Several years ago, I explored a question that still surfaces frequently in conversations with instructional coaches:

Should coaches describe their role as helping teachers? Does the phrase, “How can I help you?” fit in coaching conversations? At first glance, the answer feels obvious. Of course, coaches help. Supporting teachers is central to the work. But the language we choose can shape how coaching relationships form and function.

Over time, I’ve become even more convinced that the word help deserves close examination. Not because helping is wrong—but because of how the word helping may be interpreted.

When a coach says, “I’m here to help you,” teachers may hear:

• I have expertise you don’t.
• I know what you should do next.
• I’m responsible for improving your practice.

None of those messages reflect what strong coaching relationships are meant to be. In fact, they can quietly shift coaching away from partnership and toward supervision. That distinction is more important now than ever, as we look for coaching to evolve from a support service into a culture-building professional learning structure.

Over the last decade, the instructional coaching field has clarified something powerful:

Coaching works best when teachers and coaches operate as learning partners.

Jim Knight describes this as the partnership way of being, grounded in principles like equality, voice, dialogue, reflection, choice, praxis, and reciprocity, and identifies partnership as the first pillar of effective peer instructional coaching. Elena Aguilar similarly emphasizes that coaching is about developing educators’ capacity to reflect and make intentional decisions—not creating reliance on the coach’s expertise.

In my own work, I describe the coach as a thinking partner who engages with the teacher in shared inquiry—listening, questioning, and examining evidence together—so that the teacher’s decision-making is strengthened. In that space, coaching is no longer about providing answers but about expanding possibilities for both teaching and learning.

Coaching isn’t something we do for teachers. It’s something we do with teachers.

Organizational psychologist Edgar Schein, in Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help, reminds us that “helping is a cooperative process” and suggests that “all help is ultimately self-help.” He also explains that when someone asks for help, they are temporarily placed in what he calls a one-down position, while the helper is placed one-up. In schools, where trust and professional identity matter deeply, that shift in status can influence how coaching is experienced. Instructional coaching works best when teachers do not feel positioned below the coach but instead experience the relationship as collaborative and reciprocal. Positioning ourselves as thinking partners helps maintain that balance.

When coaching is framed as helping, it can unintentionally suggest that teachers are incomplete or lacking. Coaching as a thinking partner, instead, recognizes that teachers are already engaged in complex professional decision-making every day. A thinking-partner stance supports teachers in:

• analyzing student learning
• adjusting instruction continuously
• testing ideas
• reflecting on results
• persisting through uncertainty

The coach’s role is not to take over that thinking—but to strengthen it.

Coaches can communicate a partnership stance through language, with phrases like:

• “I’m here to learn with you.”
• “I’m interested in what you’re noticing.”
• “What would you like students doing differently?”
• “What experiments might be worth trying?”

When coaches communicate that the teachers are designers of learning for their students, teachers are more likely to experience the coach as a thinking partner — one who:

• listens before suggesting
• asks before advising
• explores before recommending
• co-plans instead of directing
• models when invited
• examines evidence together

When coaches are positioned primarily as helpers, teachers and administrators may begin to expect coaches to:

• fix problems,
• support struggling teachers
• implement initiatives
• carry responsibility for change

In every hallway conversation, coaching session, PLC meeting, or email, our words carry the potential to empower—or to unintentionally discourage. When we speak with intention—choosing language that communicates capability, fosters ownership, frames growth, and connects to purpose—we don’t just support our colleagues; we strengthen the culture of our schools. Teachers, like students, thrive when they feel seen, believed in and connected to meaningful work. As leaders and coaches, we can build that sense of connection through the everyday language we use.

When teachers describe their experience working with coaches, do they say:

“My coach helped me”

or

“My coach expanded my thinking and guided me to explore new possibilities.”

That difference may define the culture schools are working to build. When coaches are experienced as thinking partners, teachers retain ownership of their practice, collaboration deepens, and improvement becomes shared work rather than assigned work. And that shift can begin with something as small—and powerful—as the words we choose.

