It's Not About You. It's About Them.

Shane Leaning: Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Coaching Done Well with me, Shane Leaning and my wonderful co-host, Jim Thompson. Jim, how are doing my friend?

Jim Thompson: TCH! Well, not bad. know, we are in the mud season in upstate New York. Everybody else calls it spring, but it goes from real freezing cold to getting a lot of rain and muddy. And, but we still, I don't know if they have this in China or in Switzerland or in Texas, but we have some in New York state called potholes. and, and they, some of them are like moon craters and they do a number on your. on your car, so we're hoping those paddles start getting filled in in Western New York. How about in Shanghai, Shane?

Shane Leaning: It is now in Shanghai coming up to spring. So it's just warmed up, which is quite nice. it is. ⁓ Yeah, it's lovely. It's the cold. The cold has gone and ⁓ happy. It's nice, nice blue skies at the minute. But listen, Jim, how giddy are we? Because who'd thought a year later we'd be reliving one of our best memories on the podcast with two living legends on the show. with Bill Summers and Steve Barkley. Welcome Bill and Steve, it's wonderful to have you here.

Steve Barkley: Great to be here.

William Sommers: Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity.

Shane Leaning: Absolutely. And we've got not just living legends with us online, but we've also got other people joining us on LinkedIn. I can see we've got some people joining already. So if you are joining us listening in live on LinkedIn, welcome. We want you to be part of the conversation as usual. So please, I've got my screen up here and here. I can see you there. So say hi in the chat, ask some questions as you go. This is your opportunity to kind of learn from some really great people in there in the coaching space. So.

Jim Thompson: you

Shane Leaning: please do get involved or maybe you're tuning into the podcast on Spotify or on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, in which case, welcome. It is really, really lovely to have you here and hope you find this useful. I wonder if we could start, if I could just kind of pass it to Steve and then Bill, would you be able to yourself? You've been on the show before a year ago, but reintroduce yourself. What do you get up to and what have you been doing recently?

Steve Barkley: Hi folks, Steve Barkley here. I've got a long history of working in and of the guy who's ⁓ focused on teacher collaboration, whether coaching or PLCs or the way teachers study and learn. My ongoing phrase is teaching is a team sport and therefore needs to be a public act. Students are best served by a team and teams require trust. ⁓ that trust, I don't know how you get that trust if people are never in each other's classrooms, never see each other, ⁓ see each other work. So ⁓ driven my work across the years. I currently live in Switzerland where my... ⁓ My wife is a elementary counselor in an international school. So a ⁓ of my work is on Zoom, but I'm ⁓ back and forth to the states probably every other month, both for work and I've got grandkids there ⁓ as well.

Shane Leaning: Well, what a privilege to have you here. Thank you, Steve. Bill, over to you.

William Sommers: Well, I'll pick up on grandkids where Steve loves off. I'm in Austin, Texas, where it's 70, 80 degrees down here. And the reason is because both of my kids went to the University of Texas. And if you want to be by your grandkids, you move where they are. But I'm pretty much grounded in 40 some years in Minnesota, originally from Iowa. So was up there doing missionary work. That's a joke between Minnesota and Iowa. Um, I got into thinking skills, you know, back in the seventies and of course in the eighties ran into Steve and Art Costa, Jim Knight, people who really were instructional coaches. I pretty much, even though I do some instructional work, I'm really focused on leadership right now. And, uh, because if you can't get the culture right and it's psychologically safe. You're not going to get the transfer of knowledge as Steve talked about. The isolation is killing us. It always has. And so how do you get collaboration and sharing things? I call it the reverse Las Vegas effect. If it's working, tell everybody. If it isn't working, tell everybody. Why does everybody have to make the same mistake? how do leaders develop that learning culture? I'm really a synthesizer. bring in business. Any mod-way thing is going to work. I'll bring it to the forefront.

