Unlocking Leadership Potential in Schools through Coaching with Rosie Connor

Unlock the secrets to transforming educational leadership with insights from Rosie Connor, Global Director of BTS Spark. Rosie brings her wealth of experience, including turning around 19 failing schools in the UK, to our discussion. We dive into the essence of professional leadership coaching versus mentoring and how distraction-free coaching sessions can lead to significant mindset shifts and extraordinary outcomes. Learn the core principles from her book, "The Four Greatest Coaching Conversations," and how these can be applied to achieve sustainable success in educational environments.

Experience the journey of a country school principal who embraced a coaching mindset to overcome recruitment challenges and enhance her team's potential. This transformation from a directive to a coaching leadership style demonstrates the profound impact of regular coaching sessions. We also explore the integration of coaching within the New South Wales education system, emphasizing its role in professional development and navigating policy changes. Understand the critical role of coaching in enhancing feedback skills and addressing psychosocial hazards in schools.

Debunk common myths about coaching, highlighting its benefits for high performers and the rigorous accountability it entails. Rosie shares her vision for the future of leadership development, advocating for personalized, continuous professional development programs. Discover practical advice for aspiring leaders and those looking to implement coaching in their schools, underscoring the value of firsthand coaching experiences. This episode offers a holistic view of how coaching can revolutionize educational leadership, making it a must-listen for educators and leaders alike.

Rosie Connor is Global Director of BTS Spark, a not-for-profit initiative which supports school leaders through professional leadership coaching. You can access resources and programs via the btsspark.org website, find out more about The Four Greatest Coaching Conversations or receive weekly school leadership insights by following BTS Spark on LinkedIn.

To view our Professional Learning Offerings visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning

Chapters

• 0:00 Coaching Conversations in Educational Leadership
• 13:35 Building Coaching Skills in Educational Leadership
• 22:03 Leadership Coaching in School Context
• 40:06 The Myths of Coaching Perception
• 44:54 Future Trends in Leadership Development
• 54:07 Enhancing Educational Leadership Skills

Transcript

Drew: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Season 2 of the Principal Learnings Podcast. If you're a principal or educational leader looking to enhance your skills, this is the place for you, so let's get into it. Let's embark on this learning journey together, happy to play along in terms of the myths and tell me if you've heard these before. So, rosie, what's the difference between getting professional leadership coaching and getting mentoring support from a colleague?

Rosie: 0:32

Well, they're both wonderful experiences and ideally you would access both. So having a strong support network is no doubt really important, and it's important whether you're newly appointed into your role as principal or AP, or even when, whether you're very experienced. Having that professional support network of colleagues that you can offload to and share ideas and advice with, that's important, and share ideas and advice with, that's important. It is different getting that mentoring from getting professional leadership coaching and it's different in a few ways. So, firstly, when you have a coach, they're there exactly for you and if you've got a coaching conversation for an hour, they have absolutely nothing on their agenda, no distractions.

Drew: 1:29

You're not feeling guilty about taking up a colleague's time this podcast is with rosie connor, global director of bts spark, and in this episode we focus on the impact of coaching based around the book the four greatest coaching conversations change mindsets, shift attitudes and achieve extraordinary results. Impact of coaching based around the book the Four Greatest Coaching Conversations change mindsets, shift attitudes and achieve extraordinary results. Really looking forward to unpacking the themes of this book with Rosie, as well as the impact of coaching in educational leadership. Rosie, welcome to our podcast. Great to have you with us today. Rosie, can you start by telling us a little bit about your background and what led you to focus on leadership development and coaching?

Rosie: 2:14

I got involved working in educational leadership about 25 years ago. I was less grey at the time. I was brought in to work on one of the Tony Blair innovations in the UK and was very involved in turning around 19 schools that had been deemed failing by their school inspectors had been deemed failing by their school inspectors and it was really critical to work with the principals and build a professional learning community and build capability of teachers. So that's where I first got fascinated in supporting educational leadership to thrive in the role and working with the principals to build the capability of teachers in their schools.

Drew: 3:06

What a challenge to come into that context, knowing the problems that exist and utilising frameworks and evidence and research to get to. Did you get to that mission? Did you overcome those 19 schools and did you get to that mission? Did you overcome those 19 schools and did they? Did you succeed in that mission?