It’s that time of year when new coaches may find themselves wondering, “What do I do in August if I don’t have a classroom to prepare?’” Some new coaches might not even have an office to set up. Experienced coaches are reflecting upon what they have learned about coaching in their experiences up to now and how that leaning will impact their actions in the coming year. Sharron Helmke, senior vice president of professional services at Learning Forward and  a professional certified coach with the International Coaching Federation shared some great insights in an article, “6 things I wish I’d known as a new coach.”

Here are the first three insights she shared along with my reflections. Part 2 will examine her other three.

#1 Coaching is not about fixing teachers’ problems for them.

Helmke – “My job as a coach is to help teachers process their own thinking by asking questions and reflecting back what I hear, rather than superimposing my solutions over theirs.”

I have been increasingly defining my coaching role as a “Thinking Partner.”  The coach-coachee partnership is engaged in co-constructing a plan that the teacher owns and thus a desire to risk change in order to gain a goal that belongs to the coachee. Dr. Kristine Needham describes that such coaching conversations frequently create an “Aha Moment,” a sense of new knowledge being created. She describes these moments as being powerful and capable of leading to a change in practice. I am often surprised when a coachee has such an “aha” and then tells me, “That’s a great idea!” They react as if I had shared the idea with them when most often, they were sharing the idea with me.

Needham provides this description of co-constructed collaborative coaching:

“Both the coach and the coachee are adept at navigating the conversion so that the relationships between critical incidents, episodes, the lesson as a whole, and relevant pedagogical frameworks are discussed. Conversation is such that the role of coach and coachee blurs as they explore practice, recognizing and resolving dissonance so that new ideas emerge through their collaborative dialogue. This creates a feedback loop which promotes future planning.”

#2 Being a “servant leader” is about serving students by improving their educational outcomes.

Helmke: “It’s about asking the difficult questions to make educators think critically about their current practice, its impact on student outcomes, and how they can meet student needs that are not yet being adequately addressed.”

In an earlier blog, I explored the importance of Joellen Killion’s 2008 article, “Are You Coaching Heavy or Light” in focusing the early days of instructional coaching on student outcomes.  Joellen defined light coaching as  working to build and maintain relationships more than working to improve teaching and learning. I was consulting in many schools at that time, and it was common for folks starting a coaching position to provide a lot of “help” to teachers— hoping to build relationships. Joellen noted that they provided demonstration lessons and shared curriculum materials, but the pressure was not on teachers to apply learning in their classrooms to increase student success.

Joellen described heavy coaching as coaching that feels heavy to the teacher because of the weight of collective responsibility and commitment that the teacher is devoting to the success of every student.  Coaching brings that reflection to the teacher’s mind. It’s not the coach “being heavy.” Coaching heavy causes a teacher to feel on edge because they’re questioning their actions and their decisions, thinking about what they might do to have a greater impact on their students.

#3 Coaches build relationships while coaching.

Helmke: “When coaching is done well, relationship-building is embedded in the process… You are continually building on a solid foundation and gradually inviting ever deeper coaching conversations.”

Previously, I explored Michael Bungay Stainer’s book, “How to Work with (Almost) Anyone,” which focused on working relationships that are happier, more successful partnerships. He labeled these partnerships as “best possible relationships” (BPR). “They are safe, vital, and repairable.” I found many connections to coaching relationships. How do we build the “best possible coaching relationships?”  Bungay Stainer explored, “How would we fix it when things go wrong?” He suggested that by understanding that it will break and by talking about it before it does, you are be better able to notice when its failing and repair it together.”

Recognizing the role of trust in coaching relationships, I frequently stress this statement in my work with school administrators and coaches, “Say what you are going to do, and then do it.”  If I say what I am going to do and my actions appear to you as not matching what I promised, either I have made a mistake, or you have misinterpreted my words or action. If we can agree in advance on how to raise the issue when that “incongruent sense” emerges an understanding or a quick fix with a return to trust is possible.

