Practical things to try

Here’s some thoughts for educators who would like to incorporate coaching into their work with students. A coaching conversation can be the focus of a meeting or it can be a component of another different type of meeting. And you can even include coaching questions, one or two of them in a conversation that you are having with a student, however short. Also, a coaching conversation can take place in person or virtually, but happens ideally in real time.

First of all, the person being coached sets the agenda for the conversation. So the coach can initiate the conversation by asking the person being coached, “What is at issue for you? What would you like to talk about today? What’s coming up for you?” Coaches then prioritise open-ended questions that cannot be answered with a yes or no. These questions inspire thought and rumination in the student. This doesn’t mean you don’t ask some fact finding type questions, but when you use what or how as the beginning to a question with a student, it gives them that opportunity to go within, do some thinking and come up with their own more extended answers. The coach should aim to talk around 20% of the time and allow the student to dominate the conversation frankly. The more time you provide a student to speak in the conversation, the more opportunity the student has to think in depth about their own situation, start to identify interesting ideas and potential solutions and then derive their own actions.

Listening is an essential component of a coaching conversation. Listen carefully to pick up on where the student has accomplished something, for example, that you want to champion and acknowledge them for. Listen carefully for where the student is uncomfortable or concerned, pay attention to body language as well. Listening and observing are essential because those things will give you the cues that you need to ask questions about what is truly at issue for the student. Guide the conversation in a sort of arc that begins with more analytical questions so that you can help the student lay out all the elements of whatever the problem is they would like to address, then moves into a more creative space where you ask the student what they could imagine, what sort of solutions they can think of, what other paths they could take.

And then at the end of the conversation, bring the focus down to one or two action points, however small, so that the student comes away from the conversation with a specific goal and a timeframe that they are aiming for. This doesn’t mean that they will execute this perfectly and that the next time you speak, they will say, “I did this in the 24 hours after our meeting.” But if the student has something concrete and doable, that will help them drive toward their goal, piece by piece and help provide them some momentum that adds to their motivation.