Six Steps to Create a Culture of Fearless Coaching

Creating a culture of coaching in any environment starts with trust and relationships. But, coaching does not stop there. Positive relationships and trust are the basis of healthy collegial connections and friendships, and schools need to be full of these types of relationships for both students and staff. Coaching relationships go beyond collegial friendliness. With effective coaching, candor and timely feedback are the norm and the conversations center around specific goals and action steps.

The research is clear and has supported for decades the fact that teacher self-efficacy clearly impacts student achievement. Teacher self-efficacy is the belief that they have the capacity to impact student achievement. It is confidence in our own ability to problem-solve and respond to student needs. Coaching is critical to self-efficacy because coaching nurtures independence. 

Effective coaching has positive results and leads to growth for both the coach and the client, whether that client is a veteran or new teacher, a leader, or a support staff member. However, one reason educators shy away from being coached or doing the coaching is that true coaching causes some pain. As Dr. Douglas Reeves teaches us in his book Fearless Coaching, “If the fundamental element of coaching is constructive change, then we must recognize that change requires pain, the release of past convictions and firmly held beliefs and practices.” He goes on to teach us that if the coach avoids giving feedback because of fear of hurting the client’s feelings, that is not a coaching relationship. It’s a friendship. ¹

I have a friend who I call my personal Simon Cowell, not because he is a famous talent show judge, but because he gives me tough feedback. Like the cantankerous television star, my friend sometimes says things I don’t want to hear. Yet, I would not trade my relationship with him for the world because he helps me get better in ways that others rarely do. He tells me hard truths and my defenses might go up for a few minutes, but his input is the first I seek when I want authentic feedback. Relationships like this are few and far between because we do not want to cause our friends or our colleagues pain. That is why it is so important to set expectations for both the coach and client up front, and to distinguish the benefits of coaching that differ from other types of relationships.

The heart of true coaching is to foster independence and competence, and that is why it is necessary to do as author Michael Bungay Stanier suggests and, “Stay curious a little bit longer.”² I am just as guilty of anyone of thinking that I have great ideas and advice, but the reality is that if our first response is to give advice, we are fostering dependence and a lack of self-efficacy rather than empower our coaching clients to lean into their strengths, their ideas, and become empowered problem-solvers.

In the book Fearless Coaching, Reeves gives us a few tips to set up our coaching relationships for success.

1. Establish clear, simple expectations for the coaching relationship. From the very start of your coaching sessions, establish what the client can expect from you and how the coaching relationship will differ from a friendship. It is important to also establish what the coach can expect from the client. 
2. Relentlessly focus on goals, one or two at a time. The coach and client will work together to set a few agreed-upon goals for their work together. This will help focus the coaching conversations on action steps and evidence of progress. It will also help set a simple agenda for each meeting, which can consist of a personal check-in, reviewing progress on goals, feedback, clear next steps and closure. When coaching includes a relentless focus on goals and impact, the coaching sessions are much more efficient.
3. Use FAST feedback and effective questioning. It is the responsibility of the coach to give feedback that is FAST:  fair, accurate, specific and timely. These guidelines help clients find the feedback meaningful. It is also the responsibility of the coach to keep in mind that the goal is to foster growth and independence, and the best way to do that is through effective questioning rather than relying on supplying advice. This truth hurts: most of our advice is bad. We can serve our clients much better by asking questions.
4. Acknowledge that there will be pain. Growth is painful at times, and hugely rewarding in the end. Coaching relationships differ from other relationships in acknowledging that hard questions and a bit of pain is part of the process. This will set up the expectation that honest feedback might cause some pain, but it is what sets the coaching apart from friendship.
5. Appreciate the reciprocal growth both coach and client will experience. The master coach becomes a better coach with each client. The number one goal of the coaching relationship is to foster growth and independence in the client, but secondary to that is the learning and reflecting that will occur for the coach. Acknowledging the reciprocal nature of the coaching relationship is accurate and empowering to both the coach and the client.
6. Stick to a coaching schedule like glue. Coaching takes dedicated time and consistency. There are many interruptions to our days and factors out of our control. It will be important to stick to the coaching schedule like glue, so if a session has to be rescheduled, the coach and client make it a top priority.

The exciting part of the Fearless Coaching model is that it can apply to a vast array of coaching relationships in schools or the workplace. Creating a culture of coaching benefits educators because it gives them an opportunity to grow in ways that are valuable to them. Research supports that increasing teacher self-efficacy has a direct tie to increasing student achievement, and this is best accomplished through effective coaching in our schools. Students also benefit from the increased confidence and skills that result from effective coaching, and it serves as a model that can be adapted and applied in the classroom as teachers are coaching students.

1. Reeves, D., et al. (2023). Fearless Coaching: Resilience and Results from the Classroom to the Boardroom. Archway Publishing. ↩︎
2. Michael Bungay Stanier. (2019). The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Workman Publishing Company. ↩︎