, people might think that beliefs are something that someone is entitled to and they're not really my business. How do you think about the touchability or the fair game aspect of beliefs when it comes to transformational coaching?

[05:03] SPEAKER_00:

I think anytime we get into uncomfortable topics, we can make growth. And so many of us have been conditioned into a way of being, which is about avoiding conflict and being nice and keeping the peace. And we don't get into the really important stuff. Many people feel a blend of discomfort and relief when they are invited to talk about their beliefs because we recognize that we're getting into some real territory, some deeper territory, into the territory where real change can happen. One of the ways that we can coach around beliefs that makes it less uncomfortable for people is to normalize. We all have beliefs.

[05:51]

It's a human thing and there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing necessarily wrong with beliefs. They can be incredibly powerful and supportive. Beliefs are thoughts. Beliefs are strongly held opinions. They are not truth.

[06:04]

They are not We have all shifted beliefs in our life and we can continue to select beliefs that feel empowering, that feel like they help us meet our core human needs for competence and belonging and purpose. And so when we are coaching beliefs and when we're normalizing them, and when we as coaches or leaders are also nonjudgmental in our beliefs, response to people's beliefs. Many people are excited to explore their beliefs. And as you said, every single action we take emerges from a belief, whether we're conscious of it or not. And so when we start bringing our awareness to what is unconscious, we feel more empowered. And one of the biggest, I would say, problems we have in our country, in our world today is that people feel disempowered.

[07:00]

They feel like everything is happening to them. There's so much change. There's so much they can't control. And so once they start experiencing these many different points where we can feel a sense of agency, which includes selecting the beliefs that we hold. We just feel better.

[07:21] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. You can feel a sense of relief when we realize we can talk about our beliefs, but also there's a kind of a discomfort there, right? That's not a familiar thing to do for most people at work. You also talk in the book about the beliefs that a transformational coach should have. Talk to us a little bit about the five beliefs of a transformational coach.

[07:37] SPEAKER_00:

So we coach other people around their beliefs. And in order to do that, we really need to be super clear about our own beliefs that we're holding. And these include beliefs about ourselves as coaches or leaders. They include beliefs about our clients or about teachers. They include beliefs about what we do and why we do it. One of the things that I really emphasize in all my work is that in order to be effective as a leader, we need to know ourselves.

[08:10]

And so this is a part of knowing ourselves is knowing our beliefs. So because every behavior we take emerges from a belief, we as leaders or coaches need to be clear on what we believe and One of the beliefs that I encourage coaches to hold and leaders is the belief that I have to start with myself, which means that in order to guide other people in their learning and their growth and their development, I have to be engaged in my own learning and growth and development. I need to explore my own behaviors, beliefs, and ways of being. I have to engage in my own PD. And that's sort of a prerequisite to being able to guide other people. We have to hold certain beliefs about our clients or the teachers that we coach.

[08:59]

We have to believe that our teachers can learn, that they can be effective, that they want to learn and grow and change. We can't coach people if we are coming in with an unconscious belief that, well, they don't want to change. There's nothing I can do. We also have to hold certain beliefs about what we do, about the ways that we engage in coaching or leadership. And one of those beliefs is that we have to prioritize relationships. That's a belief.

[09:32]

That's a stance from which we work. And we know that Human beings have a core human need for belonging and for connection. And so to be effective as coaches or as leaders, we have to believe that relationships are absolutely paramount to the whole endeavor. So those are a few of the beliefs that we need to hold as coaches or leaders.

[09:57] SPEAKER_01:

Do you ever find that people find the process of coaching threatening to their self-concept? Because in that belief about growth, I wonder what people think about their own sense of being good enough. And certainly we know in this profession, none of us are ever as good as we could be. We always need to keep growing. But certainly on the teacher evaluation side, we feel as instructional leaders, that sense of threat that we're imposing when we have a tough conversation with a teacher. And Sometimes we do believe that someone is not getting the job done, but often we think that someone is, quote unquote, good enough in terms of being satisfactory, but we still want them to grow.