In part two I’ll look at Helmke’s other three insights:

• Effective coaching starts with a strengths-based approach
• Coaches and leaders set an example — positive or negative — for professional learning
• Coaches need support, too.

Thinking Partner is a term that I have been using in describing the conversations that I work to have emerge with coachees, especially in post observation conversations. Reading Dr. Kristine Needham’s post, 3 Ways to More “Aha” Moments in Coaching, I found several connections to the concept of thinking partner.

Needham describes these coaching conferences with moments of sudden realization, when a breakthrough occurs, as “Aha Moments.” There is a sense of new knowledge being created. She describes these moments as being truly powerful and capable of leading to a change in practice. I am often surprised when a coachee has such an aha and then tells me, “That’s a great idea!” They react as if I had shared the idea with them when most often they were sharing the idea with me.

I found a 4- level coaching conversations rubric posted by Dr. Rachel Lofthouse that describes coaching as progressing from emerging to developing to refining to co-constructive collaborative. The co-constructing stage describes what I have been labeling as thinking partners.

• “The coach and coachee collaboratively develop ideas, building on successive contributions of their partner. There is significant focus on enhancing learning opportunities. The questions they ask each other allow them to explore their own understandings. Through reflection on and responding to each others’ contributions, they identify alternative pedagogic approaches. This leads to exploratory talk related to opportunities for professional learning and development and the ways they might analyze the impact on pupils’ progress. As such this is a knowledge-creating process.”
• “Both the coach and the coachee are adept at navigating the conversion so that the relationships between critical incidents, episodes, the lesson as a whole and relevant pedagogical frameworks are discussed. Conversation is such that the role of coach and coachee blurs as they explore practice, recognizing and resolving dissonance so that new ideas emerge through their collaborative dialogue. This creates a feedback loop which promotes future planning.”

I developed my focus on “thinking partner” as a way to deal with the issue of coach’s advise or suggestions.  Referring to Lofthouse’s work, Needham states “coaches typically steer away from giving advice, and while this is a sound principle in coaching, there is room for skillful and genuinely co-constructed dialogue, optimizing curiosity and being open to building on the experiences of the participants, so that a richer ‘aha’ moment can be the result. This is a creative process, drawing on the in-the-moment collaborative capacity of both coach and coachee.”  

Tell less, ask more. Your advice is not as good as you think it is”.

(Michael Bungay Stainer)

Optimizing curiosity and being open to building on the experiences and knowledge of the coach and the coachee makes thinking partners. With all the negatives that advice can generate, I also find teachers to be frustrated by a coach withholding knowledge or insights that could be helpful to the teacher gaining a goal she wishes to reach. The key is a partnership that is built to achieve the teacher’s desired outcome. The co-construction occurs for me when coach and coachee are engaged in thinking outloud.

Needham describes the need for coaching practices that can help create co-construction. An environment built around dialogue, silences, trust, vulnerability, unconditional positive regard, challenges, and dissonance.

“This means listening for assumptions, limiting beliefs or blind spots, and challenging those with a sensitive yet firm manner. Challenge and dissonance can be fertile ground for producing new knowledge. Unconditional positive regard, at its essence, involves this respect for the coachee to be able to participate at a level that is as capable of generating new learning as anything the coach can bring.”   

(Kristine Needham)

Needham describes the need for coaching practices that can help create co-construction. An environment built around dialogue, silences, trust, vulnerability, unconditional positive regard, challenges, and dissonance.

Edgar Schein, author of “Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help,” describes how a perceived unequal hierarchical dynamic can lead to a sense of “one-upmanship.” This phenomenon occurs when the act of helping positions has one party as the provider (the one with more knowledge, skills, or resources) and the other as the recipient, thus inherently creating an imbalance. This can lead to resistance, resentment, or a lack of genuine engagement from the person being helped. Schein argues that true assistance requires an understanding of this dynamic and suggests that the helper must approach the situation with humility, open-mindedness, and a genuine desire to empower rather than dominate.