Rosie: 3:29

we, we got, we got everyone well on the way, absolutely so you can imagine, um, for the 19 schools that were appointed to be part of what was called an education action zone. Initially it was a bit of a badge of shame because, uh, their schools were deemed as struggling, but actually, uh, within the space of five years, it became a bit of a badge of shame because schools were deemed as struggling, but actually, within the space of five years, it became a badge of honour. Other schools were asking to join the Education Action Zone and it became a flagship for the UK in terms of best practice. So that was fantastic and it was a real tribute to the principals and the school communities that I was working with, to the principals and the school communities that I was working with.

Drew: 4:03

Yeah, it really highlights the work. You said there was five years, so it's not what's coming through, it's not a short fix, it's a long-term sustainable solution.

Rosie: 4:20

yeah, Absolutely no quick fixes in this one.

Drew: 4:21

There isn't, is there? No, and you see that sometimes in spaces where that can be advertised as a quick fix, and what you said is you work through that process of five years and now those schools are carrying that badge of honor. Yeah, that's fantastic. Look, let's talk about. I've just read the four greatest coaching conversation. I have to say, loved it, loved it, loved it. And in today's conversation we're going to be focusing on this book Four Greatest Conversations. It's based on extensive data from the BTS Coaching Conversations. Rosie, are you able to give us an overview of the book and the key themes in the book?

Rosie: 5:09

Absolutely so. We generated this book after having had something like 150,000 coaching conversations with leaders at all levels and then within BTS Spark. Of course, we're a not-for-profit focused based specifically on working with school leaders and we're based headquartered in New South Wales, but actually we work with school leaders worldwide. So you can imagine, having worked with thousands of leaders, we wanted to find a way of really sharing the insights and and spreading that joy of coaching. So I mentioned earlier that my first work was with education action zone in the uk. One of the things that turned that around is that we provided coaching for all of the principals and we built one of the first teacher coaching programs in those schools.

Rosie: 6:09

So we've had a long track record and myself a long professional career in coaching and we're aware that some leaders have never accessed coaching. So we wanted to help them as leaders embrace some school leaders that they'd learned some basics in coaching, maybe they'd learned a single framework and then they were struggling, really struggling to apply. It didn't feel right. It felt a bit clunky. Sometimes it felt a bit wooden. They were getting caught up in trying to get particular questions right the coaching questions. So they needed kind of free up from what they were misunderstanding as coaching that.

Drew: 7:17

Where does coaching fit? The perceptions that you may have had, but also, like in that experience that you had with those 19 schools, it's almost a sense of shame. And where does this fit in? And why am I doing this? And, as you said, you've worked through the process of what you've heard. It can be a bit awkward. It's a real relational piece in terms of making sure that fits right and making sure there's a common purpose. So I'm really looking forward because, as an association, we're really, as you know, exploring this coaching and what the impact does and the more research and evidence-based and frameworks that you share. It really shows the impact of that. If we go back to that book, it says the four critical mindsets relate, think. I think I've got that right. Four relate to critical mindsets, that is be relate, think and inspire. Are you able to give us I don't want you to go fully, fully, but give us an overview, rosie, of why is that so critical?

Rosie: 8:41

is that so critical? Sure, so it's critical because principals are telling us, and assistant principals are telling us, that they're realising that they spend a lot of their day fixing problems that other people come up to them with. There's obviously a lot of messiness in schools and a lot of challenges, a lot of issues, and folk are constantly coming up to them presenting them with an issue or problem. And because principals and APs are very time poor, sometimes the quickest route is just to tell them what to do, and they're realizing that actually that's the worst thing they could do in terms of building others' capability and empowering them. So they're asking what's a better way, and a better way is through coaching. But the problem is you can't just have like a single kind of coaching framework, coaching conversation scaffold, because each person that comes up to you has a different need. So what we explain in the Four Greatest Coaching Conversations book is how to get attuned to what the other person needs from you in order to have the right kind of coaching conversation and absolutely light.

Rosie: 9:58

We distinguish four broad different kinds of coaching conversations. So a B coaching conversation would be the right one to have if the person you're talking with has an issue around their own self-confidence, their own resilience, they may be stressed, so they would need a special kind of conversation. We call that the coaching conversation. If the person that you're supporting and coaching actually has a different need, which is more about the relationship on issues that they've got with colleagues, with parents, with others in the school, then that needs to relate coaching conversation and there's some different techniques, a totally different way of approaching those conversations.