Shane Leaning: Well, thank you so much. And I appreciate the work you're both doing and, and it's deeply important work and it's work that is constantly evolving because we haven't got these things fixed or, you know, all right yet in a lot of places. So really super grateful. I know we're going to touch on some of those themes. So Jim, Jim, I'll hand it over to you. What do you, what's on your mind? What are you thinking for today?

Jim Thompson: Well, of course, we're thrilled to have this. It really is a dynamic tool. Talk about expertise and wisdom. Roland Barth talked about the crucial importance of sharing craft knowledge. And that's what this morning was, you know, afternoon, evening, wherever we are, is kind of all about is sharing craft knowledge with each other, because we really believe that the answer is in the room. and we're trying to create this room for people to come into share this good stuff. Well, I'm going to steal a question. I'm going to ask ⁓ general question out of eight of these wonderful people that respond to it. Then I'm going to ask a follow-up question, ⁓ kind of individually tailored to them. And then after that, I want to bring Shane in as our interlocutor and what's on his mind hearing about this stuff. This one I just stole from Michael Bungay-Stanye. It's his new question. And so I sent it to each one. So Steve, I know you're the farthest away, so I'll just repeat the question for you. ⁓ your depth ⁓ breadth of experience as a coach, what do you now believe to be true about the idea and ideal of coaching done well?

Steve Barkley: Yeah, I think I'm going to start off with a really simple response. that is when coaching is done well, it's driven by the coachee. ⁓ So if I were to look back early in my work, I focusing on what I was calling the teacher's agenda. So the job of the coach, starting out sure in a pre-conference structure, was to identify the teacher's agenda. And I would paint the picture for that of, as I'm observing in the teacher's classroom, I want to watch through the teacher's ⁓ eyes. ⁓ before I watch through my eyes. describe in my coaching conferencing, ⁓ wanna avoid telling the teacher anything I'm thinking until I'm getting a clear picture of what the teacher's thinking. So that ⁓ piece has always been there for me. In ⁓ more recent years, I've really gotten deeper into the concept that it's reflection. that is what causes the teacher's growth. So in order to get the teacher to do the reflection, I've got to be working from that teacher's ⁓ agenda. And so the teacher's thinking and the teacher's is drives me. to, I'd label it If I'm sharing knowledge with the teacher from my coaching, the teacher has informed me that they want that knowledge. If I'm modeling a lesson for the teacher, it's because the teacher has requested that modeling. The idea of modeling, it arose out of the conversation. What's something that coach put in? I I extend that ⁓ step that when I... ⁓ When I talk about modeling something for a teacher, described that the first time the coach models it, they should actually have the teacher only observe the kids and not the coach. And then the conversation afterwards, the question to the teacher is, ⁓ did see what the kids did? And if the teacher can label it, then my next question is, do you want to do that? Do you want to get kids to do that? Now, if you want to get kids to do that, then I'll come back and model again. And this time you can watch me to make the connection. But if you aren't interested in getting kids to do that, I don't have a need to, ⁓ to, to push this any further. So my task is uncovering the teacher's thinking, the teacher's wondering the teacher's purpose, that the teacher's goal. And since you started it with, with, ⁓ Michael Bungay Stainter, I'll, I'll, wrap it back up. Cause I just stole the recent piece from him and he made this statement in a podcast. Coaches need to care enough not to care. And I thought that was really powerful, because what he meant by you need to care enough about the coachee to not care about what you're thinking is the most important thing that they do. And I think that's the ideal in coaching, is it's being driven by the coachee.

Jim Thompson: I think that's lovely. I'm going to go to Bill and the same question, but I love, you know, there's a phrase you can lead a horse to water. You can't make him drink, but you can salt the roads. I love how you're trying solve the roads for modeling there with that coachee. I'm going to steal that one there. Bill over in Austin, I'm going to repeat that question for you because I want to know what's on your mind as well. We've got a great start here from your real, like Steve, depth and breadth of experience as a coach. What do you now believe to be true?

William Sommers: Yeah, you can.

Steve Barkley: Yeah.

Jim Thompson: about the idea and idea of coaching done well, Bill.

