The Art of Coaching Page 6

  Hindsight, of course, is always 20/20. My reflection on how I went into this first coaching scenario helped me tremendously when I began my subsequent coaching job. I was much clearer and more articulate about what I was doing and why. Making mistakes and learning from them are unavoidable parts of being alive. In this book, I am committed to helping new coaches avoid as many mistakes as possible.

  Chapter 3

  Which Beliefs Help a Coach Be More Effective?

  Read this when:

  You're a new coach reflecting on why you do what you do

  You feel stuck in your practice or you suspect that your actions don't align with your beliefs

  You are working with clients on developing and articulating their belief systems

  The Dangers of Unmonitored Beliefs

  We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs.

  Lisa Delpit (1995)

  There was a period of time when, unbeknownst to me, my belief system was driving my actions and making me miserable. These beliefs ran rampant, like deadly viruses, until a pivotal moment in a workshop on coaching with Leslie Plettner, the masterful coach I mentioned in the Introduction. Leslie responded to a question and, while I don't remember the question, her response is etched into the forefront of my memory.

  What she said was this: “No one can learn from you if you think that they suck.”

  I felt sick as this statement echoed in my mind. In a flash of painful awakening, I realized that I had indeed thought that some of the teachers and administrators I coached sucked. Semiconsciously, I thought they were incompetent people determined to oppress children.

  As this awareness crystalized, I felt ashamed. Why would anyone want to work with a coach who thought that he was incompetent? No wonder they didn't want to meet with me! No wonder they were defensive and resistant! I really did think that they sucked!

  I had a hard conversation with myself: “Either you quit this job right now—today—or you shift this belief,” I told myself. “It is not serving you, it's not helping kids, and you are contributing to anger and pain in the world.”

  As I reflected on what I was feeling, I also realized that these beliefs did not align with my core values. And actually, I wanted to be a powerful coach who could change the education system far more than I wanted to cling to those beliefs. “Goodbye, my nasty little friends. Be gone,” I ordered. Easier said than done, of course.

  I printed Leslie's words in two-hundred-point font and posted them on the inside of my office door. I used them as a mantra, calling them forth when I noticed I was tumbling into this black hole of thinking. And little by little, I started deconstructing my beliefs and shifting into a new set from which I could be an effective coach. It took a while, and occasionally a sneaky little thought comes into my mind that harks back to this old belief system, but more often than not I operate from a different set of beliefs and I know that as a result I'm a much better coach.

  The Basics about Beliefs

  Administrators: the following sections are useful in guiding educators through exploring their beliefs.

  Here's the thing about beliefs: we all have them and they drive our actions. We experience our beliefs as truths, and we can usually find evidence to support them. Subsequently, they create boundaries around what we think we can and can't do, what can and can't be done in the world. Some of our beliefs are tucked into our subconscious, where they operate without our awareness. Sometimes our beliefs contradict each other or our core values. Some of our beliefs make us strong, powerful people; some do not serve us.

  The good news is that beliefs can be updated or changed. Think about your own beliefs about your life—perhaps about what you have believed you could do or not do. Which have served you? Which have you given up? Although we experience them as truths, they are just mental creations. We can select the ones that will lead us to fulfill the vision we have for our work, or a relationship, or the kind of life we want to live. We created them, so we can modify, strengthen, or release them.

  Here's another thing about beliefs: they are simply strongly held opinions. They are not facts, although they can appear to be. We might have plenty of experiences that seem to prove that they are real, but we can just as easily believe in the opposite experience and make it real in our lives. For example, have you ever embarked on any kind of exercise program and thought something like, “I can't run a 10K, I've never been physically active and I can barely walk a mile!” And then did you see your body adapt and strengthen and see yourself meet a physical fitness goal? Did you notice that along the way your beliefs about your capacities changed? You shifted from believing you couldn't do something to holding new beliefs about your abilities. In other words, we have a lot of agency over our belief systems, which is great news!

  We don't see things the way they are; we see things the way we are.

  The Talmud

  An essential component of coaching is supporting others to become conscious of their belief systems—about children, learning, students of color, immigrants, and so on. But before we can engage in this work, as coaches we need to become aware of our own beliefs. Otherwise we run the risk of rogue beliefs taking over our internal operating system. Understanding our own belief systems—how they were formed, how we can become conscious of them, how we can change them—makes us much more skilled at helping others do this work.

  Essential Framework 1

  Where Do Beliefs Come From?

  Chris Argyris's Ladder of Inference provides an invaluable tool for helping us see how our beliefs are formed and why we do what we do. This model describes how we unconsciously climb up a mental pathway of increasing abstraction that often produces misguided beliefs (Senge, 1994, p. 243).

