Finding the right coach for you as a school principal

If you have decided to invest in professional leadership coaching, you’ll want to be sure that the coach you choose has the expertise to give you the value you’re looking for. Whilst it might be tempting to work with someone who is already known to you, perhaps an ex-colleague who has branched out into advisory work or coaching, it pays to bring much of the rigour you would bring to a staff recruitment process, and to assess potential coaches with some clear criteria in mind.

Just as you wouldn’t employ a non-qualified teacher, we would not recommend an unqualified, or poorly qualified coach. Look for a well-recognised coaching qualification, accredited by an established expert body, such as the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Whilst there are many short courses that will provide an introduction to coaching practice, these are far from the level of training you should expect of a professional coach. ICF’s accreditation framework is a useful guide. For example, our organisation BTS Spark generally recruits ICF Professional Certified Coaches who have had 125+ hours of training and 500+ hours of coaching experience.

Ask prospective coaches how many people they’ve coached previously. You will gain more from a coach who’s supported hundreds of leaders over several years than from someone who’s just starting out as a coach.

Whilst you may well wish to find a coach who has a good understanding of school leadership and won’t be flummoxed by educational jargon, be wary of assuming that you need a coach who has themselves previously been a school leader. Coaching is not a process that relies on the coach knowing your sector. You bring the knowledge and expertise of education. Your coach brings coaching and leadership expertise that will help you to find new solutions and apply these to your particular context.

An expert coach will be able to articulate the coaching approach and principles they employ. Whilst inexperienced coaches may over-rely on a standard step-by-step process, such as the well-known GROW model, a more experienced coach can flex their approach, drawing on a wide range of coaching strategies to take the conversation where it needs to go to uncover what might be unsaid, or to seek insight from emotional as well as rational responses, for example.

Of course your relationship with your coach will be deeply personal. A successful relationship is built on trust, mutual respect and open communication. You will want to ensure that you feel heard, valued and understood by your coach – that there is a natural rapport. This will be established remarkably quickly with a great coach, whatever their own background. Whilst it might be tempting to seek a coach who ‘looks like you’, from a similar background, in reality, many leaders, reflecting on their coaching experience, find that the coaches or people that they’ve learned most from in life, are in fact very different to themselves.

So, if you’ve carried out your due diligence and found a coach with the qualifications, training, hours of coaching experience and track record with clients that warrant the label of ‘expert coach’, then we’d encourage you to take the leap and trust the process. You are likely to benefit from a powerful coaching experience.

Denise Barrows