William Sommers: I think all of us started out with, we want to know all the stuff and we can be a teacher and tell people what to do. Well, the research on that is not real high. Like a quarter of the people will actually do what you think. They're usually in their early first three years of teaching. 50 % do nothing and about 25 % do the opposite. So I think Steve set this up really, really well. It's about what... What did they want to do and how can you facilitate that happening? So Peter Drucker, and you'll see me bringing in business as well as education. Drucker said years ago, the leader of the past told people what to do. The leader of the future has to ask questions. What do they want to do? And how can I make, how can I build that pathway to help it? One of the things I learned from Marshall Goldsmith was It's not about you. It's about them. I think, you know, I can be one of my coaches. Knowledge is important and it's insufficient. It's about can you do it to make a difference for kids learning? Can you do, can you make a difference for staff learning? Because if the staff isn't learning, why would the kids learn? They're the first models. Well, parents are, but you know, ultimately in the, in the school. So I also want to put the case up and ask the kids. I used to, as a principal, sit down with the kids. How's it going? one thing you'd like to see in this school? Now, ⁓ can't do everything. I get that. And they're not running the school. But we don't get student voice very often. And as a leader, again, you have to make some hard calls. But listen to the faculty. They're the ones on the front line. And once they are bought into trying something, then it really makes a difference. So think it's building that repertoire of do you get engagement, trust in the system, try things. It's okay. Amy Edmondson wrote the book, The Right Kind of Wrong. Do it, try it, see if it works. The more repertoire we have, better are, they're able, we are to address the multiple kids with multiple diverse backgrounds, et cetera. One size fits few. So best practice could be fine for those kids. What are you going to do with the kids that don't learn through best practice? And that's what Steve was alluding to. You got to come up with multiple strategies for that teacher to help kids in the classroom in real time.

Jim Thompson: Hahaha Yeah. I love it as usual and I love asking the kids how's it going? How's it going? I'm going to ask each of our guests an individual question that kind of, and I sent them, ⁓ and I'm going to go with Steve first and have them both respond to kind of an individual question. And I want to bring Shane into this as an interlocutor, kind of what's on his mind with all this stuff to get this rocking and rolling. Steve, the question for you is you recently did a wonderful piece from telling to thinking. a feedback continuum for students and teachers. you talked about this, you said, you take a look at explicit feedback, ⁓ feedback, mentoring responses and coaching responses, and the idea of Dan Myers to be less helpful when designing learning experiences. These, to me, all point to the artistry of coaching. ⁓ Steve, you? ⁓ Share with our audience a little bit more about these ideas and ideals and how they play out to advance coaching done well.