[10:39]

How do coaches effectively help people navigate that threat to that sense of self-efficacy that comes from opening yourself to growth? Because I've just encountered so many people who seem to feel that if they open themselves up to coaching or to growth and to agreeing that they have opportunity for improvement, then that means admitting some sort of failure. Where does that fall in your thinking?

[11:04] SPEAKER_00:

It's helpful to make a distinction between I'm not good enough and there are things that I don't yet know how to do or I'm not doing effectively. So there's a difference between who I am at my core and the behaviors I'm able to enact. And so when we can make a distinction there, and yes, that's what a growth mindset is all about really, when we can make a distinction and say, well, this is something you just don't know how to do yet. That's okay. That's normal. Everybody has areas for growth.

[11:36]

There is a framework that I use and that I teach coaches how to use that I call the gaps framework or the gaps protocol. And it suggests anytime there's a gap between something that we want to be able to do and where we are now. Whenever we're not able to do something, there is a gap and that gap can lie in one of a number of domains. It can be a will gap, a skill gap, a knowledge gap, a capacity gap, an emotional intelligence gap, or a cultural competency gap. And the idea there is that it's an area for growth, not a deficit. It's just an area for growth.

[12:16]

And when we can get really clear on what is it we're not able to do, we actually often experience a sense of relief again, because it's taking something that is... unknown, that feels really scary, that feels big, that we're conflating with who we are because I'm not good enough has nothing to do with the contemporary experience that someone's having. It's all old stuff. And then we can help someone recognize there's something I don't know how to do yet, or there's something I'm struggling with.

[12:48]

And I know how to learn, and I'm confident in my abilities to learn. And if someone is supporting me to break that learning need down into its smallest pieces, then I can grow. And so the other thing is just learning how to support people in experiencing uncomfortable emotions like fear, because the fear that comes up is normal, it's human, and we're all going to be uncomfortable in a growth process for a normalize that, give someone some guidance on how to navigate that discomfort, and then help them see how they can move through it.

[13:31] SPEAKER_01:

I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about ways of being and how they inform your thinking about what we've just been talking about, because certainly the growth mindset that we want to be there in all educators seems like it overlaps with that a little bit. If you have someone who feels threatened by any opportunity for improvement, that it's admitting some sort of imperfection, and then they just take that very personally. Take us into your thinking about ways of being a little bit more, because I think that's the one that probably is the least familiar to our listeners. We understand beliefs, we understand behaviors, but you have a lot to say about ways of being.

[14:06] SPEAKER_00:

So I can lead folks into thinking about this by inviting listeners to think about a time, a professional time when you felt really good about something you did, whether that was teaching a lesson or facilitating a meeting or whatever. a time when you felt really good. And as you remember that moment, and perhaps as if you are reviewing it, like you're watching a movie or looking at a series of photos, asking yourself in that moment, who was I being? How was I showing up? And some of the descriptors that might come to mind include descriptors of emotions, like I was being courageous, I was being confident, I was being optimistic and hopeful. Ways of being have a lot to do with emotions.

[14:59]

And so when we coach around ways of being, we are inviting emotions into the conversation. We're acknowledging them. Sometimes people hear me begin to start talking about welcoming in emotions and think like, well, does that mean I need to be a therapist? No, we don't. There's a big difference between being a leader who has social emotional intelligence and can acknowledge other people's emotions and their own and has some tools for working with them and a therapist. It's a very different thing.

[15:32]

And it is uncomfortable for many people to start thinking about bringing emotions into a conversation because we have been so socialized in our world to think that emotions don't belong in the professional setting. You just have to leave them outside. You have to be... And that's just not realistic.

[15:56]

It's could engage with our emotions in a way that allows us to be more effective and impactful. And emotions are data. They are a source of wisdom and insight and information. And yet we are so often ignoring this resource that we all have. So when we coach ways of being, We are also coaching someone into a deeper sense of resilience and for them to connect with their resilience. And so perhaps I'm coaching a school leader who is talking about a really challenging interaction they had with a teacher and the leader is really distressed.

