Coaching & professional growth

I completed my coaching qualification through Growth Coaching International in 2022. What I value about the GROWTH approach is the discipline it brings to a conversation. It helps me listen long enough to understand what someone is working through, ask questions that open up their thinking and help them decide what they can do next. It also gives us a reason to come back to the conversation and see what happened.

I find coaching particularly powerful with teams because people can be working towards the same goal and have quite different ideas about what is getting in the way. A well-facilitated conversation gives those differences room to surface. I might ask each person what they are seeing, where they agree and what they think the team could try. That gives quieter colleagues a way into the discussion and helps the team reach a decision people understand and can act on. As a leader, I still have a responsibility to be clear about expectations and make decisions when needed. Coaching helps me recognise when the team would benefit from working something through together.

My work with Future Schools gave me the opportunity to apply that approach to school-wide change. As Convenor of the Future Schools Learning Community, I facilitated professional learning, brought educators together across schools and led the Future Leaders, New Paradigms series. In my work with leadership teams, I drew on the Adaptive Cultures framework to help them look closely at how their school operated day to day. Who was involved in decisions? What did people feel comfortable questioning? What did the timetable, meeting routines or use of resources tell us about what the school valued? Those conversations helped teams identify a practical change they could make and learn from.

I bring both approaches to my work as Principal of THINK Global School. When a colleague described how difficult it had been to find their way through our school’s systems, I asked what had helped them. They had already started mapping the systems for themselves. Together, we agreed to develop that work into an onboarding resource for future staff. The conversation gave the colleague a professional goal they cared about and gave us a way to address a difficulty others were likely to experience.

At PLC, I would bring this experience to the Centre’s work with teaching and leadership teams. I’d like teachers to be able to bring a real question about girls’ learning, examine it with colleagues, try something in their classrooms and have time to talk honestly about what happened. Coaching can help people have that conversation. My work with Adaptive Cultures has taught me to look at what makes it possible, including who has a voice, how time is protected and empowering leaders to support the growth of their teams