Steve Barkley: Yeah, I'll kick it off with a quote from Tom Schimmer. I've had a couple of chances to have him on my blog. Tom wrote the Agile Classroom, and he had a statement that the purpose of feedback is not to tell students what they did wrong, but to move their learning forward. So he was talking about teachers responding to students in the classroom. So now if I bring that into coaching with teachers, I'd say moving forward ⁓ the key. And ⁓ frequently talk about replacing feedback with feed forward. I describe to ⁓ folks, reason you went into classrooms to evaluate a teacher was to give the teacher feedback. Your conversation about what happened. When you switch to coaching, Your purpose of being in the classroom is to give feed forward. The only reason we're here today is because we're interested in tomorrow. happened today really doesn't have much to do other than how ⁓ plays into tomorrow. So ⁓ wrote that blog because I'm working a particular school, a year-long project, looking at feedback. And one of the items we were exploring was explicit feedback, where you're giving ⁓ very specific knowledge and information to the person. And sometimes looking at students, sometimes students need that very specific piece of information. But getting students to think is where we're eventually headed with our feedback. So if all my feedback did was get you to correct what you had wrong, we really didn't grow from it. but getting you to think is the critical part. So if you think about a continuum, on one end of the continuum you have open, and on the opposite end of the continuum you have explicit. It's not about picking one or the other, it's where does the student need you to be. And if you were to, ⁓ again, think that continuum, consider in the middle you have scaffolding. So sometimes I'm telling you, sometimes I'm scaffolding you to get there, and sometimes I'm just asking you the question that causes you to explore it yourself. So now if I took that and I went into the most instructional coaches, on one end of the continuum they have coaching. That's when they're most ⁓ in generating the teacher's thinking. Some folks may put cognitive coaching that on the continuum. If I go all the way to the other end of the continuum in the most explicit, it's ⁓ supervisory. And then I might stick in the middle of it, it's mentoring. So now my job is to figure out where is the person on here. Just today, I was coaching a coach and she described that she has a teacher new to their school, second year there, and she hasn't been using the department's rubric in... in grading students and it's caused a backlash. So she's asking me, do we go in and put her on a plan for next year, an improvement plan? And I said, you may get there, but I'll tell you how I would start. I wanna know the thinking that went into not using the rubric that the department has. That's my opening question. And she got really excited when she heard that from me. She said, man, that's a great idea. Because if she gave you reasons that you can't accept for why she didn't use the rubric, that's a good place to jump in. Now, if she came back and said, well, I didn't know we had to use the rubric. And my response would be, well, so if you knew we had to use the rubric, you'd have used it. Well, yeah, OK, now I can jump in and help you use it. It's figuring out where a person would fall. all along that continuum. So think that work giving just the right amount that causes the person to go on and grow. Telling right up front that she's wrong just makes it more difficult for you to get the teacher to dig in. And ⁓ when I that piece from Dan Myers, he was talking about math teachers and scaffolding. And ⁓ I for long time,

Jim Thompson: Thank

Steve Barkley: thought I was in classrooms where over scaffolding was more of a problem than under scaffolding. There were a couple of kids who needed the scaffolding and they weren't getting that. That's serious problem. But kids who were having to go through the scaffold and were missing the opportunity to struggle and figure it out on their own, they were missing out. So Dan's advice was... you're going to err, err on the side of ⁓ enough scaffold, because you can always add it. But once you stick the scaffold in, it's to go back and take it away. So that's where I am with my coaching. If you think about my continuum, I'm going to start on that open end and then I'll move to or I'll move to being more explicit, the degree to which I find I need it.

Jim Thompson: I love the thinking out loud. I love the thinking out loud of craft knowledge. Bill, my question to you is you wrote a piece in December on this more interesting notion of arc builders. Could you share with us what you mean by that term arc builders, Bill, and who are some of your arc builders and how do we model arc building in our coaching and mentoring in the quest to become better versions of ourselves?

William Sommers: Well, let me pick up on a term that Steve just used called feed forward. In about 2015, I read a book called What Got You Here Will Not Get You There. Duh. Obviously, there's some things that we've done in the past that will work. But it's not going to be sufficient for where we're going, because we don't know where we're going. And so how do you build that? So Marshall Goosemith wrote that and You know, know me, I just called him up and or emailed him and said, I want to talk to you. I didn't know he was like the number one business coach 10 years in a row. The next day he called me and says, I got 30 minutes where you want to talk about, about getting right to it. And then I went through stakeholder centered coaching and feet forward is one of the key elements of stakeholder centered coaching. You can't the past. If you've done something wrong, know, promptly admit it. Make amends whatever you have to do. But what are gonna do now? If it didn't work, what are you gonna do now? And Steve's right. What's the plan going forward? So that you can give people hope. I know hope gets in the strategy, but without hope, it's really tough going. You know, tough sledding, because memory grips the pass. will get accelerated hope. So ⁓ that's Goldsmith and Frank Wagner, the co-founders, have been arc builders for me. the reason I wrote that is that I think it was Howard Ruff and Cardinal Cushing said, it wasn't raining with no ability arc. Well, it's raining right now in education. Who in the hell is building an arc? Because this is not going very well.

Steve Barkley: Thank you.

