Using coaching to improve outcomes. Case study North Forest Federation

Transcription

1 Using coaching to improve outcomes Case study North Forest Federation

2 Using coaching to improve outcomes: how the North Forest Federation uses coaching across the collaboration to share and model good practice 1/12 The North Forest Academy is a co-educational academy, working in federation with 19 other academies. The academy s examination results have improved rapidly since its formation in 2007, and it has achieved many accolades pertaining to improvement, learning and progress. The academy is also in the top one per cent of schools in the country for student progress. The academy is an inner-city hub school for leadership and innovation, working with other schools to provide training opportunities to raise the standards of leadership, teaching and learning. It is a specialist business and enterprise academy. Simon Head is the principal of the academy, and has been since the academy was established in Here, Simon outlines the background of how the academy came to be federated with 19 other academies: The federation has grown rapidly over time. Partnerships first developed with a local city technology college in the early 1990s, and then grew to now include over 19 academies, including primary academy partners. Simon goes on to describe the ethos of the federation: Generally, our ethos is about improving the life chances of young people. Initially, this focused on academies around the southern part of the city but has now moved beyond this to include federated partners across the country. We are all about rapid improvement and giving every opportunity for our young adults to succeed. Simon highlights the desire for all participant academies in the federation to share best practice: Each academy has autonomy and celebrates its uniqueness; but systems are in place to share good practice and allow each academy to grow and develop. Sharing this good practice has been fundamental to ensuring that, whilst each academy has its own identity, each also learns from the other federation members. Simon refers to this as a cascade model : There are several top-level networks in place where senior leaders lead cross-federation groups. These network groups have senior leadership representation from across all of the academies. They control the pace of learning. For example, the CPD group organise a federation INSET day each October where all staff from across the federation come together to share best practice and learn from each other. This cascade model is about sharing best practice across the federation.

3 2/12 Why coaching? North Forest Academy s strategic decision to use coaching to improve outcomes came about as a response to an academy-specific staff development need. This is explained by the viceprincipal, Rod Hitch. Rod was appointed in 2010 and brought a breadth of experience in coaching to the school when he took up the post: I ran a coaching programme at my previous school called Coaching leaders, where seven staff trained as coaches and worked with other colleagues across the school. I d had previous training in coaching and I have spent a lot of time looking at business coaching models. Rod s engagement with business coaching models enabled him to reflect on the role that personality type played on the effectiveness of coaching at the academy: Drawing on recent examples from business and industry enabled us to set up the Bridge Project, in which industry leaders came into the academy and led training sessions on personality types and their role in establishing positive coaching relationships. This led me to conclude that knowing and understanding the people involved is central to a successful coaching relationship. So, at the outset, the newly formed academy had identified a need for high-quality staff development and training. The school has an open approach to its definitions of the terms coaching and mentoring, with coaching often used as a generic term to cover both activities in terms of relationships and processes. This open approach is supported in the National College Good Practice for Leaders resource Coaching and mentoring overview ( resources/developing-others/developing-team-members/coaching/coaching-theories/ coaching-and-mentoring.gp), which highlights the confusion that can sometimes arise in the use of these two terms: Coaching and mentoring are both forms of one-to-one paired support relationships aimed at facilitating personal development, the distinction between which is often confusing. The school is happy to blur the distinction between coaching and mentoring, which, whilst not a text book definition, works for the school.

4 3/12 Their newly appointed vice-principal was an experienced coach and a keen advocate of using coaching for CPD. Equally, the academy principal was keen to see coaching used to develop leadership across the academy. As Simon explains: When the academy opened, in 2007, we did a lot of work with a commercial training organisation in order to develop our skills, knowledge and understanding around the areas of mentoring, coaching and emotional intelligence. This led to the implementation of the GROW model of coaching across the academy but, in particular, through our Outstanding leader programme. The GROW coaching model 1 was chosen because of Rod s prior experience of the model. It became the baseline standard on which the academy s coaching was based and is illustrated in Figure 1. Details of how the coaching model was implemented can be found later in this case study. Figure 1: The GROW coaching model Measurable Behavioural Agreed upon Resources Relationships Interference Goals Reality Focus Action plan Fine tune Way forward Options Brainstorm Evaluate Experiment 1 Further information on the GROW model can be found in the National College publication Leading coaching in schools. Available at [Accessed on 27 August 2013]