[16:40]

And I might ask them about which of their core values they felt were best They were not able to be living into or demonstrating in that interaction. And our core values are also ways of being. And perhaps they say, well, one of my core values is curiosity. And I realized in that conversation with that teacher that was really challenging, I stopped being curious and I was just angry and I was feeling so frustrated. They were threatening me with getting a union grievance and I was just so angry and I was not curious. And that is a conversation that goes below the what did you say and how did they respond and into why it was so hard.

[17:31]

And so that's an example of a way that we address ways of being.

[17:36] SPEAKER_01:

When it comes to emotions, it's not that we want people to suppress their emotions. It's not that all emotions are... On the one hand, we don't want to say you can't have emotions. We don't want to suppress emotions.

[17:50]

On the other hand, we don't want to say there is nothing to be done at all. Because as you said, there's an opportunity to learn from the data that's included in emotions and further develop resilience. To what extent do you think... It is a good idea for transformational coaches to try to address those emotions for people.

[18:12]

Is that a boundary that people don't want to have crossed? Is it a crucial part of capacity building? Or how do you look at that work for the coach when it comes to the coachee, the client, and their emotions?

[18:26] SPEAKER_00:

So when I first started coaching as an instructional coach, I was coaching teachers who were new to the school that I was at. They weren't necessarily new teachers, but they were new to the model of instruction that we were using at our school. And many of them were incredibly overwhelmed. And I would sit down for a coaching conversation. And I loved talking about lesson design and curriculum and different supplementary resources to use. And I would sit down all ready for that conversation.

[18:56]

And the teacher sitting across from me would start crying and saying, this is so hard and I've never experienced this. I've never had an experience that's been this hard and they would cry and cry or they would just express tremendous frustration with students and all kinds of things. And I would, you know, often pass the tissue box and kind of slide the instructional guide between us and try to get them to talk about the curriculum and the lesson plans. And I noticed after a while that Sometimes they were compliant and they would try to engage. But I noticed that like nothing was getting inside of them. Like it wasn't landing the conversation and they weren't able to actually problem solve.

[19:42]

And there wasn't follow through on our conversations. And I could tell they were sniffling through the conversation. But I didn't know what to do as a coach. I just thought, you know, what's my role? I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help them, you know, feel better, basically.

[19:54]

Or I would try to, I would share some stories from my own teaching days, but nothing seemed to help. What helped was when I started leaving the curriculum guide on the side and saying, wow, it sounds like that was a really hard day for What is the story you're telling now about yourself based on that experience with that student that gets into the realm of beliefs? Because beliefs are thoughts and thoughts can generate emotions or they generate feelings emotionally. And when we get stuck in sort of a thought loop, a feeling loop, we're not able to activate our prefrontal cortex and problem solve and use the skills that we need in order to deliver the kind of instruction that students deserve. And so when I slow things down and helped, you know, or I would say to a teacher, you

[20:47]

I can see that this is bringing up a lot of strong emotions, strong feelings. Let's hold off on designing this assessment for a few minutes. And just what's coming up for you? What do you want to share with me? People are really relieved again to have the fullness of their humanity acknowledged. And yes, there are teachers who say things like, you know, I'm just upset.

[21:12]

I'm just angry. You know, if administrators just listened and if they did this and... And so, yes, there are people for whom talking about emotions is uncomfortable and they push back and that's absolutely okay also. And we can acknowledge that and say, you know, I can hear the frustration.

[21:30]

I can hear that anger in your voice. That's really hard. Using the very basic Active listening skills, reflective listening is also another way to help people be with whatever they're experiencing, be with their feelings, to build relationship with them. So there's a lot of very specific skills that can allow all of this to happen. But when I say, you know, we are human beings and human beings have emotions and we will just get so much farther if we begin to acknowledge them and learn some skills for them navigating them, regulating them, being with them, processing them. And sometimes that does include, as I keep saying, slowing things down, reflecting back, taking a slow breath.

