Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Hello and welcome to the coaching in education podcast series. I'm Leigh Hatcher, with some great stories of the difference coaching is making in all sorts of schools and school system. This time I'm in conversation with Peter Macbeth. Peter is a proud, passionate educator who's clocked up 12 years as a school principal in four different schools. He's also passionate about coaching in education. These days he's Director of public schools in the Far West of New South Wales with a network covering around 109,000 square kilometres and includes some of the most remote schools in New South Wales.

Peter Macbeth:
I've learnt how unique education is across a whole range of different settings and across ... and I've been very fortunate to teach right across New South Wales. And I've taught in a whole variety of different contexts and how unique the educational challenges and needs that young people face in different settings right across New South Wales. The biggest lesson I reckon I've learned is that you have to believe in young people, and you have to use a really positive, appreciative inquiry based approach and really believe in young people and what they can achieve and what schools can achieve. We have to be really focused around excellence. And the other thing I would say is I think the absolute core of what we do is build around relationships and good communication.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
And to be open and perhaps flexible in your thinking?

Peter Macbeth:
Absolutely. And again it's that unique context that we're working right across New South Wales in terms of being flexible and open in our thinking because we have to adapt what we do to meet the needs of young people wherever they may be.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
I have no doubt that there are great rewards, great challenges in your work. Take us through some of those Peter, first the rewards. What do you reckon you get out of it or what do you reckon the kids get out of it?

Peter Macbeth:
We have an obligation to provide kids a future and so if we do our job properly and we help kids and we support kids in the way that we could and we should and we're able to, then we're able to build a future for kids. And we're able to build belief in young people, we're able to build hope in young people, build some expectation and some responsibility in young people. And the depth of our job in terms of the capacity we have to make a difference is incredibly significant.
You know when you see young people reach where they want to go or their dreams become reality, it's an incredibly rewarding thing. I mean you come across kids 15 or 20 years after you teach them and yet they say, thank you for helping them out or supporting them or teaching them at school, it's the best.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
And they're embracing that and teachers are embracing it too?

Peter Macbeth:
Absolutely, yeah absolutely. We're in it to make a difference for young people. The reason I do my job is to help young people find a future.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yeah. What about the challenges Peter, many of those too?

Peter Macbeth:
Look many, many, many challenges. I guess the biggest challenge is you know in terms of where I am located now is, the biggest challenge that we have is distance. New South Wales is an enormous part of the world, the distances that young people have to travel, have to go to, to access opportunities is a challenge. And so that's a challenge and it's a challenge supporting them in such an environment too. You know if you use a solutions focused approach then, where there's a will there's a way, I guess that's an old saying.
Broader educational challenges, the challenge around staff turnover and accessing teachers is a challenge for us at times. You know there are several good enough even casual teachers, that's a challenge. I think that the other challenge that we face is, and this is a thing that I keep talking to my principals about, is that there needs to be a real focus on excellence not equity. And because we are where we are in the Far West of New South Wales, we're not in a position to be able to cry poor, or we shouldn't be in a position to cry poor.
We should be in a position to focus on the excellence stuff that we're doing. So there's a real challenge around making people believe in who they are and what they do because the schools out there do an awesome job and there are some fantastic people out there. And so one of the challenges is making sure that we continue to have this belief in what we can do.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You mentioned a solutions focused approach, can you tell us the difference that coaching has made to you both personally I suppose and as well of course professionally.

Peter Macbeth:
Yeah look the first thing I'd say is I use coaching all the time in my work and it's embedded, it's part of how I do my job. In terms of what it's done for me, it's given us an awful lot of confidence, it's given us an awful lot of direction, it's also given us a lot of focus and it's also supported us personally in the nature of the relationships I have with people. They're not confronting, they're not adversarial relationships, it's helped develop a really supportive culture right across the network of schools that I work in.
It's certainly provided us, with me personally, a lot of structure and organisation around the way I carry myself and the way I go about holding conversations with people which is ... and enables a focus and enables a good a job done. It's helped enable the development of a belief that we can make change, we can create change and really improve the learning outcomes and the opportunities to young people. So at a personal level that's where I'm at. I guess you know in a professional context, it has made a significant difference around the nature of collaboration across schools, between principals, between colleagues, between people at all different levels.
There isn’t a hang up a bit who's the boss and who's not the boss but there's a collective approach to doing what we need to do to help young people. It has certainly built capacity amongst leaders. In the two years that I've been out in Broken Hill I think we've changed over, out of the 22 principals, about 13 of the principals and so we have a fair degree of changeover. And so therefore a lot of those guys have been in their job for the first time and so coaching has enabled us to have very, very effective conversations where we build capacity and that's very clearly evident.
And it's provided us with a model of operation and a model that we can focus on to engage in really effective conversations and create a real collective focus around what we need to do and how we need to help improve ... what we need to do and how we need to do it in terms of improving student learning outcomes.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
They sound like big changes.

