Coaching For School Leaders | A Conversation with Joanne Robinson

Coaching is this careful, professional development that really does spark curiosity, keep the values at the centre of what people are doing, creates that intrinsic motivation, helps to make people feel valued and competent. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning, welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. As an organisational coach, I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence, make better decisions and create winning teams. And on this show, we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership.

This episode is supported by the International Centre for Coaching in Education and the International Curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more. My guest today is Jo Robinson. Jo brings years of experience in teacher training and professional development.

She's been working in postgraduate teacher education since 2018, before joining the ICCE, which is a partner of this podcast. She has been before then a director of international programs for TESS, where she led the global delivery of their IPGC and MA. Today we're diving into something that's been on both of our minds recently, the gap in leadership development. What happens after all those intensive programs finish?

Why does so much CPD just stop? And what can executive coaching offer that traditional PD maybe just can't? Let's jump right in. Talking specifically about school leaders, you get programs like the MPQ, which are very Anglo-centric but still very high quality.

And I know roll out very widely internationalists. There's quite a few people taking them from across the world with UK-based providers. And they look at things like implementing change in schools. So they're very, very effective at what they do, but they're only scratching the surface.

So you get an intensive say 18 month program where you're doing this professional development. And then like most CPD, it stops and it's a bit like, well, what next? So there seems to be a space. So some people will look at qualifications like the master's degrees.

They might look at something like even a PhD MBA. And we see more MBAs happening now with school leaders too. It's a really big commitment financially for the MBA. And I think that's one of the things that if you were thinking about doing something like that, it would definitely be speaking to the schools group that you're part of and seeing if there's anything that financially they could do to support because often the price in a way that I think makes the assumption the business will pay for it rather than the individual and because they are quite expensive.

But you've got that opportunity for something that will be postgraduate level, really critical in the way that it's tailored and getting a kind of a taste of things like business corporate theory. When we set up the course that we currently run, which is the ILM level seven in executive coaching, we wanted something that really gave the opportunity to make it bespoke for education. So first of all, the qualification that we're doing at the minute is not specific to education. It is out there for everybody.

So it can be used a lot in corporate and it is this executive coach and it's looking at how we coach leaders. But we've got this space that we've taken, which is to look at that content and really make it relevant and resonant to international education because we felt that there's not a lot out there for people. And in my previous role, I was a director of international programs for a major training provider for about five years. And I was running things like IPGCE, the master's degree, writing the courses, lecturing, working very closely with learners.

And it just became very apparent that in the research the business was doing, the research that was out there for various bodies, that professional development is something that really is still very lacking in schools. And that's for everybody, especially in the international market. There wasn't a lot of good quality professional development out there. And I think what's nice about looking specifically at creating a coaching culture in school, it's not just about initial training, which a lot of CPD looks like.

So people go along, spend a day in a workshop, have a trainer come in. It might be the insect date at the start of the year. And this is for everybody, not just the leaders, for all the teachers, for all your staff, everybody sits in that session. They do something proactive, you know, there's some activities.

They might come away thinking, yeah, I feel quite inspired by that. And then nothing else happens. And this is often the problem we've got with CPD. I mean, there was a big report released this week.

It was by the Teacher Development Trust, actually. I think you've spoken with them quite recently. And of course, they are focused on teacher development and CPD, but they've done a big piece of research or they've drawn on the survey that someone else has done. I'm not entirely sure how it originated, but basically saying that people are still feeling like it's not working.

CPD doesn't work. And I think this is why it's because if we go in, we have our day, we have a lovely day, and we might feel inspired, and then nothing happens. And so when you look at actually the MPQ content, which revolves a lot around the EEF's implementation guidance for changing, practicing schools, there's a big focus on how do we follow up? How do we embed training into a culture?

How do we actually look at creating a shift in culture? This is why coaching is an interesting thing to study and to use, because it's not just about an idea introduced. It's about that embedding over time. It's a critical reflection on practice.

