Rory Courlander, IFC Certified Coach, high school administrator, and experience learning and teaching coach, explores building a coaching culture from no coaching to an embedded collaborative coaching culture. He and Steve discuss coaching skills and coachability.

Find Rory’s Coaching Culture Continuum and connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.290] – Steve [Intro]

Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:26.310] – Steve

Building Coaching Skills and a Coaching Culture. Our podcast guest today is Rory Courlander. Rory is an assistant high school principal at the GEMS Dubai American Academy. He is a certified ICF coach, coaching facilitator, teaching and Learning Coach, IB psychology teacher, and the founder of Courlander Coaching. I’ve had the pleasure to work with Rory as I supported the implementation of a professional growth model at Dubai American Academy. That growth model has coaching elements built in to the project. So welcome, story.

[00:01:16.020] – Rory

Thanks, Steve. Great to be here. We’ve had some great conversations over the years, and you’ve definitely helped me reflect and think of how we implemented coaching here at DAA. So thank you.

[00:01:27.760] – Steve

Well, I’m anxious to get your insights today. I’m wondering, as a start, would you talk a little bit about your introduction to the concepts of coaching, and what was the process for you to build your coaching skills?

[00:01:45.640] – Rory

Yeah. So five years ago, part of a professional development opportunity within GEMS, I was offered to go on what’s known as the Coaching Clinic, which is a two-day coaching skills program to develop the coaching skills of leaders within an organization. I was a middle leader then. After my first day on this two-day training, I was just blown away. It was my first ever introduction to coaching outside It was a sports field, so to speak. What I came away, my key reflection was working in, I would say, with some high-caliber experienced educators, I was like, we need to shift from a cultural of mentorship to one of coaching. What I meant is mentorship has a place. But what I was getting from it as I was been given a time to think and reflect about what influence I wanted on student learning, and then what influence I wanted as my role as a middle leader. And then after that, I just was, I would say, obsessed, really, about how do I share this with my colleagues to get them to… what I say is to be able to feel what coaching is like, to be able to then maybe offer it.

[00:03:01.460] – Rory

And so that was the start of my journey. That was five years ago. What I did for a year or two, I just practiced my skills. A few books that I read was the Cognitive Coaching Book, your bringing coaching into education and instructional coaching impact cycle. And with that background reading and my practicing of skills with colleagues, I started to see little ripple effects of one-to-one coaching conversations with teachers and seeing them lead believe with a greater focus and understanding of what they wanted to happen in their classroom. I was like, oh, I’m going to pause here. What would happen if we had teachers doing some peer coaching and peer observation which I received from your guidance in there as well, and then having colleagues to come in and observe student learning and shift the culture of observation and feedback. And then this build us up into… This was in the high school. We did this as a process of peer observations as a way to focus on student learning needs and shift the culture around feedback. And then I was given the chance with success here in my second year to deliver this in the middle school and then the elementary school.

[00:04:15.780] – Rory

And that was my first part of experience in coaching and developing it. And then there was a key moment where I shifted into what I would say is the intentionality of developing coaching skills and culture over the past three years.

[00:04:30.280] – Steve

I want to back you up a little bit. At the very start of your explanation, you described picking up a difference between mentoring and coaching. And if you describe what you saw as that difference that caught your attention.

[00:04:46.230] – Rory

Yeah, well, from my experience of, so this is five years ago, a young, I would say, emerging teacher, I learned a lot from my mentors. But what I was doing, because I was getting more experience and I had my own ideas and I understood how to apply the strategies I wanted to meet the needs of my students learning that people were coming in and go, oh, you should do this and this. I’m like, I understand that, but in the context of the groupings, the student learning, my subject, actually, I need to do it this way. So what I noticed is that when I shifted to just asking questions more and asking… And what I found is by getting teachers to reflect and metacognitively look at what influence does this teaching strategy have on the student learning? They really started to think a lot deeper and started to look from teaching to student learning, and then backward planning upwards from that. And what I’ve seen is that in the moments of these, I was using my relationships to go, Hey, I learned this thing called coaching. I really want to practice. Can you give me 30 minutes?