Rosie: 10:54

If another colleague has an issue, say, with their school improvement planning process, then they need what we call a think coaching conversation to help them break through out of the current rivers of thinking and think more innovatively and creatively. Some help in building a vision, in tapping into a sense of purpose, maybe in creating a shared sense of vision. That would be an inspire conversation. So you can see that this is just about attuning yourself really well to what the other person needs from you if you're trying to coach them rather than get hung up in. How do I move from this stage of the coaching conversation to the next stage and what's the exact question that I use?

Drew: 11:55

Yeah, it's a real art form, but it's again, it's based on data that you've seen. But it's again, it's based on data that you've seen, and this data set is just like a goldmine of how many coaching conversations did it take to create this book, rosie so?

Rosie: 12:15

the book was written after 150,000 coaching conversations and we're a little pedantic as an organization, so we actually do monitor. We make some notes. The coach makes notes after every single coaching conversation, which is important because it helps them keep track and thread of their conversations from week to week and month to month with each person. But that means that you can imagine the size of spreadsheets. We have very big data and when folk come into a coaching conversation with their coach it's completely confidential, so they will really open up and talk about the issues that they're grappling with, the challenges that they're facing, how they're feeling about the role and the job and their levels of confidence. So this is quite a unique window into the reality of school leadership quite a unique window into the reality of school leadership?

Drew: 13:08

Yeah, and those 150,000 would come across a broad range of sectors. Rosie, can you think it's pretty hard to think of one particular example, but are there any examples that come to mind and going, yep, that has really coaching has really made an impact to a school in terms of turnaround, or a principal success story or a school? Any examples that you want to?

Rosie: 13:31

yeah, absolutely so. Um, you know, without giving any confidences away, I'll share the story of one principal that we were working with and and she came to us for some professional coaching support and she was grappling with how do you get the most out of the people you're working with. She was in a country school, so she needed to really build the talent from from within her team. There weren't lots of people she could go and recruit in terms of new um, new talents and new teachers and new folk to join her school leadership team. So she wanted to make the most to really build the, the potential of those in her team and and she she had got involved in and interested in coaching.

Rosie: 14:23

I think she'd gone on a growth coaching course before and she loved it at the time, and then it hadn't quite landed well. Afterwards she really struggled to apply it and what she was finding was that she didn't have the time to set aside, for like an hour maybe, a quiet space to go through a kind of G-R-O-W set of questions. And also, after a while, her teachers were kind of rumbling her and they were almost saying well, I know what you're doing and I know the question you're going to ask next, so it was feeling like a….

Drew: 15:03

So we know the script, we know where you're going to go.

Rosie: 15:05

Yeah, like absolutely yeah.

Drew: 15:10

It feels unauthentic, and I think that can be an experience where sometimes people go oh, this is. I feel like I'm not being authentic here, so that's a real balancing act, isn't it, I'm sure.

Rosie: 15:24

Yeah. So she had the best intent and she was really wanting to embrace coaching and it just wasn't quite landing. Some of her team would kind of joke with her like you're trying to catch me now, aren't you? So there was backfiring and what she was asking for support from her coach my BTS Spark coach on was look, you're a professional coach, how do you do it? What do you do? What am I doing wrong?

Rosie: 15:54

And over a series of sessions I think she had six coaching sessions with us, maybe once a month over six months what we did is we helped her free up, first of all to understand how to embrace a coaching mindset, and I guess the analogy Ridge uses. It's a bit like teaching your child how to drive. I've got three ex-teenagers, so imagine teaching three teenagers how to drive. You actually literally have to physically move from being in the driving seat to being in that front passenger seat and it's terrifying. And and then what you're doing is you're letting the other person be in control and be in the driving seat and, as a coaching support, what you're doing is helping to guide them. So so there's that shift that you need to make mentally. So, first of all, our coach helped her think through okay, so what do I need to let go in order to make that shift to become more of a coach rather than somebody who's just very fixed and kind of delegating responsibilities and you have to do it this way and so on with delegating responsibilities and you have to do it this way and so on.

Rosie: 17:10

And then we helped her to see how to tune into what the different people in her school leadership team initially actually needed from her. So there was one very experienced assistant principal who was trying to move forward on community engagement and they'd really struggled in the past. So she had what we call a think coaching conversation with him and it just opened up his eyes to some different perspectives and a way of doing things. She also told a story about she was supporting a newly qualified teacher that year. He was highly stressed and then that newly qualified teacher had a lesson that bombed and she needed to, as a principal, support the newly qualified teacher, the early career teacher, through that experience and out the other side, and that required a bee coaching conversation to build up her resilience and give her some sense of perspective so that she could move on and realize that everyone has bad lessons and it's not the end of the world.

