1. Lesson 5: Demystifying “Extending the Learning” and Joint Goal Setting
Coaching
Lesson 5: Demystifying “Extending the Learning” and Joint Goal Setting

2. REVIEW: 3 Steps to Powerful Interactions Coaching
Step 1: Be Present to Coach
Step 2: Connecting as a Coach
Step 3: Coaching to Extend Learning
Use the 3 steps whether you are corresponding via or text, on the phone, doing an observation, or having a brief conversation in the hallway.

3. More on “Static” Step 1: Be Present to Coach / Clear your static
If you decide that the quality of your relationships is important because the relationships will advance your work with practitioners, then you have to find a way to turn the static into “background music.” This is necessary so you can focus on the person or people in front of you. A focused interaction that lasts a few minutes has endless positive possibilities.
Do a quick “Me Check:”
Ask yourself 2 questions:
How am I feeling now?
How can I adjust to fit and connect with the other person?
Once you get the hang of it, a quick “Me Check” will take less than a minute

4. More on “Static” Step 1: Be Present to Coach / Clear your static
The “Me Check:” Question 1:
How am I feeling now? By first focusing on yourself, on the inside, you’re able to make more deliberate decisions and to respond rather than react.
How you answer this question probably changes throughout your day. Think about all the things that can affect your mood:
Ups and downs of your workday (things you need to do, meeting you just left or the one you’re about to go to, difficult people, responsibilities after work like running an errand or getting kids to practice on time)
What’s going on in life outside of work (moving, family member’s illness, argument with kids or spouse, child leaving for college, family vacation)
Your health/well-being (backache or headache, depression, stress, “hangry”)

5. More on “Static” Step 1: Be Present to Coach / Clear your static
The “Me Check:” Question 2:
How can I adjust to fit and connect with the other person? You do this automatically with family and friends all the time without noticing, perhaps shelving thoughts about what to make for dinner to light up and take delight in the beautiful rock your child is running over to show you.
A principle that underlies your coaching stance is “individualizing.” Part of your role is to intentionally adjust to create a “just right fit” with the practitioner you are coaching.

6. More on “Static” Step 1: Be Present to Coach / Clear your static
The “Me Check:” Question 2:
How can I adjust to fit and connect with the other person? You might do this by adjusting:
Your body language
Your tone of voice
The pace of the interaction
Your energy level
How many words you use
The length of pauses between exchanges
The expression(s) on your face
Many times this will feel natural and easy. But there will be times, especially with people whose behaviors can “push your buttons,” you may find that it takes extra effort to find the best possible fit.

7. Review: the 3 Steps to Powerful Interactions Coaching
Step 1: Be Present to Coach
Step 2: Connecting as a Coach
Step 3: Coaching to Extend Learning

8. Step 2: Connecting as a Coach
It is a good idea to talk with the practitioners you’re coaching about additional ideas that you both can use to connect. It’s a conversation that in itself creates a connection. Over time, moments of connection add up to strong, positive relationships that are a pre-requisite for effective coaching

9. Digging Deeper into Step 2
Review: 3 Strategies for Connecting as a Coach
Three strategies to connect with practitioners and build positive relationships that provide the security a coachee needs to be open to exploring, experimenting, discovering, and learning in your work together: 3
Be Trustworthy
Listen to Learn
Communicate to Form Partnerships
See video #13: “Tychawn on what it means to be trustworthy”
For more details on these strategies, see Coaches Calls lessons 3, 4

10. Digging Deeper into Step 2
Connecting as a Coach
Your Coaching Stance: Be Trustworthy
Your actions model that the work is important.
Acknowledge that you, too, are a learner in the partnership.
Be sincere when highlighting strengths and genuine in your desire to nurture a learning partnership.
Use a practitioner’s strengths as the foundation of your conversations and work together.
Individualize your interactions to address the coachee’s personal style, experience, language, needs, and interests. [the “just right fit”]

11. Digging Deeper into Step 2
3 Strategies for Connecting as a Coach 3
Be Trustworthy
Listen to Learn
Communicate to Form Partnerships