Peter Macbeth:
They have been.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Not insignificant both professionally and personally.

Peter Macbeth:
Pretty much so. Yeah very significant changes and it's quite interesting and you know I just went through my performance plans with all the school principals in my network and I'd probably say that's there's probably 70 maybe to 80% of principals have a professional learning goal of some description around improving and developing their skills around the use of coaching this year. And so I'm really heartened by the value that other people see in it and the capacity building that it has the opportunity to create.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Quite so. Can you talk to us a bit about how you've built these initiatives into your school improvement strategies, how have you come about doing this?

Peter Macbeth:
What we did was setup a framework through a really structured approach. We've done some professional learning around growth coaching you know 18 months ago. And throughout the course of last, the best part of the last two years almost really, we have had strategic intervals if you like along that timeline, we've engaged in further professional learning. So that means that people are updating their skills and building their capacity continually in a collective group of principals.
Then we also setup some structures where people work in what we call coaching trios. And so in that we have a coach, a coachee and an observer in a connection or a trio if you like. And the aim was and the aim is, is that those three people get together at regular intervals during the course of a school term if you like, and they coach each other, they observe each other and they're coachees with each other. And so that's a very structured approach.
And the other thing that we have done is that when we get together for professional learning events in our meetings, the meetings are not dictatorial and they're not chalk and talk if you like, but they're meetings where people are involved in. And so we use coaching in our ... coaching work as the basis of the strategy to engage in professional learning. So it's interwoven and part of the way we operate if you like in lots of different ways and facets of the work we do but it's part of the Far West.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
It's got a role in leadership development as well.

Peter Macbeth:
It does, yeah very, very, very much has. So we have out here in the Far West, we've established a Far West Leaders Network, we've got and also with our school principals, again we have structured opportunities where we get together with our leaders and when we get together with our principals we use coaching as a form, or as a strategy, or as a method, or a model, that we use to explore whatever it may be that we're looking at but using a coaching approach.
So it's not again some ... it's not a top down approach on top of people but rather people's knowledge is built from within and built from effective conversations and built through effective questioning. And I would go as far as to say it's a much deeper and richer understanding of the work that we do simply because of the coaching approach and strategies that we use because it comes from within.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
I could well imagine that. You're listening to the coaching in education podcast series. I'm in conversation with Peter Macbeth, Director of public schools in the Far West of New South Wales. So what about the implementation of the coaching approach on the ground? Any challenges there?

Peter Macbeth:
There certainly is and one is distance in terms of coaches getting together. You know the network stretches literally from the Queensland border to the Victorian border. And so having an opportunity to work with colleagues with such vast distances creates all sorts of challenges. I guess the other challenge which is slightly humorous, is the fact that we're on Central Standard Time and that half hour distance is sometimes ... it's something that you've got to get used to and sometimes that causes confusion. So that distance is a bit of a challenge.
The other challenge has been the fact that we have had a fair degree of changeover in principals and so the continuity in our coaching journey has been somewhat ... we've been very conscious of it along the journey that we have new people coming in at different times. And so the varying capacity of people in terms of their coaching ability goes from anywhere from people who have been on the journey from the start and who are competent and confident in it, to people who are for example, this year, who have just come in to the role of being a principal and so who haven't had much experience in coaching.
And so that's been a challenge to engage people of those experience levels into a meaningful process where they see coaching and the conversations that we have as a benefit to them. And so that's been good. And I guess the other thing is relevance in the fact that you know a job of a principal is incredibly busy and incredibly complex and then so incredibly important. And so continually reinforcing the relevance of coaching and how it benefits people and how it can support school improvement and leadership capacity, has been a really big focus of my work as I guess the director and the leader of the approach across the network.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
So, what would you say about the results that you've observed and also some of the key lessons that you've picked up along the way from your experience?