Drew: 18:13

Yeah, you're not going on a performance program. You know everyone, yeah, that sort of mindset. Going back to driving the car analogy you can't actually drive the car for the person. It is actually the person's responsibility to be able to do that. But they do need that, particularly if they're starting. They need someone to help them, guide them in terms of driving the car. So what I'm hearing is you can come out of like so it was almost that whole. This is too hard. People think I'm a fraud doing this. I'm not really being authentic. And what I've heard is you can come out of that through this mechanism and become a really authentic coach leader. But it's like anything it takes time, it takes practice and it takes understanding what your purpose is, of what you're trying to achieve.

Rosie: 19:15

Yes, absolutely. It takes a little bit of slowing down, some more reflective practice so you can tune into the other person's needs. And then what the book does try and do is give you some really practical tools and strategies for each of these different kinds of coaching conversations, so you're not left to your own devices. If you're trying to coach your stress teacher through a B conversation, there's some very practical scaffolds that can support that. So we try and make it as easy as possible.

Drew: 19:50

And that principle, that leader, was able to come through. Give us a timeline. When did you start seeing, okay, this is really starting to come through, they're confident, they're actually making impact here? Would you give a timeframe on that, or is it ongoing, rosie?

Rosie: 20:11

So it's both immediate and a long-term work in progress.

Rosie: 20:17

So the immediacy is that, of course, when you're engaged in a coaching program, this principal met their coach every three or four weeks for an hour and that conversation for the hour was all about her needs and how we could support her best.

Rosie: 20:39

So after that, even in that initial hour, she could go away with some ideas and some reframes and some tools and strategies and start applying those. So from that point of view, all she did is give up an hour, start to talk and open up about some of her challenges and get a reframe and she agrees or she agreed every time after the end of the hour-long coaching conversation with her coach, how she was going to apply the learning. So maybe we'll talk about this stress-only career teacher and she'd agree how she was going to work with that person and apply that immediately. So in that way coaching has a very immediate impact and in another way I guess it does open up a whole world that maybe you weren't aware of and you realize both how much you've already learned and been able to apply and progress and then how much more you want to go further.

Drew: 21:47

It sure has. It really does open up your eyes in terms of where this fits, particularly with this beautiful framework and data sets that comes out of the four greatest coaching conversations. Look, if we shift into the New South Wales context your home state, rosie I know you're the global director of BTS Spark but if we go into narrow into our audience, our New South Wales PPA colleagues, where do you see coaching fitting in against the school plans and New South Wales context? So our people listening are going yeah, this sounds really interesting, but where, Rosie, does this fit in my school plan? How can I show impact against that? It's all about school implementation, school plan. Where does that fit against an SD direction, sd2, sd3 and, most importantly, what's the impact of of that? So I'm sure you've covered some things in the. Covered it in the UK context. You covered it in the UK context, no-transcript.

Rosie: 23:17

That's a good question. So I'm really aware of the New South Wales context, obviously live and breathe it. I had kids going through the schools and now more than ever I'm conscious of high budget constraints, really difficult times, hard to recruit new staff, recruit new staff. So in that context, I think schools need to be very savvy about how they do spend their professional development funds and also their time, because both funds and time are precious. What's clear and what we're hearing from schools is that, above everything else, they need to hold on to their teachers and their school leadership teams, because it is so difficult to recruit into empty spots now. So the name of the game is about how do I make sure that those people are growing as professionals, that they're thriving, they've got the right work-life balance, that they're continually building their skills?

Rosie: 24:30

We know that the number one need that New South Wales school leaders ask for coaching support on is on how to improve their skills at giving feedback.

Rosie: 24:42

So as a principal or as an AP, I need to give feedback to those in my school, teachers in my school, to improve their quality of teaching. That feels important. Many principals are working to build a feedback culture and we also know that in many schools there's a lot of conversations that haven't been had, that feel too difficult, that continually are being put off and that's having an impact on the quality of teaching that children in the school are experiencing, because there's a knock-on impact when there's a teacher who's maybe not teaching in the most effective way or not performing in the way that you'd want them to, that affects the children directly. So there's no question that when we support school leaders to become way more confident at giving feedback and also receiving feedback, then that frees them up to have those conversations that they had been just continually delaying but in the end has actually helped to build up the skills of those in their team to improve the lesson delivery and the quality of education that they want to go through.

Drew: 26:21

But in terms of the noise around them, the legal implications new thing that's landed this year is called psychosocial hazards. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that term. It's a legislation piece and for a leader that's a really tricky space. And also the recipient, because at the end of the day as a leader.