[00:05:55.380] – Rory

And if it doesn’t add value, you don’t have to come back. Sure enough, 30 minutes, people are coming back and they’re going. What they’re getting is a moment for reflection and thinking. And then I’ve seen them going into the classroom. One of the ones that you’re talking about mentorship is great starting conversation is I need to bring more creativity in my lesson. A mentor. I have loads of ideas I can share with you about creativity. What I did is I went, I paused and I went, when was the last time you were creative? Then the teacher stopped and went, yeah, I’ve got my job, the demands. No, I’m not…Oh, my God…And then it was like, I used to love this – and then what she tapped into, so moving forward to the action piece, it was like, well, what would you need to do to bring more creativity into your own life? And then when they and I said, I’m going to get that. The next two weeks, it was like, Oh, you want to see the learning and the lesson, all these different ideas? And I was like, Wow. If we tap into the individual and ask them what they need and how it’s going to influence student learning, they sparked ideas and then have ownership.

[00:07:02.940] – Rory

And then I was like, Oh, this is a real thing now. Coaching actually is a real thing. And I hadn’t done any… I’d only done a two-day training and read loads of books in practice. So I didn’t really even reflect that. I knew there was something. I was like, and that’s something I needed to know more about.

[00:07:24.360] – Steve

The quick descriptor you gave there is that the mentor is telling and the coach is asking. There’s a time that I need people to tell me, and I need to know when to ask for that. I use the example, I went from teaching middle grades to primary, and I didn’t know enough about reading to engage in a reflective conversation. I didn’t know enough about the teaching of reading to engage in a reflective conversation. I needed a mentor to lay out, here’s the first set of, here’s the first set of steps. But then, as you described, there comes that point that I have built up a base now, and now I’m approaching this more in a thinking mode, or I’m ready to explore it in a thinking mode, and a coach sparks that for me.

[00:08:20.240] – Rory

Yeah, I like that. And that’s the key word, is that reflective thinking and that thinking process.

[00:08:26.780] – Steve

I’m wondering, as you began I’m hearing you got excited about this. [laughter]

[00:08:33.580] – Rory

Can you sense that? [laughter]

[00:08:34.850] – Steve

You wanted to expand it to your colleagues. Initial resistance to the thought or idea, or how did that change or modify then?

[00:08:50.140] – Rory

I think the key moment for me was when my superintendent came to me and said, you need to do your master’s in leadership. She was sensing some influence and development there. I looked at her and I went, okay, she reflected, what does she mean? I came back and I went, no, actually. I need to focus on coaching. I’m going to actually invest my time and money on doing my coaching qualifications. Because from my experience, after my training, to come back to resilience, there’s that book, you coach the person, not the problem. So I was actually involved a lot in the problem because I hadn’t done my training, my expertise reading so much. So talk about my own journey. It was when the resistance was coming, I was realizing I’m not upskilled enough to be able to facilitate what I want. And so that was a very intentional decision. And then once I went through my… I did a six-day intense, 60 hours of training, and then you’re practicing practice and practice and practice, I started to realize I was listening very well and asking okay questions, but I wasn’t really coaching. Then when I had that self-awareness of my competency.

[00:10:16.770] – Rory

So then when the comments of, “Hey, Rory, are you doing that coaching thing again?” I’m like, “Yes, we are.” What we’ll do is exposure to coaching will make you feel something you probably haven’t felt before. So I’m going to continuously expose you to that. And then the aim is that some of you, it will resonate and spark, like in a lesson. Here’s some of the strategies. I’ve got 60% over here. Now I’ll adapt and go over here. And then the resilience – and what I wanted – the other one is, are we doing that coaching thing again? Literally a year later, “Hey, Rory, can I stop you for a minute?” “Yeah, of course.” “You know that coaching thing you do?” “Yeah, it works.”

[00:10:55.840] – Rory

And I was like, “what works?” “Well, you know that peer coaching we do when we’re just doing those starter activities, and then we go into the classroom and do peer conversations. And then you talked about how it’s very useful for the students in the lesson. Well, I did that on a feedback process. It was amazing. Peer coaching in the classroom with students. And I was like, I know. So the resilience was definitely there. And the one thing that I had was a lot of leaders in the school that had had experienced coaching, so they were aware of their benefits. And that gave me a bit of a… it opened the door a little bit for me to share that with the school.