Peter Macbeth:
So my results would include the fact that there's an evident degree of increased level of confidence among school principals and a belief in what they can achieve. And a level of confidence where they can approach a whole variety of situations with parents, with students and with staff members in a way that can be constructive and productive to coming towards a solution that's going to be beneficial to young people as opposed to an adversarial type negative approach.
And so people are confident to have conversations, I have principals working with other principals of all different school types far more than they ever have and engaging in professional dialogues and deeper conversations far more than they ever have. And the sharing of that expertise across such a vast difference in experience levels can only be beneficial to the young people that sit in the schools.
We've developed a set of school hubs, so you know we have 22 schools, we have seven hubs so there's roughly three schools in each hub. And so collectively we're bringing like groups of schools together and they're working together on planning, on staff development activities, on professional learning activities, on student related activities. Because there's confidence to sit down, have conversations with people and not have any challenge through an effective questioning approach, the methods in which they want to go about doing what they do.
Well I think the engagement in professional learning activities that we've had has been far richer in all principals through the way we've structured the using of coaching in our professional learning work and activities has meant that everyone's had to get involved in it. And that's been capacity building in itself, so that's been really rich. Most importantly in my job, the leadership capacity of the staff both principals and school executive staff across the Far West, has most definitely improved and increased and strengthened, and people are confident and they can go about doing the rich work that they're doing at schools really well. And it's a really bubbly, positive part of the world through in so many ways the coaching work that we've done.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
A wonderful thing to see and hear. This is my favourite part of these podcast, give us a couple of real life examples where you've seen this actually practically change ... people change careers.

Peter Macbeth:
We setup one coaching trio and the one coaching trio involved the principal of a public school who is a very experienced principal, one of the guys who works in our school services, so he's a corporate staff member if you like. And we also had a principal who was brand new to being a principal. And last year they engaged in a coaching trio and they met religiously every two weeks and they went to the different sites where they worked in. And I was only talking to them a matter of weeks ago and they were able to articulate both a whole range of professional benefits that coaching has supported them through in working with their colleagues.
And the thing that probably touched me about that example was that the three of them spoke to me about the personal benefits. They've been able to use coaching in a very trusted environment with their other two colleagues, to explore and coach around some really significant personal challenges. And so both professionally and personally it's really built some people up into a really confident approach to what they do. And it's a very structured organised approach and it's literally changed some people's lives. And it's not a light thing to say but, the benefit that people have got out of it is significant and real both personally and professionally.
So that coaching trio the one that comes to mind is an absolute highlight and again very proud of. The other example would be because my role changes from a director of public schools to director of educational leadership at the start of term two, we've engaged in a process in our term in this past term in our network where I put my role statement out there, and my job out there and through a very deliberate coaching approach have come across ... have developed a strategy canvas for the role of educational leadership next term.
And so that meant that principals have had input into what our best hope are, what our critical success factors are for this new role and have been able to articulate where they'd like to be at the end of the year. Where they think is out of 10 now and 10 plus ... and n + 1. So they've been able to articulate where the next first step is and then they've been able to articulate what the first small step is and who's responsible for it.
And the who's responsible is really important because it's built up a real teamwork approach. The department of education released a school leadership strategy back in September and the new directorate leadership role is a major part of that. The guys out in the Far West have been part of the journey to develop what that role will look like in our unique part of the world, through a very deliberate coaching approach and it's been incredibly successful.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
It does sound fantastic, I want it everywhere.

Peter Macbeth:
Yeah it's a strategy that's been very successful and everyone's engaged in it, everyone's participated in it and everyone realises the changes, the school leadership strategy that we are implementing through this new role that everyone has a journey to play in it.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Have you thought about what next?

Peter Macbeth:
Yeah we have thought about what next because the work that we do, I don't want to set it up and then let it go and hope that it survives. And so what we are going to do is in August this year, we're going to go ahead and do a Solutions Focused Masterclass. And so all the principals across the network will engage in that and again refine, develop and strengthen their coaching skills so that's exciting. So that's in terms of people that's the next big thing. We will continue to use a coaching approach in our network meetings and in our school hub meetings, so we'll continue to do that.
And the thing that we are going to do coming into term two 2018 is reset our coaching trios. So that they're probably geographically a little bit more suitable and that will enable colleagues in different geographical locations across the network to meet more regularly and engage in the process. And so the feedback I've had from principals is that, "Can we reset them because I'd like to engage and I'd like to get more involved in it." And so if we can reset that structure and keep going with it, it should become embedded in practise and certainly not something extra, and certainly not something on top of, but it will become embedded practise in the way we go about what we do.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Peter Macbeth it's a great story, I'm so glad you've been up to speaking with us about it. Thank you so much and thank you for your time.

Peter Macbeth:
My pleasure.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You've been listening to the Growth Coaching International Case Study podcast series. I'm Leigh Hatcher. Check out some of our other great podcasts in this series Inspiring and educational. They're atwww.growthcoaching.com.au