It's a strategy. It changes who you are as a person because it is all about that reflection on self. I think most of what we know we need to do as professionals, and yet something we give so little time to in reality, because our jobs are so busy and our lives are so busy. A lot of the work I do in change is working out how we sustain change over the time.

And I agree, these kinds of coaching cultures or coaching conversations are a key part of that because it's about hooking on to, okay, what are you learning? What are you working on right now? And how do we keep setting goals and monitoring and talking through how you're progressing and coaching can provide that, which to me is just brilliantly exciting. And I'm particularly excited that the stuff that you're doing is coaching training specifically for international school leaders.

Like it's actually thinking about what the actual experience is like in an international school in a leadership setting. I mean, I wonder if we could speak a little bit to that. A lot of the PD that international schools get offered to them often comes from domestic really. It's like British PD that's transplanted abroad or American paid transplants abroad.

Do you have any views on what's been happening there? You see that all the time. And I think most of teacher training that's offered because ITT teacher training was my background is still very, what we call Anglo centric that comes out of the UK. And actually what we found was there's a lot of other types of schools out there.

As everybody knows, there's lots of people that are working to British curriculum and the diversity of international schools. There's so many different kinds of school. It's so difficult to typify an international school because they're all very, very unique places. Things that I found about them, that inquiry culture seems to be very prevalent in international education.

So really wanting to be global citizens, really seeking out that critical thought, critical reflection and a real passion for how do we instill this in our children too. And that's been fairly universal actually. So all the different schools I've visited through my time in my different roles, that's always been evident. There's a real drive for that.

We want our children to be thoughtful, engaging and really trying to create these positive, inquisitive, like you were saying, that curious wanting to learn behaviours, the behaviours for learning that we hope to see. And it's about having that for your staff too. We know that competency is what keeps teachers in teaching. So we've got huge rates of attrition from teaching.

We see this everywhere, the serious, serious teacher shortages and of course in the international market, more and more schools being built. It's getting a bigger and bigger market. So there's more and more of a demand for good quality teaching and yet there aren't the teachers. And so what we need to do is first of all, attract teachers into the industry, into the sector and not necessarily just from the traditional sort of Western countries that would feed into the international market.

But from everywhere, local teachers should be looking to make the moves into international education, saying nothing else. That's so important for equity and diversity. But what are schools doing then to support those people? Beyond that initial teacher training, and it's that bit.

And we saw survey results saying, 25% of international teachers, I think this is a test survey that was done around 2020-21 about international education. 25% saying we're thinking about leaving because we're not getting any development. They were just going to atrophy. And I think it's keeping people professionally engaged and curious because like I said, every time I've worked with people from international schools, they naturally seem to be really professionally engaged and curious.

So it's giving them the chance to study things that allow them to keep finding expertise, to keep trying new things, to stay fresh, but also create that space for professional reflection because that's the difference between being somebody who goes through life with some purpose, with some strategy, making choices that they align to things that matter to them compared to a lot of us in teaching. I know I certainly was for the 20 years that I was teaching, firefighting, just trying to get through the day, dealing with things that came up, falling into roles rather than strategically choosing where I went because of just the chaos that I was allowing myself to exist in. And I wasn't taking a step out of it. And I think I've learned a lot since I've moved from being a teacher to a teacher trainer and really looking at leadership management, really looking at the theoretical side of how we can work in schools and wishing I knew then what I know now, I think things would be very, very different.

But for schools, the nice thing about coaching is it's so bespoke because you train your coaches whether to do that. We train the people to coach, but your individuals are getting the chance to work on the things that matter to them. And we think about motivation, what drives motivation? So you've got intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

So extrinsic is the way that we normally work most of the time, which is carrot and stick, which is we give reward or we punish and people will be motivated out of nervousness because they haven't done something or to get a reward. But long term, that doesn't create satisfaction. Intrinsic motivation, which is what we're trying to get our children to be able to do, comes from autonomy. It comes from mastery and purpose.