[00:11:42.040] – Steve

It’s interesting as you started that story that while leadership degree was recommended, you looked at coaching instead. And I’m continually just flabbergasted contested by the lack of coaching training that’s built into leadership programs. People go through and complete a degree in leadership and spend a very limited amount of that time exploring the concept of coaching, not alone the skill-based elements of it. I know that you’re engaged in providing coaching training to others now teaching them coaching skills. So I’m wondering if you’d talk about what do you see is when somebody’s new, what do you see is the initial things to be able to get them started? And then what do you see as people who have experienced and practiced with coaching for a while? What do you see as the skills that you put in front of them to go to the next step?

[00:12:52.660] – Rory

Yeah, I think for a very satisfying moment is that when I did that two-day coaching clinic myself, I remember sitting in there and saying, I’m going to deliver this one time. I just felt it. I was like, this is one of the best things I’ve experienced. I’m going to deliver it. And then fast forward, now we deliver that in the school, a two-day bespoke coaching training. We’ve been very intentional of having a top-down approach, so all members of SLT. And that’s not just an education, that’s operations, IT, director of admissions, athletics, full scope. Now we’re into middle and teachers and counselors. And to come in into skill-based pieces, the feedback is so positive. Taking time from teachers is very valuable. And what I’m noticing, which had comment in the last one I did in January, was like, “that was seven hours, and I didn’t feel bored.” I’m go, “I’m writing that down.” So to go back to the point of the skills and what I’m noticing within the school is we have all these different members we have are teachers in many different divisions. We have middle leaders, we have our counselors, we have our senior leaders.

[00:14:14.100] – Rory

Every time I’m passing in the corridors, they’re telling me stories about how they’ve used coaching interacting with parents, their team, and what I love, with their students. One of the beautiful stories is, particularly in the SEND Department, this has been quite important, where they’re asking them more questions and getting them to solve their own problems. And it’s actually leading to that development and resilience within the individual. And obviously within that 40 of them, we’ve had the skills where we’re noticing is that people are pausing a bit more and listening to others at a deeper level to understand them, which is giving them the information required to maybe actually step step into more a directive style of coaching or information to ask more questions. But the awareness and the skill is there. Now, that’s the key what I wanted to bring is I want people to have the awareness. This is the right moment to ask Or actually, because you’ve listened properly, this is the right moment to tell them. But having the awareness and the skill to choose. And we’re seeing that slowly, and what I would call a coaching environment is in place.

[00:15:30.130] – Rory

And that is happening. I wouldn’t say the culture is there. We’re building it. The coaching environment is in place. And my biggest success, which I wanted to do, was I was the only coach. So I was a psychology teacher. I was practicing it, and then I was intentional, and then I measured the impact and I shared it with leadership. They went, oh, this is good. Okay, let’s do it next year again. And then they said, right, I think there’s something on here. I want time off. Just give me one lesson off, and can I get a stipend role for this? And then when that happened, it was a bit more intentional. And I was able to now build a coaching skills, but also offer one to one coaching for all our senior leaders. So I had all the assistant principals, some of our middle leaders, and then our one principle, utilizing myself as an internal coach. Within that, there was still embedded teaching and learning, instructional coaching piece with teachers, new teachers in particular, giving them the support to implement what type of learning do the students need, so leading what strategy is there. So this holistic view of it has been important.

[00:16:37.310] – Rory

My success is that we have five of my colleagues who’ve now gone on to do their own coach training. Within instructional coaching within instructional coaching, within coaching for students, within the journey I did. So now we have, this is the first year, we have a full-time instructional coach in elementary. We have an Arabic coach in middle school, K-12, actually as well. We have a director admissions who’s coaching and coaching our team to get our hours. And then we have a student-focused coach who’s just finishing. So now is how do we build that capacity so it’s not just me. And it gets me really excited because now I have these people who want to talk to me all the time about coaching. And not me talking to everyone else about coaching.

[00:17:20.320] – Steve

I reached out to you about the podcast when I saw a post that you did on LinkedIn that laid out a structure of moving from what you labeled as a no coaching culture to an embedded collaborative coaching culture. Can you take just a couple of minutes and walk us through that? What’s happening at that lowest stage, and then how do you move through the steps?

