Transcript

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Hello, I'm Leigh Hatcher with the Growth Coaching International Podcast. I'm in conversation with John Campbell, Founding Director at Growth Coaching International. John's professional experience ranges from author, curriculum expert, teacher, consultant and company director. In this podcast, we're speaking about the school as a conversational community.

John Campbell:
When we first started out at working coaching and education, we were basically doing work at the leadership level, training leaders to be coaches and actually doing coaching with them. That all worked well and we were getting some great stories about how that was being successfully implemented. As we studied more, read more, and just thought about more what we were doing, we started to see that there was a whole lot of stuff emerging around how schools were viewed as complex adaptive systems, highly intensive social systems.
People were starting to say, "Look, one of the key things that drives these sorts of organisations forward is the way people talk to each other." We saw a whole lot of emerging literature come through, both the academic stuff, and the more practitioner-based saying, "Leaders lead through the way they talk to their team members." There's work coming out of Jane Dutton and the University of Michigan talking about high quality connexions and the way that they drive energy in the organisation. People doing work on social network analysis talking about how the whole networks of people interacting was a key driver of organisations.
And in fact, these guys, Rob Cross from the University of Virginia, started to identify what people were doing in the conversations they were having. Interesting things emerged. They identified five key things that were a part of these positive energizer conversations. They were these: They said these conversations are linked to a compelling vision. There was something about the future that was being focused on and discussed. These conversations allowed both parties to be meaningful contributors so that there was not a one-way dominance in these interactions. These also had a sense of being both people fully present, so there was full intention engagement. They also had a focus on progress, on moving things forward. The last thing they said, they conveyed a sense of hope.
As we started to think about these kind of things, and similar things were emerging from other areas, we thought that's kind of what coaching conversations are really doing, so it describes a lot of that, and yet they're not talking about coaching. We started to see that the work that we were doing could have applications in a range of both informal coaching conversations, and more formal ones as well.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Tell us something more about those conversational contexts in schools, where the coaching style conversation could make a difference.

John Campbell:
We mentioned that we were working primarily at the leadership level initially, and that was leaders in using coaching approaches with their teams. We were doing lots of that, and that was still very important to be doing. We also recognised that teachers did lots of talking to each other, and there were opportunities to help them do that in a coaching style way, as they began to observe each other's teaching, and look at professional learning initiatives in those areas. We've done some work in exploring how that can work, and using the same kind of coaching approach at peer to peer level.
We also started to hear people doing things with students. In the conversations teachers were having with students, and also some schools were doing some work in student coaching as well. My colleague from the UK, Christian van Nieuwerburgh, had done some research around that area. We saw, here's another context in which the way that the two participants talk to each other can be quite interesting.
Then of course there was the whole context of the community itself, and parents, and other key folks in the community might have a stake in what's going on in the school. How do those conversations maybe play out in this space as well? We haven't done quite so much in that area yet, but we actually think that's an important area, the way that some conversations with parents can heavily have a coaching style that could make a real difference. Out of that came the global framework idea, where we started to say, "Look, here are four different key conversational contexts where coaching approaches can really make a difference."

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
If you focus on one of those contexts, that is the conversation with the student, it might have an educational benefit for them as well, so they can realise ‘what is this conversation about’. It's just not that the conversation is happening, but what lies under it, and what's driving it? That can surely be a benefit from them.

John Campbell:
Schools have done quite a bit in this area in the last couple of years, and really interesting work that's made some interesting differences to the academic performance and to other social goals that came out of it. Some schools have defined this coaching for students around career areas, or study skills, or next steps for them, academic goals and so on. That stuff's been really, really helpful.
One of the interesting areas has been actually getting students to coach each other. We've seen the emergence of some programs that have actually, and we've been involved in some of these, the training, sometimes senior students, sometimes younger students to actually bring the coaching approach to in school peer support programs, and other things that have been around for awhile. There's some great stuff emerging from that.
There has been one particular study that I'm aware of, that was actually done here in Australia, which was with year five boys. The study actually trained them in some basic coaching skills. There was incorporated within that, some measures on the impact on levels of engagement in school, and levels of hope. There was quite some positive results that were found from that.
We're starting to see that sort of stuff emerge in other contexts as well. That actual study that we can reference that, and people can follow that up. It was Wendy Madden, and Suzy Green, and Tony Grant from the University of Sydney. As I said, there's others emerging now since that's happened, and in various different parts of the world more of that developing.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
What kind of practical difference, in that kind of study, was it making to those year five boys?

