Breakout Session 4.5: Every Leader Needs a Coach: The Impact of Coaching on School Culture
Principals often find gaps in their skills and performance, even with the best preparation and professional development. Coaching can fill the gaps and provide individualized support to bring out the best in school leaders. Coaching helps transform leadership practices so that leaders can transform schools. In this session, we will provide concrete tools and strategies for facilitating coaching conversations, eliciting reflection, and setting goals.
The relationship between a principal and coach is centered on helping the principal clarify and reach individual goals. As a catalyst for transformation, the coach uses a set of strategies and tools to help a principal shift perspective and discover alternate paths to progress. A coach is in a unique position to help a principal view challenges through a different lens. A coach can also help a principal identify differences between intentions and actions. A coach can reveal patterns, solidifying the helpful patterns and changing those that are not helpful.
Throughout this session, we will include reflections on our own shared journey as a principal and a coach. Our goal is to help session participants discover that a coach can be a transformational catalyst on a principal's leadership journey.