[00:17:53.320] – Rory

Yeah. And then, to be honest, thanks to yourself, because it was actually one of your your articles on your website, that post that popped up on my LinkedIn that was actually talking about what does a coaching culture look like within a school. I was thinking about it, and then I read yours and I went, oh, I was like, wow, that’s very similar to actually my journey of trying to create it. I was using it as a framework within the language of my journey of, actually, not even a language or a topic of coaching being used within the school. Some of the leaders knew to adopt more coach-like conversations with their direct reports, but nothing there. So as we know, culture of minimal experience and understanding of what coaching was and trying to distinguish between mentor and coaching. And then my job was to create awareness of coaching, of actually bringing it into the professional development and professional growth model. And my thing is, you got to receive it if you want to give it because it’s experiential. So I was like, keep exposing little coaching skills, listening activities, asking questions, and then getting people aware of what coaching feels like, and then bring it into our professional growth model, which is embedded in our practice.

[00:19:17.440] – Rory

So within the PLC’s you’ve helped us develop, at the end, all teachers do peer observations using a coaching model, and that’s just embedded in the practice. Everyone knows to ask the questions, to listen, and to focus on the teacher and the student learning. And what’s interesting for the teachers is that they just want to give advice. So taming that advice monster. Actually, I would have done this. It’s not about you. [laughter] It’s a very challenging shift, but I love watching it because I share, actually, I see them in my training, the advice monster coming to their teeth. I can actually feel it in my ears now because of my practice. That was the awareness piece. Then what does developing coaching practice look like? Being intentional, is that right? If we’re serious about this as a school, let’s be intentional and let’s go top down. Because I was able to build it up, I would say I built up the awareness and say, look, coaching is a real thing here, and this is the influence I’m tracking through my quantitative data and my qualitative surveys and interviews and sharing it with the team. So let’s develop coaching practices so it becomes…

[00:20:35.640] – Rory

We can create an environment, so then the culture of conversations is more coach-like, and the culture of our professional growth is more coach-like. And then that’s what we’ve done with the training of 40 of our colleagues now in the school. And we’ve still got another… By the end of this year, it’ll be 50 or 52. And then embedding instructional coaching. Now we have within elementary with an instructional coach, I’m literacy coaching, Arabic coaching, and myself within the high school, within our feedback models, our observations, informal walkthroughs, all that through a coaching lens and using coaching cycles. So I would say our coaching environment is there. I’d say another year or two, I would say we would… Hopefully, this is my aim, we will have embedded a collaborative coaching culture. And that’s because the more of our colleagues will have done the training, so when new staff They’ll come in, they’re having experience, more coaches conversations with colleagues and leaders. They’ll be like, what’s coaching? I want to go and do it. And then it builds like that. It’s only when I put this down, I had time to reflect because I was in the doing of it.

[00:21:45.670] – Rory

I looked back and I was like, there was nothing here. I’m like, whoa, look what we’ve done. As I said, I love… Now I’ve got people who want to come and talk about coaching me. I’m not the only one running around saying, “Coaching’s amazing. Listen to me about coaching.” And that’s a really positive place for our school to be, I think.

[00:22:11.720] – Steve

So one of the words that I like to use when I’m talking coaching culture is growing coachability.

[00:22:19.950] – Rory

Yeah, I love that one.

[00:22:21.430] – Steve

When we mentioned earlier that it’s a stretch to figure out how people go through a leadership program and don’t receive training in how to coach. I find it almost the same struggle that I go through a degree program to become a teacher and being coachable wasn’t built in. So I’m wondering, is there a spot in your building sequence there where coachability is the piece that really pushes us to the next level?