John Campbell:
There were some pre-test and post-test measures done on issues related to hope and goal attainment, quite sort of rigorous standard psychological measures that were done. This has been written up in a peer review journal. There were some quite significant gains there. There's other studies that have been done with senior students that were showing similar kind of things. These are all out there in the coaching literature. There's some really nice things happening in that area.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
This is the Growth Coaching International Podcast. In conversation with Executive Director, John Campbell, on schools as conversational communities. John just mentioned formal and informal conversations. What's the difference between them?

John Campbell:
When we've been talking about that in a coaching context, typically a formal coaching context conversation would be extended in time, would be part of a scheduled series of formal conversations that would take place, maybe once every couple of weeks, once a month over several months. There's be some documentation around how that might go, and it would be something that was scheduled regularly. The coach typically in that case, has been maybe even come from outside the school environment.
We're actually thinking that a lot of the good elements of what makes a great formal coaching conversation can be conveyed to a whole range of less formal contexts - in the hallway conversations, in the corridor conversations. They can focus on some key elements that are there in the more formal context. Things like, being concerned to help identify an outcome, what's wanted, looking at the resources that might already be in place to help people achieve what they're wanting to move towards, identifying some clear small step actions to move towards that, keeping a level of accountability involved so that there's some kind of check in, even if it's just, "How's that going?" a week later. We think those sorts of elements can be in any number of conversations, and they're not typically what we would have called formal coaching conversations, but they're getting quite impactful.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
It seems relatively simple, accessible. You're not creating false conversations, where I'm thinking too much about what conversations. These will naturally flow I imagine.

John Campbell:
They do, and they can. We think a coaching type conversation is most appropriate where someone wants something to be different, and they're prepared to do something about it. Coaching style conversations don't have to be everything all the time. Sometimes, someone just needs a bit of advice, or encouragement, or whatever, and that's fine. It's sometimes helpful to get in the habit of asking whether it might be useful to explore this in a coaching way, because sometimes it's not necessary to do that. We do think there's a whole range of informal context where coaching style conversations can be useful, time efficient, and can make quite a big difference in a short time.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
How might schools get started if they want to have better coaching style conversations? I imagine lots of people listening to this saying, "I could do that. I think this would be good."

John Campbell:
Lots of people are. We think that's one of the good things about the Global Framework. It gives people a way of thinking about coaching at a leadership context. Is this where it might be useful for us to train some of our leaders, prepare our leaders to do this in more effective ways? Is it around professional practise areas, where it would be useful to think about some of these concepts and to explore that? Is it in the area of student coaching, and how we might engage with students, or they might engage with each other in this sort of way? What about parents? Is that something we'd like to think about as well?
That's maybe a useful thing to consider. If we're wanting to get started in this area, which might be a useful entry point, and then to maybe explore what's already happening in the context of the school already, and perhaps to identify some things that might be part of a plan for the way forward. There's lots of resources on our website that people could access to help them think through some of those kinds of things.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Absolutely. Fascinating conversation with a potential real change in schools at so many levels. John Campbell, thank you so much indeed for joining us.

John Campbell:
Thanks Leigh.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You've been listening to the Growth Coaching International Podcast. I'm Leigh Hatcher. If you'd like to make that kind of difference, head to our website,www.growthcoaching.com.au

References:

• Dutton, J. (2003). Energize your workplace (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Cross, R. and Parker, A. (2004) ‘The hidden power of social networks: How work really gets done in organisations’. Boston: HBR Press.
• Madden, W., Green, L. S., & Grant, A. M. (2011) ‘A pilot study evaluating strengths-based coaching for primary school students: Enhancing engagement and hope’, International Coaching Psychology Review, 7(1), 71-83.
• Van Nieuwerburgh, C & Campbell, J. A Global Framework for Coaching in Education, The Teaching Leaders Coaching Journal 1 (2-5)