5 4/12 Taking coaching across the federation partnership Gradually, the GROW coaching model was mirrored in other academies across the federation, with each adopting this coach-as-facilitator model. Simon Head explains that this was done from a position where each partner in the federation started from a baseline of little or no coaching taking place. Senior staff were trained by senior staff at North Forest Academy, and this allowed each academy to train other coaches in their own workplace. As Simon explains: Senior leaders within each of the academies in the federation were trained in coaching. They then trained others on how to be a coach. We modelled this in our conversations with each other. We trained three senior leaders in each academy on coaching, emotional intelligence and coaching conversations. This allowed senior leaders to go back and contextualise coaching within their own organisations. North Forest was the driving force behind the roll-out of their coaching model across the federation. Agreement was gained at a senior leadership level, supported by the fact that the principal at North Forest Academy was a key driver in the coaching programme, and each federation partner engaged as part of the federation ethos of sharing good practice and learning from each other. One might expect there to be issues of ownership or opposition to the coaching programme, but evidence would suggest that this was not the case. Charlotte Cress (Assistant Principal for Business and Enterprise) is clear that coaching then developed organically across the federation of academies: The GROW model was our starting point and, initially, using a coaching model was important to us; but, as the skill set of those involved grew, it became evident that the model had to grow too. It is important that the model is organic and develops with the coaching relationships and a skill set, for example, a newly appointed colleague needs a more structured approach than a practising colleague with a breadth of coaching experience. Not only did staff receive individual training in coaching techniques from their own academy senior leaders, but staff development was also supported in more subtle ways, for example, senior staff would model coaching techniques in the conversations they had with colleagues and staff also observed coaching taking place through videos of coaching conversations. These strategies helped to dispel commonly held myths about coaching. As Simon explains: Coaching is not about time. It is not about allocating 45 minutes to a coaching conversation. It is not like the doctor s; it is not therapeutic and it is not used to solve problems. Coaching can just as easily happen in a corridor as it can in a meeting room. It is about asking the right questions.

6 5/12 So far, this case study has focused primarily on the development of coaching across the federation and we have discussed a certain fluidity in the way that North Forest uses coaching and mentoring definitions. Simon Head acknowledges that there are occasions when target groups receive interaction and training that the school defines specifically as mentoring: Every Forest Federation NQT received a minimum entitlement to high-quality mentoring. We trained mentors on how to challenge, support and give really good, quality mentoring. Mentors were always more experienced staff and often subject specialists from the NQT s own subject area. However, even in this instance, the school prefers to adopt a blended model to the coaching and mentoring processes it provides. Mary Greek is another viceprincipal with responsibility for training and student leadership at North Forest Academy. She explains more about the blend of mentoring and coaching used with NQTs: We had always provided mentoring for our NQTs but we also adapt to what evidence tells us. We adapted our NQT mentoring programme to incorporate coaching so that their mentors became hybrid mentor-coaches. This was because we noticed that the impact of coaching in a colleague s training years was really quite powerful, with NQTs more quickly plugging gaps in their learning. The role of senior leadership in developing a coaching culture The cascade model allowed for new coaches and mentors to be trained as the programme grew and developed across the federation. Simon explains how this was done: A lot of work was done culturally to facilitate the growth and development of coaching across the federation. We identified ambassadors for coaching : colleagues who modelled good coaching practice and presented positive coaching models. We created time for coaching to take place and we built coaching techniques into our core programmes. For example, our NQT induction programme engages participants through a mentoring model; but this shifts to a coaching model as the participants grow in skills, knowledge and understanding. Embedding coaching both as a style of interaction and as a process for school improvement in everyday conversations and practices was clearly central to making this coaching model a sustainable one. Simon explains further: All of our staff training is delivered in a coaching style. We pose a lot of questions: How would you...?, What would you...?, How can we...? etc. Coaching is firmly embedded into our practice.

7 6/12 Coaching was also a key element in the federation s line management processes, as Simon explains: We explored how coaching could be used in our line management relationships. For example, when conducting work scrutiny we explored how we could use coaching to engage with colleagues in coaching conversations rather than making quality judgments. Charlotte Cress notes that coaching also plays a key role in developing the quality of middle leadership across the federation: I use coaching-style conversations and processes a lot with middle leaders. This is because I want to develop their leadership as well as their teaching. In order to do this, I present challenging coaching questions and encourage them to think things through. Because of our engagement with coaching, they feel more empowered and skilled in their own development. They have ownership of their own professional growth. Although coaching and mentoring can be seen by the North Forest Federation as interchangeable terms, it is acknowledged that each is built on a different relationship based on knowledge, skills and experience. Both fall somewhere on a continuum of development and, in some circumstances, it is OK to coach and mentor at the same time. As Rod Hitch states: Coaching and mentoring are situational; which model we use depends on what needs to be accomplished and between whom. We do whatever is the most appropriate for the context we are in. Generally, it is clear that developmental interaction towards the mentoring end of the continuum is employed at North Forest Academy when the mentee has limited professional experience of teaching, for example, newly qualified teachers and colleagues identified as significantly underperforming. Coaching strategies are employed with colleagues who are able to access their own toolkit of professional skills and experience. Coaching questions are used to enable coaches to sharpen the saw, to use a reference to one of Stephen Covey s The seven habits of highly effective people (Covey, 1989). For example, coaching is often used at Forest Hill Academy (a member of the North Forest Federation) to enable teachers to tackle the underperformance of a particular group of students, to identify dips in pace in their own lessons and to enable them to progress to roles of greater responsibility.