The importance of listening, really listening, continues to be reinforced as my coaching experiences and skills increase. Quality listening generates quality questions driven by curiosity. I’m realizing that questioning and listening to myself, which requires some vulnerability, extends the sense of partnership and co-construction.

Thinking Partner is a term that I have been using in describing the conversations that I work to have emerge with coachees, especially in post observation conversations. Reading Dr. Kristine Needham’s post, 3 Ways to More “Aha” Moments in Coaching, I found several connections to the concept of thinking partner.

Needham describes these coaching conferences with moments of sudden realization, when a breakthrough occurs, as “Aha Moments.” There is a sense of new knowledge being created. She describes these moments as being truly powerful and capable of leading to a change in practice. I am often surprised when a coachee has such an aha and then tells me, “That’s a great idea!” They react as if I had shared the idea with them when most often they were sharing the idea with me.

I found  a 4- level coaching conversations rubric posted by Dr. Rachel Lofthouse that describes coaching as progressing from emerging to developing to refining to co-constructive collaborative. The co-constructing stage describes what I have been labeling as thinking partners.

• “The coach and coachee collaboratively develop ideas, building on successive contributions of their partner. There is significant focus on enhancing learning opportunities. The questions they ask each other allow them to explore their own understandings. Through reflection on and responding to each others’ contributions, they identify alternative pedagogic approaches. This leads to exploratory talk related to opportunities for professional learning and development and the ways they might analyze the impact on pupils’ progress. As such this is a knowledge-creating process.”
• “Both the coach and the coachee are adept at navigating the conversion so that the relationships between critical incidents, episodes, the lesson as a whole and relevant pedagogical frameworks are discussed. Conversation is such that the role of coach and coachee blurs as they explore practice, recognizing and resolving dissonance so that new ideas emerge through their collaborative dialogue. This creates a feedback loop which promotes future planning.”

I developed my focus on “thinking partner” as a way to deal with the issue of coach’s advise or suggestions.  Referring to Lofthouse’s work, Needham states “coaches typically steer away from giving advice, and while this is a sound principle in coaching, there is room for skillful and genuinely co-constructed dialogue, optimizing curiosity and being open to building on the experiences of the participants, so that a richer ‘aha’ moment can be the result. This is a creative process, drawing on the in-the-moment collaborative capacity of both coach and coachee.”  

Optimizing curiosity and being open to building on the experiences and knowledge of the coach and the coachee makes thinking partners. With all the negatives that advice can generate, I also find teachers to be frustrated by a coach withholding knowledge or insights that could be helpful to the teacher gaining a goal she wishes to reach. The key is a partnership that is built to achieve the teacher’s desired outcome. The co-construction occurs for me when coach and coachee are engaged in thinking outloud.

Needham describes the need for coaching practices that can help create co-construction. An environment built around dialogue, silences, trust, vulnerability, unconditional positive regard, challenges, and dissonance.

Edgar Schein, author of, “Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help,” describes how a perceived unequal hierarchical dynamic can lead to a sense of “one-upmanship.” This phenomenon occurs when the act of helping positions has one party as the provider (the one with more knowledge, skills, or resources) and the other as the recipient, thus inherently creating an imbalance. This can lead to resistance, resentment, or a lack of genuine engagement from the person being helped. Schein argues that true assistance requires an understanding of this dynamic and suggests that the helper must approach the situation with humility, open-mindedness, and a genuine desire to empower rather than dominate.

The importance of listening, really listening, continues to be reinforced as my coaching experiences and skills increase. Quality listening generates quality questions driven by curiosity. I’m realizing that questioning and listening to myself, which requires some vulnerability, extends the sense of partnership and co-construction.