[00:23:03.260] – Rory

Well, it’s a lovely little gap by which I hadn’t… I’ve heard you use that word, but now I’m looking in between those what is an embedded culture and a coaching environment. And I think that’s the key thing. And I had a good conversation with a colleague recently who was in a different school, and I went up and said, “Hey, I’ve seen you just finish your coach training.” She was like, “How do you know?” Then I was like, “What’s one of the biggest challenges?” And she’s like, “Mindset.” And it’s just I was listening to her and I was like, then I think we’re looking from that closed mindset towards how they think about their performance as a teacher and how they think about themselves, really, to this coachability. One of the things I love and how you can see it in a coaching conversation was some of our colleagues, they’re new to the school, they need that extra bit of support. They have those formal observations and they’re like, here, look, here’s some feedback. I think it would be useful, actually, to take this feedback and have a more coach-like conversation with Rory.

[00:24:04.610] – Rory

Happens a lot on the time. I was told I need to come here.

[00:24:13.230] – Steve

[laughter] So folks, you need to know that while Rory is presenting. I’m watching him on video, and in the podcast, you’re only hearing it. But you can picture Rory with his arms crossed as he makes that statement, I was told I need to come here.

[00:24:29.700] – Rory

[laughter] Sorry, I forgot about that.

[00:24:30.670] – Steve

But all instructional coaches have heard that.

[00:24:33.730] – Rory

Yeah, and that’s a really good piece. For the coachability is that when you can use the coaching skills effectively to support another person, what I noticed is this actually came from sitting back to leaning in and looking at themselves as a way of, oh, I can do this. Even if it is, I need to go and observe somebody else, or I need to go and read something is now I’m taking ownership. Nobody’s told me what I need to do. The feedback was there. All I did was ask questions about how they’re going to actually implement the feedback and what would be the benefits on your student learning if you did that. And then once you do that, they’re like, oh, the students will learn this way. Well, how are you going to actually implement that? Actually, my colleague is fantastic at that. I might go watch a little 20 minutes of that, and then you have that culture just going in. And even the teacher is like, oh, I’m just observing the strategies influence on student learning. You’re just a medium for that.

[00:25:34.950] – Rory

I love that shift to make people more coachable. I’m glad you brought that up because that could be actually what a culture is, is more of our educators and our conversations are just more coachable. I like that. Thanks, Steve.

[00:25:51.960] – Steve

You’ve talked earlier about teachers carrying coaching into how they work with students. I would suggest that what we’re looking to do with our students is to build coachability. I’ve done so much of looking at what I learned from the performing arts instructors and the athletic coaches. They’re looking for players who are coachable. The more coachable the player becomes, the more the player or the artist is seeking input from everyone.

[00:26:37.170] – Rory

What would be some of the characteristics, you’d say, of an individual that would be more coachable?

[00:26:44.240] – Steve

First of all, they’re hearing any input they get as being possible. It doesn’t have to be true, but it’s possible. I compare it to doing a large presentation to a very large audience and getting back 300 evaluation forms, and there’s five of them that say it was terrible while everybody else is saying it was outstanding. It’s the ability to look at the ones that didn’t get what they wanted and begin to ponder. It’s not really an evaluation of your performance, but it causes you to ponder what could be different, what could take it further. To me, another coachable piece is actually when you said there’s a tendency on the teacher’s part to say, well, this is how I would have done it, and people are resistant to that, totally agree. But where we want to be is to have the other person ask, how would you have done it? And I want to ask four other people how they would have done it. And I don’t have to I don’t think that any of those are the right answer, but they’re all things that feed my reflection, my pondering, my ability to have a picture of the future.

[00:28:11.390] – Steve

I’ve had instructional coaches talk about getting feedback from a teacher. The administrator says people need to engage in coaching with the instructional coach. An instructional coach will get a note from somebody saying, I’m happy to have you come into my room. I just don’t know what it is I’d have you look at. I’m not seeing a problem right now. And I trained the coach. As soon as you get that call, you let the teacher know, hey, I’ll be right down. The administrator said anybody who doesn’t have something to work on, they go to the top of the list. We don’t want to be a school that has educators who don’t have a picture of where they could go or where they want to go. And that’s coachability. I have to seek it out and I can explore it.

[00:29:03.490] – Rory

Yeah. Those coachability to be able to really listen and hear what’s been shared with you as a way of possible change, be able to reflect on that and look into action. It seems like that deep curiosity to improve.

[00:29:22.010] – Steve

There it is. That’s the big… There is somewhere I haven’t gone yet. I’ve described as a I like to start the year by having each teacher let me know what it is they’d like to accomplish with students this year that they’ve yet to do in their career.

