“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” (Marissa Mayer)
How do administrators, instructional coaches, and teacher leaders foster such a mindset?
Research on psychological safety underscores the importance of creating an environment where individuals feel secure enough to take risks, make mistakes, and reflect without fear of judgment or blame. In education, this principle is vital for fostering teacher growth and innovation. Instructional coaches can play a pivotal role in establishing this safety by encouraging teachers to experiment with new practices and reframing missteps as valuable learning opportunities.
Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.300] – 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.
[00:00:29.910] – Steve
Pushing Through: Embracing Growth Through Discomfort. A quote from Marissa Mayer triggered my thinking for this podcast. Marissa Mayer is a renowned American business executive and technology leader who was the CEO of Yahoo from 2012 to 2017, where she led the company’s turnaround efforts. Prior to that, she was one of the first female engineers at Google and played a pivotal role in developing products like Google Search and Google Maps. She’s been celebrated for her ability to navigate challenges with vision, diligence, and a growth mindset. Here’s the quote that caught my attention. Meyer stated, “I always did something I was a little nut ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s the moment of, wow, I’m not really sure I can do this, and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.”
[00:01:40.130] – Steve
So here are the questions for us. How do administrators instructional coaches, and teacher leaders foster that kind of a mindset? How do we support each other as we navigate the discomfort of growth? How do we create this environment for teachers who actually should be working to create the same environment for students? Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety underscores the importance of creating an environment where individuals feel secure enough to take risk, make mistakes, and reflect without fear of judgment or blame. In education, this principle is vital for fostering teacher growth and innovation. Instructional coaches can play a pivotal role in establishing this safety by encouraging teachers to experiment with new practices and reframing missteps as valuable learning opportunities. When teachers feel supported in their efforts, they are more likely to embrace change and step outside their comfort knowing that their risks are seen as part of a growth-oriented process. To build this culture, coaches can start by celebrating teachers’ past attempts to try something new, even if those attempts weren’t entirely successful. Highlighting the courage to take risks reinforces the idea that growth comes from action, not perfection. By normalizing discussions about challenges and celebrating progress, coaching leaders can create safe and empowering spaces where teachers are motivated to continue exploring and refining their practices, ultimately leading to breakthroughs in both teaching and learning.
[00:03:52.840] – Steve
I found an approach to teachers’ professional growth plans that illustrates risk-taking and learning learning over goal setting where the teacher might feel evaluated. Jean Ross’s article, “Why Hypothesies Beat Goals,” found in the Sloan Management Review for MIT, suggests that instead of asking, what is your goal, we should be asking, what is your hypothesis? She states, “Hypotheses can force individuals to articulate in advance why they believe a given course of action will succeed. A failure that exposes an incorrect hypothesis can more readily convert them into organization educational learning. A hypothesis is an educated guess. It emerges from a set of underlying assumptions. It’s a belief that by taking these actions, I could create create a desired outcome. Articulating and justifying assumptions starts a learning process. The growth plan should outline the path that the teacher will take to investigate the hypothesis. The plan carried out may identify that the hypothesis was faulty. This finding can be the start of a new learning leading to a modified hypothesis. So learning from faulty or proven hypotheses can continue the drive to increased teacher and student success.” Historically, too many growth plans are shelved in September and revisited in April.
[00:05:50.250] – Steve
Coaching conversations can assist teachers in building growth plans around a hypothesis that lays the groundwork for ongoing coaching and reflection throughout the year. Here’s an example from a teacher-coach conversation. Teacher to coach: I’ve decided that my goal for my professional growth plan this year is to increase the number of formative assessments in each science unit. Coach: How do you see formative assessments impacting student learning? Teacher: Well, I’ll get more information about students’ understanding earlier, and therefore I can adjust my instruction. Coach: How do you see students using the information from formative assessments? Teacher: Hopefully, they would invest study time or question me as they discover what they don’t know that they should know. Coach: So you envision that implementing formative assessments will change your instruction and change students learning behaviors, both of which you believe would have a positive impact on student learning. That’s the teacher’s hypothesis. Now, going forward, the teacher and coach conversation throughout the year can examine how the formative assessments are changing the teacher’s teaching and how she is seeing an impact on students. Constant adjustments in the teacher’s practice promote ongoing learning. Another supporting coaching approach is framing discomfort as a growth opportunity.
[00:07:51.070] – Steve
This helps teachers embrace challenges and move past those feelings of uncertainty. Marissa Meyer’s perspective on growth, seeing moments of doubt as precursors to breakthroughs, can inspire us to view discomfort as a sign of learning in progress. By normalizing these feelings and connecting them to eventual success, coaches can shift mindsets and encourage risk-taking. Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset further reinforces this idea, emphasizing that ability and expertise are developed through effort and persistence. When working as a mentor, a peer coach, or an instructional coach, I need to know that my presence will be bringing some discomfort to the person I’m supporting. As the person being coached, I need to recognize that unless I can get myself to enter that area of discomfort, the growth won’t occur. As leaders, our goal is to create an environment where people will feel comfortable with discomfort. I find it intriguing that teachers recognize this with their students. Many, many, many teachers will report how hard they work to create a classroom environment where students can feel comfortable with discomfort. Yet they frequently work to avoid discomfort for themselves. Many teachers will not step back and not have the door open for other teachers to come in, not approach colleagues for peer coaching or approach an instructional coach for coaching because they want to avoid that feeling of discomfort.