I mean, Daniel Pink wrote a book about motivation. It's such a good book. It's such a good summary of a lot of really important research. And I do all sorts of workshops on helping children to develop these skills and looking at behavior for learning and looking at creating efficacy and self-determination, things like that.

Because we want to see that independence and that understanding of their learning. We need it for staff. We're still learning. It doesn't stop because you're a teacher.

And I think there's that expectation of teachers turning up as these fully formed outstanding practitioners who are just ready to go. And that's that. And then occasional CPD to just look at something different. And that's how it's approached.

Whereas coaching is this ongoing, careful, professional reflection, professional development that really does spark curiosity, keep the values at the center of what people are doing, and help to create that competency. So help to deal with that issue that we've got where teachers say, I'm five years in. I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing. I think I'm in the wrong job.

And that's what we see a lot. We see a lot of people leaving before they hit the five year mark. I think that's why coaching could make a real difference. So recruiting but retaining.

I honestly think having a coaching culture in schools creates that autonomy, creates that intrinsic motivation, helps to make people feel valued and competent. And I think that's why it's such an important thing. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. The ICA have been around for 30 years now, championing quality, unlocking potential, and improving learning in international schools.

And what I really love is that right at their core is the model for improving learning. This is a model focused on the learning experience, and they have got tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources, and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours. If you're interested, head to internationalcurriculum.com.

This episode is supported by the International Center for Coaching in Education, and I am actually on their current cohort. I don't recommend anything I don't believe in, and I am genuinely excited to be strengthening my coaching practice this year. The ILM Level 7 Certificate in Executive Coaching is built specifically for senior leaders in international schools. It's fully online, really practical, and honestly, learning alongside other school leaders who get the context we work in as being brilliant.

If coaching is something you want to develop properly, not just dabble in, head to theicce.org or click the link in the show notes and listen us to this podcast, get an exclusive 5% discount using the code SHANE5. That's SHANE5. I'm curious, because the course, the ICCE is all about leaders who lead leaders.

It's coaching leaders. We touched on the teachers there. What's the value in your mind of leaders being able to coach their leaders? We've started there.

That isn't going to be the only thing we do, so we will be looking to introduce the further courses that are going to be more teacher specific. It's not exclusive to leaders. I think if anybody was an aspiring leader, to somebody who knows that they're wanting to take those steps into leadership, as long as you can find people who are willing to be coached, so people who are already in that senior leadership role, it doesn't stop people who are teaching now from taking the course, because I think an aspirational thing, it'd be a really lovely thing to start to understand some of the models of leadership and management and start to really explore how leaders think before you step into that role. A bit like when we have aspiring leaders do MPQ.

I run MPQ groups and I've got a lot of mixture of very, very experienced people, people new to role and aspiring, people who aren't in role yet but want to make that step. So I think it's a really important thing, because again, it's about that professional curiosity. If they know they're interested in leading, beginning to study some leadership is important. But in terms of leaders coaching other leaders, I think there's an expectation that when you hit senior leadership, you know what you're doing.

I think imposter syndrome is rife. It's so funny, people think it's just them. I've never met one person who doesn't have it. I think we all get it and it's because of that and it's a conscientiousness, it's a desire to want to do well in the role but knowing that actually when you step up into a role, that is a new role.

You don't know it and it will take time and yet this is a gap in the leadership ladder. There's loads and loads of stuff out there, and this is in corporate too, loads of stuff out there to train new leaders to start leading. There is a gap in training leaders of leaders about how you lead other leaders. So what you get is this situation and it happens a lot and I've worked corporately and I've worked in schools where you have a senior leader that rather than when they line manage their leaders beneath them are talking about the day-to-day running and the operational side of running that business or that institution.