Drew: 26:43

hopefully, most leaders want to get the most out of their staff. They want to get great, have great people around them, have a great school, great students, great teachers. That's the essence of why people get into this game, and just being aware of that noise, so that's really interesting in terms of your feedback.

Rosie: 27:05

yeah, Well, you've been around long enough, drew, to know that. So every year there will be new policy initiatives that need to be implemented at school level. So, as a school leader, you're constantly needing to drive change and lead change, and that can either go well or it can go less well.

Drew: 27:28

So being skilled in being able to engage those in your school, particularly more reluctant members of staff, and influence and get buy-in, that's really critical, yeah and I can see where coaching can really fit in, as opposed to a whole session of PL, whereas coaching can be more tailored, differentiated, et cetera, and listening to the needs of those things, and that could be something tiny but it could lead into a bigger thing if it's not resolved at a conversational or coaching level. So it makes clear sense. So for those people, let's go to. I'm not sure if we'll call it. We'll call it the myths about coaching. Rosie, happy to play along in terms of the myths and tell me if you've heard these before. So, rosie, what's the difference between getting professional leadership coaching and getting mentoring support from a colleague?

Rosie: 28:33

Well, they're both wonderful experiences and ideally you would access both, and ideally you would access both. So having a strong support network is no doubt really important, and it's important whether you're newly appointed into your role as principal or AP or even whether you're very experienced. Having that professional support network of colleagues that you can offload to and share ideas and advice with. That's important. It is different getting that mentoring from getting professional leadership coaching, and it's different in a few ways.

Rosie: 29:15

So firstly, when you have a coach, they're there exactly for you, and if you've got a coaching conversation for an hour, they have absolutely nothing on their agenda. No distractions. You're not feeling guilty about taking up a colleague's time.

Drew: 29:33

Have you got five minutes?

Rosie: 29:35

Yeah, yeah, and the five minutes becomes 20 or an hour so you actually need an hour and yet everyone around you, including the person you're trying to get some mentoring support from, is actually busy themselves. So your coach is there just for you. They're also there as an external person, completely open up to them, without any concern about being vulnerable, about talking. Maybe you're having an off day, maybe you're not feeling very confident about the role that you've been appointed into and it can be difficult to expose yourself really openly to a fellow principal down the road or to your DEL or your PSL. They might be the person who may eventually promote you into your next role. So having that external coach does make a difference.

Rosie: 30:35

I think another difference is that a professional leadership coach is a professional.

Rosie: 30:40

They're a full-time, accredited coach.

Rosie: 30:43

They've probably been coaching certainly our coach has been coaching for over 10 years, full-time, non-stop.

Rosie: 30:48

They have coached hundreds and in some cases, thousands of leaders, so that doesn't mean that they're really good at their job. It also means that they can pull on the experiences of a whole range of different leaders who may have experienced the same problem. They're not just pulling on their own personal experience and they can share with you some really neat strategies, tools, conversation scaffolds to help you approach your current situation in a completely new way. So, whether you're trying to influence a colleague, whether you're trying to find a completely new breakthrough thinking perspective on a problem, if you're trying to structure a feedback conversation, if you're trying to become less stressed, they have very specific strategies, coaching strategies for all these contexts, and it's not even just the four greatest coaching conversations. We actually train our coaches in 33 different coaching strategies. So they have this wide repertoire repertoire and that can make quite a big difference in terms of helping you shift not only your leadership practice, but also the mindsets, the beliefs and attitudes that sit behind the current way that you may be leading.

Drew: 32:14

No, it's not helpful, but it's kind of drawing you back to old patterns yeah, look that really in terms of gives that real rigorous integrity behind that, and you've differentiated that too quite clearly. Let's go to the next myth. Why don't more school leaders access coaching? Why don't they access more coaching? What's stopping them from doing that?

Rosie: 32:44

access more coaching. What's, what's? What's stopping them from doing that? Well, the the best and worst thing, uh, about many school leaders is, of course, that everyone's there for the children and, and it would be wrong if they weren't in the job, because they wanted the very best for the children in their school and, uh, and they don't think they're worth investing in themselves as a school leader. They want to spend all the school budget on resources or maybe on their colleagues' professional development, but not on themselves, and that's kind of the best and worst attitude, because what they miss out is the biggest lever for school improvement is themselves, and and there's so much research, not only in australia but in the uk and the us that I could point to around the connection between great school leadership and great schools well, if we have that research, I'm sure we could put it into notes or distribute that out accordingly.

