Coaching Competencies Soft skills, or putting behaviorism to work?

From the Coaching CoP Framework a. What do you expect your coaches to be able to do? What are your coaching competencies? (1) Intensity (2) Frequency (3) Duration b. How do you ensure that the people have the capacity as coaches? c. What competencies are most important? (1) Relationships (2) Critical conversations (3) Data based decision-making (4) Communication skills d. How do you match coaches with the teams that they will be working with? e. How do you set up the training related to these competences? (1) Critical conversations 

Materials for the conversation  Feedback PPT (NIRN)  Team Coaching article  Killion article  Rapport video

Questions to guide our discussion  Did the readings change your frame on approaching relationship building/soft skills? How so?  How do you approach soft skills with your coaches? How do you teach your coaches to build rapport?  How do you support your coaches in providing effective feedback?  What did you think about Killion's theory that coaches are most effective when they build relationship through effective coaching techniques (not when they start by solely building relationship)?  What did you think about the team coaching article’s proposition that building team performance is more important than building their relationships?

Killion Article: “Reprising Coaching Heavy and Coaching Light”  Coaching Heavy means robustly engaging in the work of coaching with a laser-like focus on improving student learning.  Coaching Light is more focused on the teaching rather than learning. It emphasizes the sense of being supported rather than the sense of producing results. “…more substantive conversations about student learning increase trust.”

 “Coaches can also establish trust and respectful, productive relationships with teachers by giving authentic feedback supported with evidence about student learning”

What would an emphasis on coaching heavy mean for your coaches’ training?

Team Coaching Article A Theory of Team Coaching (2005), Hackman & Wageman  Functions, Timing, & Conditions  Functions coaching serves for a team  Times when coaching interventions are most likely to “take”  Conditions under which team-focused coaching is most likely facilitate performance

Definition of team coaching  “…direct interaction with a team intended to help members make coordinated and task-appropriate use of their collective resources in accomplishing the team's work.”  It is unlikely that administrators will engage in team coaching

Poll  Do your coaches work with individuals or teams?

Coaching Models  Eclectic interventions  Taken from the management lit  Process consultation  Observe the team at work and then help them to create more effective processes  Behavioral models  About how to receive and provide more effective feedback (i.e., NIRN ppt  Developmental coaching  Teams need help with different issues at different stages of their development, and  There are times in the life cycles of groups when they are more and less open to intervention  Learning sessions

Poll  Did you know about these coaching models prior to reading the article?  Yes  No  Some of them

Team Performance Effectiveness  The productive output of the team (i.e., its product, service, or decision) meets or exceeds the standards of quantity, quality, and timeliness of the team's clients.  The social processes the team uses in carrying out the work enhance members' capability of working together interdependently in the future.  The group experience contributes positively to the learning and personal well-being of individual team members.

Effectiveness cont.  The level of effort group members collectively expend carrying out task work.  The appropriateness to the task of the performance strategies the group uses in its work  The amount of knowledge and skill members bring to bear on the task.

Coaching a team to be more effective  Coaching that addresses effort is motivational in character (build shared commitment)  Coaching that addresses performance strategy is consultative in character (foster the invention of ways of proceeding with the work that are well-aligned with task requirements)  Coaching that addresses knowledge and skill is educational in character

The article’s model of coaching  Purports not to put main focus on building relationships (soft skills)  Instead, addresses a team's task performance processes  Their theory: performance drives interpersonal processes Proposition 1: “Coaching interventions that focus specifically on team effort, strategy, and knowledge and skill facilitate team effectiveness more than do interventions that focus on members' interpersonal relationships.”

Poll  For those of you whose coaching model focuses on teams, what kinds of things do your coaches do to improve team performance?

NIRN Feedback PowerPoint

How does all this apply to your coaching model?  Your thoughts…

Planning for the SPDG National Meeting  We will hold a face-to-face CoP meeting.  When would you like it to be?  What format (e.g., open discussion)?  What would you like to accomplish (i.e., build relationship, learn about specific coaching work members are doing)?  If you are not part of the planning committee, what would you like for us to integrate into the meeting related to coaching?