William Sommers: I know that Europe and Asia and other places are worse show in America is still stuck on test scores. How's that working for us? We have more disaffected kids, more running out of the public schools. And so we're trying to, you know, do career tech and all kinds of things, which is good. mean, it does generate things. second thing is, you know, no, I think it was Don Beck said,

Steve Barkley: you

William Sommers: There are no more medals or prizes for predicting rain. There are five people who are building ARCs. So who are the people who are building ARCs? Well, I go back to Art Costa and Ben Kaleck on Habits of Mind. John Safir at the Research for Better Teaching is one of my go-to gurus. The guy wrote a book called High Expectations in Teaching, 50 Ways to Prove to Kids They're Smart. Well, what else besides student efficacy and teacher efficacy do you want? It's the highest driver of learning. Andy Hargraves, he has 10 elements on professional collaboration. So these are people that I look to and then business, of course, know, the Marshall Goldsmiths, Edgar Schein, who's now since passed, Peter Block, Richard Sheridan, who runs Menlo Innovation, wrote the book Joy, Inc. Richard Sheridan has a mission statement from Menlo to end human suffering because of technology. I don't think I'm ever going to get there. However, I just talked to him about a week ago and I said, can I use that for my website, Learning on the Bores, which has a lot of free stuff, by the way, just use it. And so I'm thinking about ⁓ a mission statement for my Learning on the Bores, end human suffering because of schools. How do we get joy in learning again? Learning is the key. Is it helping learning or is it inhibiting learning? And what are you doing to make that happen? you know, that's, that's where the is we want ⁓ people in a better society. The how is where, you know, Steve and Costa and Jim Knight and other people come in and here are some processes that will help move the learning forward. Again, I'm focused more on leaders right now because if you're not in the right culture, the culture will win. You can take a great person, put him in tough culture, culture will eat him alive eventually.

Jim Thompson: Yes, yes. I love it. Shane, we got a lot on your mind here with these wonderful guys. What's on your mind here now, Shane?

Shane Leaning: I honestly, I don't know where to start. literally, I like got pages full of notes here because I just feel I'm learning so much. There was a few things that really stood out to me with, what you were saying. I mean, to kind of go back to what you both started off saying with coaching done well, it's thinking about what the coachee wants to do. It's driven by the coachee. it's, and it's ⁓ is what I was taking. from you like in terms of that process. And I really liked Steve, the way you talked about that scaffolding process of, of starting with minimal really, what have you got? You know, let's work on what you've got, but also as a coach, there's some expertise we can draw on, but that is not the first place. That is not where we start. We start with you and where you are. And I, I it. was thinking you, ⁓ can't remember the term you use, but it's almost ⁓ well being. passionately dispassionate. don't know who said that. Like it was the really, a really nice phrase. And I also love, this has just given me that really. ⁓

Steve Barkley: Michael's phrase there, Shane, was caring enough not to care. That's what I say. I just make sure it's, you give him the credit, but it just jumped out at me because I thought it was brilliant.

Shane Leaning: caring enough not to care. I love that. I love that.

Jim Thompson: that.

Shane Leaning: Isn't it? ⁓ wonderful. This guy, how does he keep coming up with these terms that are very addictive, very jealous of his wordsmithing. I love it. And I just also love this kind of forward thinkingness of that you both have kind of like always looking forward. And that's what good coaching is about. It's about kind of taking the next step and

Steve Barkley: Hahaha!

Shane Leaning: You know, I don't know. It was making me think, you know, the world at the minute, things that go, and we just get a little bit obsessed on ruminating and we can kind of get, have this tendency to ruminate on what's happening and start to go there. And actually I think coaches have this wonderful space to kind of, ⁓ with, to, lift people into the future and bring some positivity and bring what you were talking about, Bill about joy into learning, which is where we need to, where we need to be. So. ⁓ my mind is buzzing. And it's not just my mind that's buzzing, by the way, we have good people joining us online. We've got comments coming in as well. Everett good Lord, gents, it's hard to keep up with all these people you're referencing and all these materials, which is good. Thanks for that, Everett. Faya also joins us and says change education isn't just about adding new tools, it's about shifting the culture. And she goes on to talk about, for example, standardization to personalization. She asked a question, she wonders, she'd love to hear your thoughts on which of these shifts is most critical in our current environment in shifting from standardization to personalization. ⁓ wonder Bill or Steve, before I pass back to you Jim, do you have any thoughts on that question from FIRE?