[22:17]

We've all been with people, with teachers, with colleagues who have felt strong emotions. And you can tell, it's so clear that they're just not in a place where they can do the sort of cognitive lifting that needs to be done in schools. And so what do we do in those moments? And there are a lot of skills and strategies we can use there. So it's what I'm talking about in terms of coaching behaviors, beliefs and ways of being is implicating a big culture shift. And it's a shift into discomfort.

[22:53]

And it may be temporary or maybe permanent, but a discomfort where, yes, we talk about things that we haven't talked about in schools. We talk about things that some of us feel like that that should not be talked about in schools. Your emotions should be left outside. We don't talk about beliefs that's too scary. That gets into dangerous realm. And I'm saying, no, we need to talk about what's uncomfortable.

[23:13]

We need to learn the skills to be with discomfort so that we can have the conversations we need to have so we can make the changes we need to make.

[23:20] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Elena, I know in this book, as in your other books, you have quite a few tools. And one of the tools in this book is the Transformational Coaching Rubric 2.0. I wonder if we might wrap up by just having you talk a little bit about how you envisioned that different types of leaders and coaches would use that because certainly I know you have a substantial audience of people who are full-time instructional coaches, but you also have a considerable following among school leaders who maybe don't have the title of coach and they have different responsibilities because they do evaluate, they play that formal administrative role. How do you see different audiences using that transformational coaching rubric with the people that they work with?

[23:59] SPEAKER_00:

I think it's a great example to think about instructional leaders who don't necessarily think of themselves as coaches but know that they want or need to do some coaching as well. The rubric is long and it gives people a reference point or a starting point for some of the key skills for coaching. for a coach or for coaching. And so one of the ways that it can be used is to just use it almost as a resource or even a checklist for what can I do if I'm going into a coaching conversation and I want just a quick reminder. So one of the indicators that's on the rubric is I guide my client to identify their own strengths. And so taking a strength based approach and having teachers identify what they're doing well, their strengths, their gifts is a strategy that we use in transformational coaching.

[24:53]

Another indicator of transformational listening is I cultivate awareness of where my mind goes when I'm listening. And I use strategies to return to presence when I wander. And so that is a key strategy for listening, for understanding, for building connection is just where is my mind when I'm supposedly listening? Am I thinking about the next question to ask? Am I ready to give advice or jump in with a suggestion? Or am I really listening?

[25:25]

And so this rubric in some ways is a bit of an outline of what transformational coaching is and can give people these anchor points or specific behaviors that they can use when they are in conversations, whether those are coaching conversations or even other kinds of leadership conversations.

[25:47] SPEAKER_01:

Fabulous. And I know the book is full of many other tools as well. And rather than ask you to give your website, I wonder if I might ask a question I've never asked before on this podcast. And that is the origin of a metaphor that you use quite frequently in this book, as well as in the name of your company. You seem to like mornings, you seem to like sunrises, things like that. Tell us a little bit about that and where people can find you online.

[26:09] SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so my company is Bright Morning, and I am up almost every day by dawn. I love the feeling of the morning. It feels so promising and energizing and exciting. I have a tremendous amount of...

[26:24]

optimism and hope. I wake up every morning with another day. What's going to happen today? I'm so excited. That is some of the origin behind the name of my company and behind the ethos and the philosophy and approach that I bring, which is there is possibility in every single conversation, even if you only have 15 minutes, we can have a really powerful conversation in that amount of time that could even be transformative. And it is really about learning the skills and strategies so that we know how to maximize those moments of possibility and potential and so my website is brightmorningteam.com i'm also on linkedin and that's where i post current thinking and reflections and i have a newsletter and a podcast and all of that can be found through my website so the book is arise the art of transformational coaching

[27:23] SPEAKER_01:

Elena Aguilar, thank you for joining me again on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[27:27] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much.

[27:29] Announcer:

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