[00:09:45.200] – Steve
Leaders can build trust by openly sharing their own discomfort, sharing how clumsy it feels to be using a new technology or being observed by a coach during a staff presentation and sharing that even though I feel this discomfort, I’m doing it because our students are too important for me not to do it. Our students deserve my willingness to go through this uncomfortable phase. Much the way teachers create classroom environments where the students support each other, we need to create a school culture where teachers support each other. Here’s an example from an instructional coach’s story. The coach stated, last year, our district introduced a new digital assessment tool that was supposed to streamline data collection and help us tailor instruction. It sounded great until I actually had to use it. I sat in a training session watching the presenter click through the system effortlessly, and all I could think was, I’m never going to figure this out. My usual strategies weren’t working, and the more I struggled, the more I wanted to just avoid it altogether. I felt awkward and frustrated, especially because as an instructional coach, I thought I should be able to pick things up quickly.
[00:11:16.080] – Steve
I even thought myself thinking, maybe I just won’t use this tool too much. Sound familiar? But then I realized something. That’s exactly how many teachers feel when trying new instructional practices. The same way that I hesitated to fully engage with this new system, teachers hesitate to invite a peer in to observe or try a new strategy or to shift their approach. And I get it. It is uncomfortable. We all prefer to feel competent and in control, but that’s not where growth happens. So I did what I asked teachers to do. I took a small step. I picked one feature of the tool, and I tried it out in a low-risk setting, and it wasn’t perfect, but I asked a colleague to walk me through it, and I kept going. And eventually, what felt overwhelming became second nature. I share this because I know that opening our practice to coaching, whether from peers, mentors, or instructional coaches, can feel just as uncomfortable as learning a new technology. But just like I needed to push through my discomfort to improve, we need to be willing to step into that space of uncertainty. Our students deserve our willingness to grow even when it feels awkward at first.
[00:12:47.910] – Steve
Coaches can guide teachers to take manageable steps towards implementing new practices, helping them build confidence along the way by scaffolding risk and and focusing on achievable actions. Coaches make challenges less overwhelming, empowering teachers to embrace discomfort as a natural necessary part of their professional growth. Another way to support this feeling of discomfort is for us to focus on celebrating progress over perfection. Teachers, like students, thrive in environments where progress is acknowledged and celebrated. When instructional coaches and school leaders focus on small wins rather than waiting for perfection, they reinforce the idea that growth is a continuous process. Michael Fullen emphasizes that building capacity requires a culture where individuals feel motivated to take risks, knowing that their efforts will be recognized. By celebrating incremental improvements, whether it’s a teacher experimenting with a new questioning strategy, refining their use of formative assessments, or making slight adjustments to classroom management, coaching leaders can create momentum that encourages sustained learning. This approach shifts the focus from perfectionism, which can be parallelized realizing, to ongoing development, which fosters confidence and a willingness to keep trying. One of the most effective ways to celebrate progress is by using concrete evidence to highlight a teacher’s impact.
[00:14:48.030] – Steve
Classroom observations, student feedback, or assessment data can provide tangible proof that small instructional shifts lead to meaningful outcomes. As an example, an instructional coach might point out how a teacher’s increased use of open-ended questions has led to deeper student discussions, even if the teacher is still refining her questioning techniques. By constantly recognizing these advancements, coaches and leaders reinforce a culture where educators see risk-taking as a pathway to success. When teachers feel that their efforts are valued, even in the early imperfect stages of implementation, they are more likely to persist, experiment, and ultimately achieve lasting growth. Andy Hargrave’s concept of collaborative professionalism emphasizes that meaningful change in education happens not in isolation, but through collective effort. When teachers embrace place new practices, they often feel vulnerable, uncertain, and hesitant, especially if they fear judgment from administrators or even their peers. A coaching culture that fosters collective growth and support can ease these concerns by reinforcing that no one’s expected to navigate change alone. Instead of viewing professional learning as an individual challenge, teachers who engage in collaborative professionalism see it as a shared journey, where colleagues support, challenge, and learn from one another. This mindset encourages educators to take instructional risks, knowing that they are part of a team invested in mutual success rather than part of a competitive environment that values perfection over progress.
[00:17:01.900] – Steve
One way to apply this principle is by establishing structured yet flexible opportunities for teachers to engage in peer coaching and reflective dialog, either through professional learning communities or peer observation groups. Here, teachers can exchange ideas, experiment with new strategies, and debrief their experiences together. Coaching leaders can further reinforce collaborative professionalism by facilitating protocols that focus on inquiry, curiosity, and shared problem solving, rather than on compliance or critique. When teachers experience firsthand the power of working through challenges collectively, whether through informal discussions, co-planning sessions, or structured feedback loops, they develop a stronger sense of trust and commitment to their own growth and the success of their peers. This approach transforms coaching from an individual act of vulnerability into a collective movement toward excellence. Growth begins at the edge of our comfort zones by encouraging teachers to embrace moments of uncertainty and providing the right mix of challenges challenge and support, instructional coaches can unlock educator potential. Marissa Mayer’s insight reminds us that true breakthroughs come from pushing through discomfort. As a coach and school leaders, we can guide educators towards these transformative moments. Educators, like our students, deserve an environment where we can feel comfortable with discomfort.
[00:19:00.050] – Steve
Consider what your efforts are at creating that environment. Thanks for listening.
[00:19:13.770] – Steve [Outro]
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 find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