William Sommers: Well, first of all, do you want standardized kids? Jesus, Jenny. where innovation is going to be standardized kids. I, you know, obviously AI has got some really good things and some really bad things, you know, about it. And that we're going to have to figure out how that works. But the same time, ⁓ know. Do we want to test kids learned optimism, questioning There's an old story about Itzhak Rabi, Nobel Prize physicist. And they asked ⁓ how come ⁓ became a Prize winning physicist? And he said, well, most of my friends came home, the parents said, what did you do in school today? And they say nothing or bored or whatever. He said, when I came home, my mother said, what questions did you ask today? Is he so, you know, the learner has some responsibility, what's the questions? And so like in the stakeholder coaching, I work with leaders and say, what's one thing that you if you had the question to, which sets you free? I got that from Peter block. I want to know what what was going to make your life better than letting us build a strategy to elevate that and all kinds of positive things happen. A quick example, and I'm sure Steve has made more of these, but you go into it as a principal, you go into a teacher's classroom. What do want me to focus on? Well, I want to know how many kids are off task. I will reframe that and say. Would you be interested in knowing how many kids are on task? Because you're going to get what you look for. So sometimes you got to reframe and know, the skis are matched with that as well. how do you get them focused on what you can do, not what you can't control?

Jim Thompson: Thank you. Thanks.

Steve Barkley: Take that question, Shane, back to coaching. I talked about with the coachee being the drive of ideal coaching, ⁓ the personalized component. And one of the problems we have in our schools is some schools are saying they want it for the kids, but they aren't doing it for the teachers.

Jim Thompson: Suck it.

Shane Leaning: Yeah. Hmm. It's one of the

William Sommers: I'll give you an example of a teacher. I'll give you example of a teacher. One of my teachers came in. She was a Spanish teacher. I do not speak Spanish. She came in and said, this was the summertime. And she said, I want an hour of your time. And I said, Barb, why do you want an hour of my time? said, well, you always give me good ideas. I said, I don't know how to speak Spanish. I don't even know how to teach Spanish as a physics major. I don't tell you what to do. She said, okay, all I know is when I come out of these conversations, I have more ideas. I'm your guy.

Jim Thompson: You

Shane Leaning: I love that. love that. It's and Everett's commented back saying reframing is really powerful in education. It's getting me thinking of something as well. Have I got the one of my favorite books, which I can't find now because my wife's reorganized my shelves into by color. Do you see? So said there it is. This is I love this book. It's by Johnny Utley and John Thomson putting staff first. it sounds like counterintuitive to put stuff first, because I don't know about ⁓ don't know ⁓ where you three are based. But in the UK, there was a big a lot of things about student first, student first, student first. And sadly, it became to the detriment of all adults in the building and, you know, regardless of them. And actually, this book really kind of helped me to think, you know, if we put the staff first, then they can put the students first. I think it kind of speaks to what you were mentioning, Steve, there.

William Sommers: I'll give you one resource on my learning omnivores.com. I've got five, six pages of lot of book summaries. So I can save people a lot of time, then you decide whether you want to read the book or get deeper. But it's all free. You don't have to pay me anything. Although I should be on demrind. I won't go there. But there's a lot of free stuff out there. And one other thing, Art Costs, years ago, and he's been my mentor for 40 years. We were doing a training in thinking skills and at dinner he looked at me and he said, Bill, you're a press boy. I said, yeah. He said, what are you doing to create a mentally stimulating environment for your staff? And I looked at him dumbfounded and said, I got to do that too? And this is typical art coaching. He said, well, if you don't do it for your staff, why do you think they'll do it for kids?

