In The Leader’s Guide to Coaching in Schools, John Campbell and Christian van Nieuwerburgh, share key coaching skills; several of which I think closely connect to listening skills. Being Present – “There are few greater gifts we can give another person these days than being present.” Giving full and focused attention is a powerful way […]

The recent passing of Larry King, the renowned CNN interviewer caused me to reconnect with a message I pulled from an article I read years ago that was exploring King’s success. The first part of the article asked other interviewers what they felt was his key strategy. The common thread they shared was that King […]

I recently had the opportunity to have several conversations with Sherry St. Clair, the author of Coaching Redefined: A Guide to Leading Meaningful Instructional Growth. Sherry is a strong promoter of the need for school leaders and coaches to support teachers as they tackle the challenges of maximizing student success. Here she shares her thoughts […]

Thanks to Jim Knight, I had the opportunity to engage in a panel discussion with Jim, Sherry St. Clair, Christian van Nieuwerburgh, and Megan Tschannen-Moran as part of the Teaching Learning Conference. We were each asked to respond to the topic, The Art and Craft of Coaching. While we each took a different approach to […]

I’ve been asked that question by new clients who have had some coaching program going on in their district and then looked at having me work with their instructional coaches, administrators or perhaps even introducing peer coaching to the staff. They want to know how my work compares to other coaching programs that they’ve read […]

Listening has always been a critical skill for effective coaching. I’ve connected it with questioning skills. Too often when coaches are conscious of questioning, they can get too focused on creating their next question and not really listen as the teacher responds. The pause after a teacher speaks is the time to consider how I […]