Drew: 33:44

But that you're right, it's that whole guilt factor that um, uh, principals may have. It's the interest of that's, it's the best interest of the students. But, as you've explained, that can be, if they don't invest themselves, how can they lever that uh, that leadership coaching and get the best out of their leadership coaching and get the best out of their staff and, essentially, the best out of their students? So, absolutely, another myth I don't have time. I'm working long hours. I don't have time. How can I fit coaching into my already busy schedule?

Rosie: 34:24

Yeah, and there's absolutely no doubt that my school leaders that I've ever met do work for really long hours. So not denying that, I guess the misunderstanding there is that, well, coaching actually only takes an hour. The misunderstanding there is that, well, coaching actually only takes an hour. So, whereas any other professional development you do, likely you're going to lose a day or more. So coaching is literally only an hour out of the day and it's there to talk about what you're finding most challenging in your role or how you'd most like to grow your leadership. So at the end of that hour you would be able to expect a reframe, some new ideas and new approaches, a clear plan to move forward. That's probably not a bad investment of an hour in your trickiest challenge.

Drew: 35:19

Yeah, an hour a week or it's tailored based on the needs of the school principal and the school.

Rosie: 35:26

Well, it's absolutely down to you. Literally, you can book up your coaching sessions for when suits you. Most people would have coaching sessions maybe every three weeks, so that gives you enough time to plan for your coaching session, have the coaching session and then reflect on what you've learned, have a chance to apply what you agreed as an experiment with your coach, maybe have that feedback conversation that was overdue or whatever. So that would be a typical cadence, but it's so flexible. You literally would be accessing your coach's online schedule and choose what timing suits you, whether that's during the daytime or even with teaching principals. It can be before or after school.

Drew: 36:15

Oh, good to know. Good note to have there, because that is classic. Good note to have there because that is classic. Well, I'm a teaching principal, which is a fair amount of our principals in New South Wales. So where can I fit that in? Rosie, I'm teaching. How does that all fit?

Rosie: 36:34

So that's good to know, this flexible option. Some folk want evening sessions, and that's fine for us too, or sessions in the school holidays, so whatever works for them, we're open fabulous, okay.

Drew: 36:45

Next myth I can't afford it. You know, everything comes to a price. Um, what's the um? I'm sounding really negative. I can see a lot of benefits, but I'm putting my black hat on saying, rosie, I can't afford it. So tell me why. How can we work through that?

Rosie: 37:13

So coaching is typically one-on-one, although we also do group coaching for school leadership teams or for middle leaders. So there are ways of making it cheaper by working with a group rather than one-on-one. I mean, of course, it comes at a price. Any professional development comes at a price. But it is an investment and the evidence shows that you can really justify that investment by the impact it has on teacher engagements and then on student engagement after that.

Rosie: 37:46

And of course, the good thing about coaching is because it only takes an hour, or maybe a group coaching session would take an hour and a half. It doesn't require you to bring in a substitute teacher or someone to cover you. You can save all of that extra cost. There's no travel involved. You don't have to book a hotel. So all those extra costs that are involved in a lot of professional development simply you never see they're not relevant to coaching. Is it generally now online as a main method of delivery, or do coaches come and do a face-to-face? And the reason for that is it's much more flexible. So if something crops up at school you can cancel virtual coaching very easily and reschedule. But also, if you actually want access to the top leadership coaches, you don't really want to be paying for them to sit in traffic to come to your school to do a face-to-face coaching session, because it'll immediately double the price of any session.

Drew: 39:00

Yeah, sure, yeah, and virtual is the same impact. Most people are used to virtual as well, but there is an option if people wanted to look at a face-to-face. But virtual is having very much the same, if not a higher, impact from the coachee and the coaching experience.

Rosie: 39:22

So the weird thing and this takes a bit of getting your head around the weird thing is that the evidence is that virtual coaching is more effective than face-to-face coaching. It creates enough of a reflective space so that you can go deep into your feelings and your thoughts in a way that sometimes face-to-face coaching can be more distracting. There's a cup of tea? Maybe there's the distractions coming like in a busy school.

Drew: 39:53

Yeah, yeah, oh, sorry, I've just got to deal with. And then the coach is just sitting there waiting for the person to come back. So, yeah, absolutely. Next myth Look, coaching is only for those who are struggling, rosie. So what's the feedback on that? There's a perception that, oh, that's not for me, that's only for those people that are struggling, I'm fine, so what am I going to get out of that coaching?