8 7/12 The impact of coaching and mentoring on sustainable improvement Members of the North Forest Academy leadership team are all clear that the coaching and mentoring models in the academy have had considerable successes; here, they outline some key areas where impact is most evident: Improving teaching: Coaching and mentoring were used as the principal process by which the school has encouraged NQTs to focus on their skills as classroom teachers, to challenge areas of weakness, and to use reflection and key coaching questions to raise the game : A few years ago, 10 per cent of NQT lessons were judged to be outstanding. This has improved to 35 per cent in this current academic year. Simon Improving learning outcomes: By working with teachers using a coaching model to improve their classroom practice, teaching has had a direct impact on learning and progress: The percentage of five or more A* C at GCSE (including English and Mathematics) has risen from 20 per cent in 2007 to 80 cent in Simon Ninety-two per cent of our students identified as gifted and talented now feel challenged in their lessons. Rod Improving the quality of leadership: Coaching is used as one of the principal tools by which academy leaders challenge each other, each other s assumptions, and existing practice within the academy: We do a lot of coaching work as a leadership team. In order to keep our skills sharp, we model coaching in our leadership team meetings. These are not traditional meetings with elements of do and tell ; they are coaching conversations and development discussions. We model this and cascade this style of coaching leadership through to those we line-manage, and they do the same with those they line-manage. For example, we wouldn t just return progress reports that we consider not of an appropriate standard and ask that they be redone; we now have a coaching conversation that allows the report s writer to identify what needs to be improved. Mary

9 8/12 Driving forward sustainable improvement: The academy uses coaching processes to engage staff in dialogue and debate, to focus attention on underperformance and to develop solutions that are then implemented: One assistant principal has been very effective in developing our work on supporting the learning of our gifted and talented students. Coaching played a central role in this through the development of a student parent network, which meets throughout the year, supporting the sustainability of the work we do in school. Rod Increasing our capacity to improve further: The coaching ethos evident throughout the North Forest Academy has empowered staff to engage in their own personal development. It is clear that engagement with coaching questions has enabled staff to become their own coaches, questioning their own practice, challenging themselves, and identifying their own improvement targets. Coaching processes have resulted in a breadth of reflective practice: Colleagues now take much more personal responsibility for their own development. Simon We practise situational leadership; just because we have done something for a while doesn t mean we don t review it. We keep things sharp. Mary Meeting challenges Of course, Simon Head notes that there were challenges in ensuring that coaching and mentoring were so well embedded into school practice: There was more of a challenge getting colleagues to engage with coaching rather than mentoring. Mentoring is a term that was easily accepted, but coaching was seen as a woolly word and quite soft; so there was not so much acceptance initially. In order to overcome this perception, those engaged in the initial coaching relationships were encouraged to be quite overt in discussing the coaching process and positive outputs of the intervention. This overt engagement gradually changed staff perceptions so that participating in a coaching relationship became something that staff wanted to buy into rather than something they were directed to do. Challenges also went beyond encouraging staff to accept coaching as a viable development model.

10 9/12 Another clear challenge was matching expectations that coaching takes time to deliver results with the clear drive to deliver meaningful and sustainable improvement rapidly. But Simon remains an advocate for the success of a coaching model in doing this: We had to find a balance between sustainability and rapid change. Part of this required us to dispel the myth that coaching takes time. We posed key coaching questions to challenge this myth: How can you use your time more effectively? Why do you need a telling style in a meeting rather than a coaching style? We did this because we strongly believe that asking a question is more powerful than giving an answer. In order to engage staff fully on the potential of a coaching model to deliver rapid, sustainable improvement, North Forest Academy invested a lot of time in staff training and development. As Simon explains: We concentrated on doing a lot of intelligent training; in particular, training in emotional intelligence and the work of Daniel Goleman. Staff analysed themselves against Goleman s work what aspects of emotional intelligence were they effective and less effective in. The academy had identified a coaching model that worked: the GROW model. However, as confidence in coaching methods grew, this GROW model developed further. As Simon explains: We identified a coaching model that worked: the GROW model. As we became more confident in our coaching methods and the impact these were having across the academy, we moved on to the GROWER model, adding E: Evaluation and R: Review into the process. We did this because we came to believe that coaching should not have a start and end point; rather, it should be cyclical. This model contradicts a more traditional expectation that coaching should be a timebound/temporary intervention focused on shorter-term goals and challenges, but Rod Hitch explains further: When I joined the academy, I was keen to add the E and the R to the GROW model because experience told me that we needed to take our coaching model forward to include Evaluation the E focusing on the impact of our coaching work on student learning and progress, and Review the R enabling all participants to look at what has worked and where we might go next.