  Let me explain this framework by providing an example. A high school principal asked me to observe a teacher who had been struggling with management. We entered the classroom and stood at the back. Ms. Smith was at the front directing a whole-class discussion of a text. She asked a question, and twelve students raised their hands. She called on a girl sitting in the front row. She asked another question. A boy shouted out the answer. The teacher ignored him. He shouted it out again. She called on a girl in the back. The teacher asked another question and called on another girl. One of the boys got frustrated and said, “How come you don't call on me? I keep raising my hand. Why do you always ignore me?” Ms. Smith quietly redirected his behavior. He groaned and put his head down on the table. The teacher asked another question and called on another girl. Several boys in the back mumbled to each other, “See, she always calls on girls.” Under his breath, one of them called the teacher a bad name.

  The principal and I left the room. “Wow,” the principal said. “Those boys were so disrespectful. I can't believe she let them get away with behaving like that—she's so weak. She needs to get tough and institute detention. That kind of talking back can't be tolerated. She's going to lose control. They can't be allowed to run the room. I'm going to insist that she implement a tough behavior management program immediately.” The principal intended to take actions to move the teacher into this management program that afternoon. But before he could send her an e-mail requesting an emergency meeting after school, I asked if we could debrief and explore how he'd arrived at that decision.

  You might have arrived at a different conclusion based on what I described, or you might have some questions about what I shared. Let's use Argyris's Ladder of Inference, shown in Figure 3.1, to trace how the principal arrived at his decision.

  Figure 3.1 The Ladder of Inference

  Visualize a ladder. On the first rung of the ladder is observable data and experiences. What is captured on this level is what a camera would record—a massive amount of data. If you could see a video of the classroom we were in, you'd also see the student work posted on the walls, the piles of boxes in the back of the room, the sunlight streaming through the windows, the torn jeans of the kid in the front, the teacher
's red earrings; you'd hear the questions the teacher asked, the articulate responses by the students, the chuckles from some boys, the train passing outside, and so on. Because our brains cannot make sense of so much data, we need to sort. This is where things get interesting; this is where the principal started climbing up the ladder to his conclusion.

  On the second rung of the ladder, the principal selected data from what he observed. Because of what he already believes, because he's seen some of these actions before in this class or elsewhere, he filters out most of what's going on and selects certain data points. In this class, the principal noticed that the boys were shouting out, criticizing the teacher, and calling her names. He's just ascended one rung.

  On the third rung of the ladder, he added meaning to what he observed. Meaning often arises from our own cultural backgrounds and experiences, and/or the culture of the structure or organization in which we are working. According to the principal's cultural background, students must respect their teachers. They must never talk back to them, they must always raise their hands, and so forth. When they demonstrate this behavior, it means they don't respect their teacher. By adding meaning, he's ascended another rung.

  On the fourth rung of the ladder, he made assumptions based on the meanings he had added. He assumed that the boys had no boundaries in class and that their behavior was not kept in check.

  On the fifth rung of the ladder, he drew conclusions. He concluded that the boys are out of control. Without realizing it, the principal moved farther up the ladder.

  On the sixth rung of the ladder, he adopted a belief about the boys (that they are unruly, disrespectful, and don't take learning seriously) and about the teacher (that she is weak and losing control of her class).

  And on the seventh rung, at the top of the ladder, he took an action and was just about to mandate that Ms. Smith institute a tough behavior management plan immediately.

  What could happen next is actually what propels someone up the ladder again. The principal's belief that boys are not serious and are out of control will influence him the next time he's observing a class—his attention will be drawn to how boys behave. Unconsciously, he's going to focus on data points that affirm his belief system—this is just what our brains do. Most likely, he'll constantly see the same thing: unruly boys who need discipline. This translates into a generalized belief about boys, and his actions will emerge from this belief.

  We can't live our lives without adding meaning and making assumptions. We simply have to do these things in order to make sense of our world. But as you can probably see, there's a great danger in constantly charging up the ladder and taking actions based on unexamined assumptions—we end up operating from a distorted picture of reality.

  As I described the principal's thoughts while he was climbing up the ladder, did you have any questions about what he was thinking? Did you want to interject something like, “But maybe …” Or “Perhaps the teacher was …”? Did you want to challenge his thinking because you saw other meanings to add, other assumptions that could be drawn, or different conclusions to arrive at?

  To make this scenario more complex (and also more realistic), what if I'd told you that all the boys who shouted out were African American? And that the assumption the principal came to was that African American boys don't respect their teacher or take learning seriously? And that this assumption affirmed his belief that African Americans don't value education? And that the action he suggested amounted to a tougher policy toward boys who don't value education—perhaps he ruminated that “they should not attend our school, because we are focused on academic success”?