Steve Barkley: Bill probably knows the reinforcement ⁓ as to where this came from. you just talked about, ⁓ Shane, came out of the business sector where the was, it's not client first. It's the staff first. ⁓ a business focuses on ⁓ the client's right, the client's first, is not going to have the staff to ⁓ make that And certainly our schools are the same.

William Sommers: Thank you.

Shane Leaning: For sure. Jim, what's on your mind with all of this? I imagine your mind's ticking.

Jim Thompson: I just love it. A quick connection and then a final question for everybody here. I and I talk about coaches because it's always about the coach and it is, but coaches got to take care of themselves. And what are we told when we get on an airline? Put the oxygen mask on who first? On us. And boy, our coaches need that oxygen mask. You know, they're servant leaders and they're putting the oxygen mask over here and here. But, you know, we've got to work on the wellness of our coaches as well. that's a connection. here's a final question here. Final question. We are blessed to have you guys here. We hope you're coming back next year. You know, we don't have a sponsor, but if we ever see you in New York, I owe you a slice with minimum, minimum of two toppings. Okay, minimum of two toppings. So on a more serious notion here, here's a wrap up question in here and we're blessed to have you here. they're wonderful books. evocative coaching. Megan and Bob Shannon Moran include a chapter on listen for stories. And they quote the wonderful Parker Palmer who said this, we must remember the simple truth. The human soul does not want to be fixed. It wants simply to be seen and heard. We are hearing so much about loneliness. It's a national epidemic. We're seeing about the idea of sense of belonging. Jim Knight, thank you. When we had him on our show, he recommended Kate Murphy's new book, Why We Click, and the idea of connection. So I'm going to ask you guys here, and again, thank you. this is, I didn't send you this in advance, but you guys have got this wisdom here. Say we're having this conversation five years from now. What would be your hope with coaching stories that evoke being seen and heard? So I love, I didn't say any of this in advance, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on five years from now. What's your hope with coaching stories that evoke being seen and heard? Can I go to Switzerland and Steve first, and then we'll wind it up with Austin? Thanks.

Steve Barkley: Well, I'll tell you, Jim, all that's going through my head with that is model the model. And what I mean by that is until kids are seen and heard in the classroom, whether you want to call it personalization, whether you're calling it whether calling it developmental relationships and kids until kids ⁓ are and heard, the stage isn't set for learning. And so if we're going to carry that same thing over, the of the coach, when I'm uncovering a teacher's agenda and having the teacher drive our coaching, it's really about, I need to hear your story. I need to convince you that I not only heard your story, but I understand your story. I know why your story is important to you. and know that when I'm here working with you, that story is in my mind. be driven by it the same way you are.

Jim Thompson: It's beautiful, same question to Neil. What's your hope ⁓ years from now with coaching stories that evoke being seen and heard?

William Sommers: referred to this before Rich Sheridan, who wrote the book, Joy, his second book was the chief joy officer. And he calls himself the CEO and chief storyteller. Because stories is what evokes people forward. If you go to a workshop, how much of us remember the data and all the resources and all that you remember the stories, because they touch your heart and your mind, they put it together. So that's why a couple of my books have stories in them. What are the stories that tee things up to get the conversation going? I do not have this summary on my website, but I highly, highly, highly recommend it. Zach Muriel, I don't even know he's at Harvard, but he wrote a book called The Power of Mattering. People need to know they matter. And in five years, if people know they matter, things are going to be a lot different than, this is bomb them or let's just, know, screw them. They're not, everybody can contribute. I really, he really caused me to do a lot of thinking. So the power of mattering is one. I would ask people to read education, but read off, read about innovation, read about The Rebels, another book I read, Art of Insubordination, which has gotten me in trouble, by the way. Read that you don't necessarily ⁓ read. my last recommendation, what I hope, ⁓ is being choosy. Who do you hang with? Do you hang with people who sap you suck you dry? ⁓ Or are you hanging with people who zap you and energize you? Because the more you hang with people who zap your energy, you go home and go, well, who wants to follow that? come up with it. And still I'll go right back to it's about relationships building trust. One of my posts was build trust or become toast. And then Where does this fit? How does this make my life better by using this? I still can't figure even as a math minor doing the quadratic formula. I know it's on the test, but getting two intercepts when a curved line is not going to send me to the moon. I want to know where I can use this stuff. So relevance is the other one. Rigor will take care of itself. If you got relationship and relevance, you don't have to worry about rigor. You'll get it. Motivation, take care of yourself.