11 10/12 The academy leadership sees coaching as an inherent part of interaction at the academy interaction between members of the leadership team and other colleagues, between colleagues, between colleagues and students, and between students themselves. Coaching is so embedded that it is a logical step to see short-term coaching interventions developing into a cyclical development process. Once any change model progresses beyond those who initiate it, the need to maintain quality standards becomes ever more important. North Forest Academy did a lot to ensure that new coaches across the federation were coached by experienced coaches from the North Forest Academy. They, in turn, then cascaded the developing of coaching across their own institutions. Although, in this way, quality was maintained and coaches remained true to the original coaching model, coaching did develop organically, as Rod Hitch explains: Over the past year, we have moved away from pure coaching models and we can now see a clear interplay between coaching and mentoring. Across the federation, coaching is now seen as something you should live in everything you are doing; it becomes part of our day-to-day practice. Next steps Looking to the future, Simon Head is clear that coaching will play a central role in delivering continued and sustainable improvement: There is much more use of coaching in a whole variety of situations. We have moved away from a themed programmes-based approach for CPD to a model where small professional learning teams (PLTs) develop each other and other colleagues. The use of these professional learning teams is now central to the sustainability of coaching across the federation. As Charlotte explains: Each professional learning team is made up of three people: a coach, a coachee and a third person placed with each team in order to gain coaching skills. This third person will then apply their learned coaching skills to their own PLT in the future. Mary explains further: Our PLTs work in triads so that others are shadowing those that have good coaching skills and learn from them. In order to embed coaching and develop a sustainable model, training in coaching has become part of the general CPD entitlement of all staff across the federation. Simon Head worked with the principals of the other academies in the federation in order to share good practice and build sustainable coaching structures:

12 11/12 Trainee coaches watch our expert coaches work and shadow their good practice. This enables our trainee coaches to then cascade their new skills the following year with the next cohort of trainee coaches. Simon goes on to explain further: We have built staffing and time into our professional learning teams. We identified our best teachers and coaches and each now leads a professional learning team. In any team meeting, 20 minutes is dedicated to the lead teacher training other team members using a coaching model; 40 minutes is then dedicated to collaboratively sharing ideas as a group, with everyone encouraged to ask coaching questions of each other. Of course, accountability is still important when using a coaching model. As Charlotte explains: The GROWER model allows us to develop cycles of coaching that are evidenced based and focus on improvement and positive results. If staff are not able to deliver on agreed targets, we use coaching to explore barriers and reasons why an improvement strategy hasn t worked. We then move forward and repeat the GROWER cycle again. Ultimately, we have to hold people to account. Conclusion It is clear that the North Forest Federation has embraced a personal model of coaching (with some elements of mentoring) as a highly effective and sustainable school improvement strategy. Mary Greek is clear on the key benefits: Engaging with a coaching model across our federation gives people responsibility for themselves and their own actions. It is about empowering them and making them see that we have the tools and can work together. But they are in charge of making it happen. She goes on to explain further: Coaching is definitely about improved learning and teaching. Our percentage of outstanding lessons has increased. It has improved the way our middle leaders develop their skills, knowledge and understanding of effective leadership; and this has enabled them to move on in their careers. But, as Rod Hitch concludes: Academies and schools are all about people; if you want to get the most from people, then coaching and mentoring are both key tools in achieving this.

13 12/12 Reflection North Forest Academy developed its own coaching model based on a fluid interpretation of the terms coaching and mentoring. Do you think it is important that we have clear definitions and a shared understanding of such terms? In order for the coaching model to develop throughout the academy, clear strategies were put in place to ensure consistency and quality. What can we learn from these strategies that can be applied in our own professional contexts? Elements of chance senior staff appointed with positive experiences of coaching led to coaching being adopted as a process to meet staff development needs. To what extent do you feel that the success of the North Forest Academy coaching model is a product of chance rather than of design? The coaching model has evolved with time. What steps can you identify that ensure that the quality of outputs remains high even when processes change? What lessons can be learnt from the implementation processes that the North Forest Academy has been through that could be applied to your own professional context? References Good practice for leaders, Coaching and mentoring overview. Available at college.org.uk/uaamanager.htm?act=r&target_server_id=55&ru=nclscs-leadership% 2Fresources%2Fdeveloping-others%2Fdeveloping-team-members%2Fcoaching%2F coaching-theories%2fcoaching-and-mentoring.gp Covey, S, 1989, The seven habits of highly effective people. Available at aw/srcovey?gclid=ckawjsms4bccfqthtaodi1iaaa.

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