So for example in a school, said Deputy Head who was meeting with the Head of Humanities and talking about what's happening in history lessons or geography lessons or MFL, rather than how are you leading your team, what's going on with the people, it's how do we lead other people to lead effectively. And again we have massive attrition and so having leadership that is empathetic, that leads with EQ as well as IQ, that has an understanding of treating every person as a learner and knowing that nobody comes fully formed, we've got to move away from that. We treat children all the time as ongoing, they're learning, we never stop learning and yet for some reason it's that fully formed thing again. We expect teachers and leaders to be fully formed and we never are, it never stops, we can always learn more.

And so treating people as potential, so when you've got staff rather than thinking you've got a higher outside to fill a role, looking at potential and also the other thing that's very dangerous in leadership which I think coaching is very helpful for is digging into assumptions, we all make assumptions about people, we all make assumptions about how we work, it's a very natural thing to do especially when you've got a lot of experience, how do you know for sure that is the case? So like when you make an assumption about how somebody teaches because you've seen them teach twice, you don't know that person. So when you're thinking about this role, we've got this vacancy in leadership, that person said they're interested if someone teach twice and there was this issue, this issue, that's not enough of a picture of who that person is professionally and the capacity they have for learning and you need to have more professional conversations with people, you need to know people better. It's the same for the children.

I love that example you just gave, so you've got a leader who is like I've seen this teach twice and therefore I've made a judgment on them. How would coaching practices help a leader to not fall into that trap? If they've been coached, it's the idea of approaching things with curiosity and seeking to know for certain or as certain as we can be and finding information from other sources, so triangulation of information is really important. Looking at the whole picture and gathering as much evidence of the whole pictures you can have and if they are coaching that person, well that opens up so much possibility because then they get to know the drivers for that person. I mean

really years ago when I started 2002 teaching and when I trained, lesson observation back then wasn't like a performance management measurement stick. The idea was always it was formative, it was a professional conversation, it was a reflection on practice that was supposed to be mutual, so you were supposed to sit down with the person who'd observed you after you've been observed and when we said feedback, what feedback was, was the leader or person who'd observed you would then say, well these are the things that I took from it. From your perspective, what do you think went on? Where can we see there were points that we think, yeah this worked well?

Where are the things that we think maybe want to investigate interrogating a little bit more enough for the next time? Yet lesson observation became, even learning walk which we have now, walking on the spot of judgment and walk out. It's not a full picture of what happens in that person's practice and it's such a contrived environment as a lesson observation anyway, there's so many factors that make it not a very natural way of seeing that person teach and that's why I think if that's the only way people are judging the stuff they've got, it's very risky and what it means is, and I see this all the time, it holds back where you have got talent and you have got potential and where you've got the opportunity, this striving to recruit externally which is so expensive and so difficult especially in international schools when you've got people, it's about how are they as a learner? How willing are they to reflect on what they do?

How do they respond to feedback? Have you had evidence of okay they didn't have a great observation but did somebody sit down with them, talk about the practice? Have they done something about it? It's that how responsive are they? How

willing to take on board new ideas are they? How informed are they? Those are the things I'd be interested in rather than I went into a lesson and it wasn't very good but that's a true thing. I love that and it's encapsulated by what you said at the beginning which is it develops curiosity and if you can develop your curiosity muscles you're going to be a much better leader in so many different situations and coaching obviously is like one of the best curiosity builders either being coached or being a coach as well. I'm really

curious about that you're doing the ILM and you mentioned it's a corporate coaching tool that you've then applied to international education so are there like corporate structures that you teach on this course or a part of this that you think are actually really useful to education because I think when many educators hear anything corporate we all kind of curl up a little bit inside. You see it's such a shame because it's really interesting theoretically really interesting thing to look at and actually practical tools of business management could be very very advantageous for people working in senior leadership and education. When you move into a mark because you do you have businesses international education is a business and when you move into business leadership which is what you do when you're SLT in a school having some understanding of some of those mechanisms could be very very useful. You are a position where you're marketing your institution. You are your

stakeholder management is customer management. There's all these things that you've got to take on board. Financial responsibilities, duty of care around that and managing your budget but you know as part of a wider group and how you deal up with this is the other thing I'm finding interesting about any leadership. You're never at the top of a chain as a leader.