Jim Thompson: ⁓ lovely, lovely.

Steve Barkley: Bill, I just want to reinforce something you said earlier, Bill, where you said hope was important. Is that the strategy? I think it is a strategy. ⁓ what we got to be looking for in the stories. ⁓ people's stories have hope in them.

William Sommers: Yeah.

Jim Thompson: Amen.

William Sommers: I agree.

Jim Thompson: Amen. Amen.

William Sommers: Right. Well, and I would add there's a book of 365 stories from indigenous cultures. think it's Modern Wisdom for the White Mind. They want to say Shaft Wilson. Another book called Millennium Tribal Wisdom for the Modern World. There are stories, you stories from indigenous cultures. They've been around for thousands of years. Not one of them had a three ring binder full of policy.

Jim Thompson: Yes.

William Sommers: The story is a metaphor.

Steve Barkley: Great line. That's a great line, Bill.

Jim Thompson: Shane, what's on your mind as we wind up our time with these fabulous guys?

Shane Leaning: Well, I'm just really thankful to have spent this time. You know, I mean, there's the most difficult position of all, think, this call in that it's nearly 9 p.m. at night. and I I get energized by these conversations, I don't get to sleep very well. So this was definitely an energy giving conversation. And I'm super, super grateful for that. So thank you both for sharing so much. ⁓

Steve Barkley: Yeah.

Shane Leaning: episodes like this are ones where I know I need to go back on Spotify on Apple podcasts and relisten because there is a lot. There's only so much my note taking can do I need to relisten to this again.

Jim Thompson: in the

William Sommers: Jim and Shane, thank you for putting Steve and I together because I have the utmost respect for Steve and we get together about once a year at Jim Knight's conferences. so I remember way back we were in Pennsylvania, think probably 30 years ago, where we met.

Shane Leaning: That's awesome. Well, it's a privilege to be able to bring you together. And Jim, do you have a closing word before we before we say ⁓ good morning, good afternoon, good night? Yeah.

Jim Thompson: Heath brothers wrote that wonderful book called The Power of Moments. I getting at our age, getting long in the tooth here, you cherish these moments and I really And going back to Shannon Moran's wonderful book, E.B.O.C.H.E. of Coaching, they said trust really begins when the coachee trusts you enough to start sharing their story. Well, Bill and Steve, thank you for sharing your stories today. Thank you for sharing your expertise. You guys are witnesses to the good, witnesses to the good in making a difference and continuing to make a difference. And we're blessed. We're blessed for your work and we're blessed with your friendship. And we hope to see you again next year, please.

Shane Leaning: you

Steve Barkley: Thanks for the opportunity.

William Sommers: Hey, we're

Shane Leaning: goodness. ⁓ ⁓ Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Jim. Also thanks to those who've tuned in online. Fire, ⁓ Doug. It's really great to have you here. Please tune in again. ⁓ time we've got some incredible coaches from around the world. We're going to Ireland in our next episode, which is super exciting. There'll be more, more information about that coming soon. So please do join us on ⁓ LinkedIn live we go live. ⁓ every time we do this podcast or find us on Spotify or Apple podcast to kind of catch up catch up. In fact, I'm going to go back and listen to our conversation a year ago and have a little listen of that as well. So that'd be great. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in the world. Thank you so much for joining us.

Steve Barkley: Thank you. Take care.

Jim Thompson: Thank you so much.

William Sommers: Bye.