Rosie: 40:27

It's funny you hear that because I have heard that a lot, so it's a good challenge. Then, if you look at the world of sports, you know if an athlete's getting a coach, you don't assume it's because they're a rubbish athlete, you assume it's because they're an amazing athlete and therefore they have a coach. So it's a myth that doesn't transfer very far, is it? We would argue that coaching is most effective for those that are high performers already. They very, very quickly can embrace new strategies. So we coach all leaders in all sorts of situations. But actually, if you're talking about folk who really need performance management, that's less of a coaching scenario. That's a light management issue. That not at all. Coaching is there to build and support your professional growth wherever you're at and however experienced you are to that mindset and hopefully people come in with that mindset.

Drew: 41:32

I'm ready to be coached, but I'm sure that comes, comes through. You don't have the people going on. What am I? Maybe you do. People come in with that one, I'm sure. Why am I here for the next one? In terms of going, there is um the myth that there is the myth that coaching is soft and fluffy. It's all you know. It's all you know. This, blah, blah, blah.

Rosie: 42:00

Talk to us about that, rosie. Yes, yes, so I have heard of that. You know it's all about the fluffy, emotional stuff. So when you look at the range of areas of leadership that we support on, it's a whole range. I mean, it's certainly not soft and fluffy, and the reality is that when you have an hour-long coaching conversation with your coach, they are there in deep support of you, but they will ask you challenging questions, drew, and they will really help to push your thinking and they will work with you to agree how you're going to not only reframe during the session but then apply what you've learned to your school in the next three weeks before your next coaching session. And the first thing they will do when they meet with you again, apart from asking how you're going, is asking how did your experiment go? Sharing is asking how did your experiment go? You said you were going to have a go at applying this, learning what happened and let's debrief that so that really is holding you to account, that's not soft and fluffy?

Drew: 43:21

Yes, it is. It's a real sense of accountability that can be held in a one-to-one space that no one else needs to know about. Yeah, absolutely, but we're really breaking down the myths. One more, if I can and, rosie, I've already done this coaching thing. I've already done that already, so I'm fixed. What's your feedback to that comment?

Rosie: 43:51

Ah, yes. So when we hear that comment, it generally means that someone's maybe experienced one or two days of coach training. Maybe they've learned the grow model or some kind of coaching one-on-one frame, which is fantastic, really, really great, and maybe has opened up their eyes a little bit to coaching. That's totally different from actually being coached and from getting coaching support from a professional leadership coach, so really not helpful to confuse that. If you've been on some kind of coaching skills training, you started learning a little bit about how to hold a coaching conversation, but you haven't been supported with your own professional growth from a professional leadership growth coach yeah, really important to again unpack those, those myths, and go through that, and you can really well what I can hear is just seeing that what the impact of of coaching done.

Drew: 44:54

As we are exploring this today, look, let's move into, I guess, the future of education, leadership development and, I'm sure, back Don. You've seen that in the past and now projecting forward. I mean, you've had over 20 years experience and you've seen leadership development evolve. What sort of trends do you see, rosie, in the future if you had a crystal ball?

Rosie: 45:26

So leadership development is changing really fast and I have colleagues in BTS outside of BTS Spark who work with companies and large organizations, multinationals, whilst. Obviously all of my work in BTS Spark and my colleagues is working to support the education sector and schools. So there are some differences and in some ways the education sector is quite slow in catching up with best practice and leadership development. But what we are seeing is that there's a big move away from the kind of one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development. A one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development and there's a need to move away from a one-and-done like I go on a workshop or I go to a conference. I've been inspired Because the evidence is that it's very hard to apply the learning from an event.

Rosie: 46:33

What's much more effective is a professional development program that spans a series of months with short, sharp sessions. They could be short workshops, they could be virtual workshops, there could be some online learning, there could be some one-on-one or group coaching, but any kind of professional development or leadership development that is continuous over a period of months, which gives you a lot of application of learning throughout and great opportunities for peer learning, that's much more effective. I think the other trend we're seeing is that people are becoming more demanding and quite rightly so, for more personalized leadership development, and there's this kind of phrase what I need is leadership development that's just in time. That's just enough and just for me. So the idea is that you can access it when you need it. You can access it in bite-sized chunks, so just enough, rather than like it's all or nothing and it's personalized.

Drew: 47:45

It's just for me is just for me, which is again where I'm sure you've seen a trend in the past 20 years of coaching scaling forward and I suspect that visual of scaling and going with higher participants will be on the projection forward. Yeah.