You might get a little bit more autonomy as you go but you're always answerable to somebody. If you're in an organization you always have responsibility to somebody and it's that management of everybody's management of all your stakeholders that sit above you. We often spend a lot of time thinking about how we lead down you know so looking at what people are doing day to day on the ground but actually a lot of the job is how you vision share and strategize and include above and get them on board with what you want to achieve for your school. So there's so many interesting things that go on but the ILM model isn't sector specific. That's the

thing. It's used a lot. When we talk about executive leadership coaching most people use that in a corporate setting. So it's come up really through corporate and when you look at anybody that leads in coaching and management they're often working with big corporations. They've often got

executive coaching experience. We're transferring it into school because it's nice to have something that's actually for our sector that's specific because we are a bit different and we're very vocationally driven. Our drivers when we get into the profession are often very different and I think at the center of everything all the time are the children that we work with and what we want to do for them and that's why it's about that experience. Yes they are customers but they are still people and we work on that empathetic level and that level of wanting to do the best for them and a lot of the qualities that we get through coaching are exactly what we're trying to instill in our children.

What we were seeing is this thing of children doing incredibly well academically in very high performing schools and this is international as well as in the UK. Incredibly well academically especially from international then flying to the states or to the UK to go to university and then burning out dropping out because they can't cope when they're out of the institution when they're out of the school because the school has been so built to support their academic performance and hold them through that that when they've allowed to be independent they don't understand enough about themselves as a learner and about how they've got there and the imposter syndrome the overwhelm having to juggle a much tighter timetable of academic learning with a lot more independence and you get this high rate of burnout and children not succeeding or it hits them when they get into professional roles. It's not every child but it happens and I think because we need to be looking at this behavior for learning and how we understand ourselves as learners that's where you get the metacognition coming in understanding how our brains work understanding the processes our executive function how we work and always it's that failure thing. I don't like it all being about the exam result because it's a one test at one point in your life that you move on from what you take in the processes of learning for that and then what you can transfer beyond that is the bit you really learn.

So just like we want that for our children we want them to be fully formed learners curious critical understanding themselves having the tools to organize themselves to plan to self motivate to be independent we want all of that I want that for staff as well. I want to see it for teachers and I think coaching then lets you sit with somebody and go these are the things I want to work on these are the things I want to really find out about and this is why this is why it matters to me I'm reminding myself why I started to be a teacher and reminding myself why I want to lead other people and inspire that in other people that's why I think we need this and I talked to people where they've set coaching coaches up in school I'm yet to find somebody saying it's not worked well it's not been something that's benefited everybody it seems to always be really positive people. You know what really struck me about this conversation it's the idea that we want our students to be curious reflective independent learners but we're not always creating those same conditions for our staff. Joe made such a strong strong case for why coaching is not just another CPD tick box but actually about embedding change over time and creating space for critical reflection and actually it was about shifting culture rather than just introducing ideas that fade away after a workshop ends.

I really like to point on the lesson observations too when did they become these moments of judgments rather than opportunities for reflection and growth that's actually something I've seen hold back real talent in schools just because we were looking at a snapshot instead of asking how willing is this person to learn how do they respond to feedback how curious are they about their own practicing and you know the thing that keeps circling back for me after this conversation is if you've got people in your school willing to reflect willing to grow willing to engage with their practice then you have already got your next leader you just need to create the conditions for them to develop. If you want to learn more about Joe's work and the ILM level seven executive coaching qualifications you mentioned that I'm also on I will pop a link in the show notes. Education Leaders is hosted by me Shane Leaning thanks to the show editor Pete McGill and for the original music by Guillermo Silver. Thank you so so much for tuning in today and if we don't speak before I'll see you here next week.

If you're interested in the work of the International Centre for Coaching in Education or the International curriculum Association check out the links in the show notes.