  Back in the principal's office, I pulled out the image of the Ladder of Inference that I always carry and asked if we could explore how he'd arrived at his conclusion. He agreed, somewhat reluctantly. He just wanted to take action regarding what he'd seen in Ms. Smith's class. Two hours later, after we'd painfully worked our way down the Ladder of Inference, he dropped is head into his palms and said, “I feel like you just took a sledgehammer to my brain. I don't know what I think or believe anymore, but as hard as this was, I think I'm glad my brain has been shattered.” The actions that he took in the coming weeks were very different than what he'd planned on doing that day.

  Coaches help people delineate the cognitive steps that led them to a belief system. We work with them to change their actions, but unless we explore the underlying belief systems that drive actions, we may not see the kind of transformational, sustained change that we need in our schools. The Ladder of Inference is a tool to help us delineate the cognitive steps that lead to our belief systems. When we guide clients down the ladder, they can explore other ladders to climb up. This is how we can dismantle racist belief systems, or belief systems about boys and education, or girls and math, and so on.

  The reflection tools we use when coaching clients allow them to slow down their thinking processes and hone their awareness of how they form beliefs. It also allows clients to identify gaps between their actions and their core values. Often when they recognize those discrepancies, they are motivated to change their behaviors. When we work on the level of examining values and beliefs, lasting changes can happen; transformation is possible (Argyris, 1990; Senge and others, 1999).

  Coaching Beliefs and Core Values

  Administrators: exploring beliefs and core values can be a powerful activity for building teams.

  At the beginning of this chapter, I described my epiphany when I realized I was operating from destructive beliefs about the teachers I was supposed to coach. What I realized was that this declaration was in sharp contrast to my deeply held values; I just hadn't noticed that they conflicted. This belief—that the teachers sucked—was a recently acquired belief. I had only recently left the classroom and had worked with many phenomenal teachers. Naming the belief allowed me to dislodge it; it felt like a scab that I quickly picked off.

  In order to become an artful coach, I needed to do two things: deconstruct how I'd arrived at that conclusion so that I could take the assumption of “truth” out of it, for there was no truth in this declaration—only a limited data set. Second, I needed to articulate the set of beliefs from which I intended to work as a coach.

  One stop on this reflective journey was at my core values. Core values are deeply held personal codes that reflect our ethics and what is most important to us. They come from our families, religious teachings, schools, people we admire, and from our culture (CampbellJones, Lindsey, and CampbellJones, 2010). Research on school leaders has found that core values play a key role in how educators build personal resilience. It is the process of “privately clarifying, publicly articulating, and consciously acting on” core values that resilient leaders identify as the greatest source of strength in helping them face adversity and emerge stronger than before (Patterson and Kelleher, 2005, p. 51).

  Within the context of our workplaces, very few of us have had an opportunity to clarify or articulate our core values. Given that they are our moral compass, it follows that we are often misguided or floundering when we aren't being regularly guided by them. Before you articulate your belief system, I encourage you to identify your core values. On my website you can find an exercise to help you do this. It is also a fantastic exercise to do with anyone you coach—it is empowering to your client and it offers you a set of data that can anchor many conversations.

  My Transformational Coaching Manifesto

  Many schools and organizations have sets of norms or community agreements that guide the behavior of their members. This manifesto works in the same way for me: it emerges from my core values and helps me stay aligned to my vision.

  I offer this manifesto to coaches as an opportunity for reflection on the beliefs we hold in this work. While there are some core beliefs that we might need to agree on as coaches, I also recognize that some of those on my list may not resonate with all readers. It has helped me to articulate them and make them explicit so that they are not quietly lurking aro
und—on the forefront of my consciousness, they are far more powerful.

  Everything is connected. I start with this premise, what systems thinkers call the “primacy of the whole.” Everything is connected in space and time; every action has a reaction and influences other pieces of the whole now and in the future. We are all bound to each other by invisible webs of interrelated actions. From within this belief, there is no single person to blame for what's not working; we're all connected, we all share responsibility.

  Meet people where they are. If a systems-thinking perspective is like looking through a wide-angle lens, then from this second belief I look through a telephoto lens. Here, my compassion is activated as I seek to understand why a client is where she is. I don't make her wrong for being wherever she is—she's just there. We're all somewhere. And we don't have to stay there. But if my work is not infused with and coming from compassion, there is no possibility for me to positively affect the world. Meeting people where they are means exercising compassion, and it really is the only place to start when trying to make meaningful change.

  There is no coaching without trust. A teacher or principal will not reveal the areas that she's struggling in, or share beliefs that might be holding her back, until she absolutely trusts you; trust defines a coaching relationship. It takes time to build, and once it has developed, it should not be taken for granted. This statement comes into my mind as a reminder that I must always tend to this fragile state—we don't work in a very trustworthy world of education these days, and many school teachers and leaders feel under attack. Chapter Five is devoted to translating this belief into action, as it is so essential.