12. Digging Deeper into Step 2
Connecting as a Coach
Listen to Learn
Listening is more than just hearing – it’s deciding to pay attention and to find meaning in what someone says (or doesn’t say) through words and body language. Coaches have to put aside their agenda and assumptions to be open to what the other person is trying to communicate.
Your Coaching Stance:
You are more likely to “listen to learn” when you:
Quiet the temptation to form judgments
Trust that you CAN learn from the coachee and let him/her know when you are learning
Are open to hearing about your own strengths
Focus on specific actions the practitioner describes so that you can help her articulate her intentionality

13. Digging Deeper into Step 2
3 Strategies for Connecting as a Coach 3
Be Trustworthy
Listen to Learn
Communicate to Form Partnerships
Intentionally choose words and phrases that communicate that you are aware that you have as much to learn from the coaching relationship as the person you are coaching.

14. Digging Deeper into Step 2
Connecting as a Coach
Communicate to Form Partnerships
Putting the other practices in place helps coach and coachee build a bridge and find common ground.
Your Coaching Stance:
You are more likely to “communicate to form a partnership” by:
Checking in with the practitioner about how he/she would be most comfortable communicating.
Posing a question that invites the practitioner to talk about his/her decision-making.
Calling attention to intentionality by using facts to describe the practitioner’s actions and the impact they have on parent’s and children’s learning
Starting conversations with “I notice” statements to validate the practitioner’s strengths.

15. Discussion/Reflection:
What are some of the words or “catch phrases” you use to communicate that you are open, interested, and willing to learn together in a partnership with others?

16. Review: the 3 Steps to Powerful Interactions Coaching
Step 1: Be Present to Coach
Step 2: Connecting as a Coach
Step 3: Coaching to Extend Learning

17. Demystifying “Extend Learning”
Step 3: Coaching to Extend Learning
Demystifying “Extend Learning”
“Extend Learning simply means stretching someone’s learning just a little bit.” -- Charlotte Stetson
The Extend Learning step is an opportunity to change reflections into insights, expand knowledge into wisdom, and inspire changes in behavior that improve performance.
See video #17: “Tara, Michael, and Diana on managing ‘venting’ and moving the work forward”

18. Step 3: Coaching to Extend Learning
This step – coaching to extend learning – is a 2-way professional development conversation in which you apply the four interrelated Extend Learning Strategies to stretch the coachee’s learning:
Focus on goals you set together
Notice “moments of effectiveness”
Use prompts/questions to encourage “thinking together”
Document plans and progress together
No matter WHAT you want to teach, HOW you interact influences the other person’s receptivity to learning from what you model or discuss.

19. Step 3: Coaching to Extend Learning
4 interrelated Extend Learning Strategies to stretch a coachee’s learning:
Focus on goals you set together
Notice “moments of effectiveness”
Use prompts/questions to encourage “thinking together”
Document plans and progress together

20. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
Think of joint goal setting as establishing a “big picture” plan for your work together.
“People change when the change is meaningful and important to them.” Margaret Wheatley, 2001
See video #18: “Tychawn on goal setting”

21. Discussion/Reflection:
Do you set personal goals?
If yes, pause to think about them.
What role do your personal goals play in your daily life? How do you monitor progress?

22. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
Powerful Interactions differentiates between “your” goals for a coachee and those you and the coachee have set together.
As a coach, you may have goals for change you hope to see in a therapist’s practice that come from observation/formal assessment, administrative directives, program improvement goals, etc. But the therapist may not see their importance, may disagree with them or may not understand these goals. He/she may have other priorities he/she wants to attend to first.

23. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
“I am working on an old habit of skirting around the topic of goals. I now know that I did this because I wasn't sure what the teacher wanted to work on, what she thought our relationship was for, or if she would be open to my suggestions.” Clarissa, Classroom Coach from Arkansas

24. Discussion/Reflection:
In a supervisory and/or coaching situation, when you have a goal for a coworker to meet, how do you “goal set” for them to reach the goal?
Have you been in a situation where a program or supervisor has set goals for your and your work?
How effective has this strategy been in changing practice?

25. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
At times I may have to put some of my goals on hold or modify them to meet the needs and interests of my learning partner and to meet her where she is at and extend her learning.
Goals I set WITH a practitioner through conversations together provide a shared focus that creates a sense of ownership and investment for him/her. This buy-in or commitment is necessary if he/she is going to make a meaningful and lasting change in practice.
See video #19: “Helena acknowledges tension and how to repair the relationship”

26. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
“My role as a coach is to help practitioners articulate their own goals and return to those goals over time to keep them relevant. Often I will simply ask a practitioner to talk about something they want to keep in mind in their work with parents and children, and usually what they describe is a goal that we can focus on during coaching.” Monica, Coach from Arizona

27. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
-- but what about best practices I need the therapist to incorporate?
You notice something the therapist would benefit from focusing on. You guide him into a conversation about it and build on his natural interests and strengths related to that area to help him articulate a goal that will reach the best practice you’d like to see him incorporate.

28. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
“At our first meeting, I asked Ms. Green, “What do you have in mind for our goals?” She wanted to focus on asking more open-ended questions and wanted help with transitioning from one activity to another. I observed her, and didn’t see any problem with transitions – she was very skilled. It didn’t take long to figure out that she was simply looking for more ideas to add to her already rich collection of transition strategies. Her first comment about open-ended questions was something we kept coming back to in our work, so I watched for that the next time I observed. . .

29. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
“One day while observing Ms. Green I realized she was good at formulating questions but the piece missing was a back and forth conversation after a child responded. For example, she’d ask a child, ‘Why do you think the bubble popped? When a child responded ‘Too much soap,’ she’d say ‘OK’ and move on to another question without drawing the child’s thinking out (extending the learning) by asking ‘why do you think that might be so?’ or ‘tell me more about that.’
I had been trying so hard to find moments of effectiveness that I missed focusing on our goal. Only when I did could I support her in clarifying it. Only then were we able to think and talk about it together.” Diana Courson
See video #20: “Sarah on ‘I notice’ statements”

30. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
“When we did a goals survey at the beginning of the year, one teacher told me she wanted to work on incorporating more math and early literacy opportunities in learning centers. So, I set up my first visit during center time. In some centers, she’d done a great job, but in others there was no sign of either one. When we met, I shared strengths-based feedback about those in which she had already met her goal. I encouraged her to talk about her decision-making in those centers that already were effective. That allowed her to realize and then share with me that she was having a difficult time coming up with math and literacy ideas for the other centers, so we brainstormed ideas for those centers together.” -- Danielle, Coach

31. Digging Deeper into Step 3
Coaching to Extend Learning
Strategy 1: Focus on Goals You Set Together
Even in messages/correspondence, intentionally highlight goals in follow up communications to continue the learning.
Example: “Dear Karen,
Thank you for welcoming me into your classroom last week! When we spoke, you mentioned your goal is to focus on language and literacy skills, specifically emergent writing and print concepts. Let’s focus our next visit on this. Please send me a quick outlining opportunities you already provide children to recognize print in the classroom environment and write efficiently. I’ll be at your program Thursday the 23rd. When you send the with emergent reading and writing information, please let me know what time Thursday afternoon is best for us to meet.
Thank you, Jessica”
-- Jessica, Coach

32. Coaching to Extend Learning
Reality Check
Coaching to Extend Learning
See video #21: “Diana on Accountability as a 2-way Street”
Remember the Roles
Be transparent about your role as coach. The coach-coachee relationship is not a personal relationship but rather a collaboration with a shared purpose on behalf of children and families.
Each partner has something important to contribute. Each is accountable to the other in reaching goals.

33. Putting It into Practice:
Coaches’ Homework for Lesson 5:
What element or elements of lesson 5 (this lesson) offered you guidance towards your coaching goal (identified in lesson 2 as a skill you’d like to strengthen – see post for L. 2 if you can’t remember)?
(slide 20) Margaret Wheatley notes that “people change when the change is meaningful and important to them.” (a) What are some ways you think that you can tie the new practices we are learning in our UP work to change in practice that matters to your colleagues? (b) What do you think some challenges will be?
In your work coaching a team-member this month, engage in a conversation to help the coachee articulate their own goal. Describe the goal and how the two of you worked together to set this goal.
Coaches will post their answers in the blog space on the team’s site: prior to Lesson 6 to document work and to be accountable to the team!

34. For Additional Support:
Visit The Powerful Interactions Web site and create a user account (at no cost)
On the Powerful Interactions Web site: Videos 18 (goal setting) and 20 (I notice statements) (in the members’ area):