Rosie: 48:06

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In the jargon, there's this model called 70, 20, 10, which is about the way where people gain most professional growth and, and very loosely speaking, um then the argument is that only 10 of what you learn um as a professional comes from that formal event, the training day or whatever. So what's much more important is the ongoing support which could be in the form of coaching.

Drew: 48:40

Yeah, Now, as a busy author director, how do you, Rosie, continue to develop your own leadership skills?

Rosie: 48:53

That's a killer question, isn't it?

Drew: 48:54

I know it is. It's tricky, it's so many competing priorities running the organization being an author, but I'm sure you continue to develop your own leadership skills. What are you currently looking at or developing?

Rosie: 49:10

Yes, absolutely so. Look, I just love the world of leadership development and it's so rich and what you soon realise is that, effectively, like it's a lifetime of leadership learning. If we look at the curriculum we have in BTS Spark, we've identified 33 different leadership mindsets that all become important at various times depending on the different situations that I'm facing, so you can imagine that I get immersed in gosh. What I'm really needing now is to focus in on this particular leadership mindset and this tool, focusing on this particular leadership mindset and this tool and it is a challenge to practice what I preach and to put into place mechanisms. You know when I'm stressed how do I self-regulate? And those emotional intelligence strategies. The good thing is, I have a coach.

Drew: 50:08

Drew. I was going there, rosie. I was going there, rosie, I was going to go. My next question was do you actually? I was really going to say, well, do you receive coaching yourself?

Rosie: 50:17

Absolutely. Yes, I do, and some of my most powerful learning moments have been just from something very simple that my coach said to me, you know, six years ago, and I can still remember it and it still gives me that reframe that I need in particular moments. And right now, yes, I'm still getting coaching. What I enjoy most actually in a coaching session is, of course, I get my coaching through Zoom. I actually ask to shut the screens down and I just like to have that audio working for me. That works really, really well so I can just focus and think about the questions and let the conversation flow. That's interesting about the questions and then let the conversation flow.

Drew: 51:11

That's interesting. That's an interesting thought, because a lot of us on the video calls are obviously focusing on the person, but you also have a mirror aspect as well, so that's a really interesting takeaway as well to consider in terms of that reflection. So do you find that is less distracting?

Rosie: 51:35

Yeah, it works for me and because I'm the coachee, I can call the shots. My coach is just going to work for me, so if you can go with it, that's great, absolutely.

Drew: 51:49

Yeah, yeah, fabulous. Okay, rosie, so let's go into finishing up our first conversations. Really enjoyed our conversation so far. What advice, rosie, would you give to aspiring leaders or those looking to make a significant impact or considering coaching in their schools?

Rosie: 52:15

Well, what I would suggest is, if leaders are looking at bringing coaching into their schools, the best thing they could do is to start by just getting a few sessions of coaching for themselves, working with a coach, because they will gain so much from that experience. That modelling that they will see will just be completely invaluable when they want to then start bringing coaching approaches in for themselves and start coaching others.

Drew: 52:51

Yeah, really practical. And the advantage is that they can trial that and see how that has that work and see the impact of that. So, yeah, really practical advice. Look, thank you. Firstly, just thanks for your time today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom. I've really enjoyed the conversation. We've unpacked some myths today of coaching and where that can fit into professional learning, unpacking where it fits in the New South Wales landscape as well. So you've really unpacked that Well. I'd really like to see if we can potentially come back and have another discussion regarding you've just released a new book, messy Leadership, and it'd be great to unpack that work further if you're willing and able to come back and have a further discussion.

Rosie: 53:49

Absolutely. You know, BTS Spark is a global not-for-profit initiative working with thousands of school leaders, but our heartland is New South Wales. I'm global director, I live in New South Wales and we would love to engage further with that. Yeah, let's talk about all things messy leadership.

Drew: 54:07

If you're a principal or educational leader looking to enhance your skills, this is the place for you. This season, we'll be showcasing a wide range of professional learning experiences designed with your success in mind. We'll continue to focus on the values of wellbeing, leadership, growth, as well as optimising school operations. Curious to learn more about our offerings? You'll find our full catalogue on our website at wwwnswppaorgau, or you can easily book your next professional learning experience at wwwnswppaorgau. Professional-learning-calendar-bookings. If you or your network is interested in further professional learning through the New South Wales Primary Principals Association, reach out to me directly, djinnetski at newsouthwalesppaorgau. I look forward to hearing from you soon.