[00:29:42.650] – Rory

I love that. There’s somewhere I haven’t gone. That’s brilliant.

[00:29:47.220] – Steve

Take that to an athlete, take that to a performing artist, take that to a mathematician.

[00:29:56.320] – Rory

Anyone. You mentioned the good thing about student coachability. So the one thing I look about this question of what is coaching in education? Is it just instructional coaching or is it just leadership coaching at the top end for executives? Looking at there’s a great framework by Christian Van Neerberg and someone else within growth coaching, and they have those four components, coaching embedded in your professional practice, developing coaching as a way of leading students in your coaching, and then coaching for the community with parents. The one thing that I’ve seen is the gap from what is coaching for me is getting in with those students and trying to be intentional. It’s hard with the rigor of being an IB and an American high school, diploma school in the high school. But I think we found that we’ve been able to create within our student government and our student leadership program, where they take four hours within our parent-teacher conference. They’ve done like, what is leadership as a student? And what I’ve asked now is, let’s go to the next level. What are some of the leadership skills for the future? So coming April, we’re now creating a four-hour, what’s called student coaching, developing the leadership skills of the future, and then seeing how we can create that environment where students become more coachable, where they have a more coach-like, what I have on my board, actually, to be more coach-like.

[00:31:28.470] – Rory

That was me pointing on my whiteboard, sorry. I have it at the top. It just says to be more coach-like. It’s that coaching mindset piece from how do we have that coaching mindset, reflective practice, listening, being patient, pausing, being present, and one of the topics why this is important to me is it links to the disconnect I’m seeing with the big word of integrating AI and technologies within the education. That’s happening. It’s happening. No stopping that. I want to make sure that as my kids and our students are developing those skills, they’re also developing those skills to connect with themselves and connect with others. From my experience, there ain’t no better skill than coaching to connect with yourself as an individual to reflect on who you are and what you want to do, and to connect and build really positive relationships with others. And that’s what really pushes me. And I love the AI topic. I’m like, yeah, I’m with you, but let’s make sure we balance it. And that’s something that’s quite important to me, actually. There’s this quote, and it’s a futurist, is in a high tech world, we need to be more high touch.

[00:32:38.210] – Rory

That’s the key one.

[00:32:40.250] – Steve

Pulling those in for our students to develop an ability for themselves and coaching skills in their relationships with each other. My wife and I, she’s being a school counselor, there’s frequently times where one of us is taking our coachability to the other, looking for the other one to use their coaching skills, but back with us. It’s building that partnership. And for kids to leave school knowing how to look for coaches, how to be a coach, and be coachable.

[00:33:28.420] – Rory

Brilliant. One of the best moments I had this year, my 15-year-old daughter, “Hey, dad.” I was like, “What’s going on today?” And she goes, “I’m getting better at asking questions.”

[00:33:37.790] – Steve

Oh, wow. Terrific.

[00:33:39.390] – Rory

I was like – because she’ll talk at you for 45 minutes in the car. She said that to me and I was like… And she’s like, “Dad, you want to see the answers they’re given to me? They think it’s to me, but it’s actually to themselves.” I was like,” I know. Well done, kid.” That was lovely. That was good.

[00:34:02.750] – Steve

Well, Rory, I appreciate the time.

[00:34:05.650] – Rory

Yeah, me too.

[00:34:06.110] – Steve

Great conversation. I’m excited to get this out to my listeners. How can people touch base with you? One, I’d like them to be able to find the, I’ll call it a continuum that you built for coaching. How do they find that? And then how can they touch base with you with any questions they might have?

[00:34:26.140] – Rory

I think LinkedIn is the best platform for me. I have my email, but everything’s on LinkedIn, Rory Courlander. One of my posts has the document in there called, “Building a Collaborative Coaching Culture,” which I’ve tagged you in as well. So yeah, on LinkedIn, Rory Courlander.

[00:34:42.280] – Steve

Okay. We’ll put those in the podcast lead-in. Thanks so much.

[00:34:48.130] – Rory

Steve, great fun.

[00:34:50.830] – Steve [Intro]

Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.