Learning Map for Chapter 3

Coaches as Leaders

is about

Making sure learning happens

by

Leading yourself

by

Leading others

• Balancing ambition with humility • Being a Multiplier

• Creating alignment

• Making good decisions

• Knowing your purpose • Managing time

• Building habits

• Practicing self-care

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3

[Your purpose] has to be something that doesn’t allow you to sleep at night unless you’re dreaming about it; something that wakes you up in the morning and gets you excited about it; or something that makes you so angry, you know you have to do something about it . . . because jumping from the “what” to the “do” is mean- ingless if you don’t know why. Because when it gets hard, when it gets tough, when your friends walk away from you, when your supporters forget you, when you don’t win your first race—if you don’t know why, you can’t try again.

—Stacey Abrams

Author and consultant Ann Hoffman, a longtime friend and colleague, has led workshops and provided coaching for thousands of educators around the world. Before writing books and consulting with educators, Ann was a special education teacher, and before that, she earned a graduate degree at the Uni- versity of Iowa and an undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in special and elementary education.

Going into special education was an easy choice for Ann. She grew up in a household where fighting for every person’s human rights was a family value. Her sister was a volunteer who worked in the fields and eventually became an attorney for the United Farm Workers of America. Her mother was a member of the League of Women Voters and spoke out and protested for human rights so frequently that she and Ann’s father were teased about her activism. Her father was “a kind, gentle soul” who was proud of Ann’s mom’s determination to do the right thing. “I was raised in a family where you give back to the com- munity in which you live through behaviors and actions,” Ann said.

Ann chose special education before the Individuals with Disabilities Edu- cation Act (IDEA) legislation was passed in 1975, at a time when many people with disabilities were institutionalized. “One of my best friends had a sister with Down syndrome, and I saw how the family refused to put her in an insti- tution,” she told me. “She was a part of the family, just like everybody else. It inspired me, seeing how they interacted with her. I remember reading about the institutions for people with disabilities, and it just broke my heart. So special ed has always just been what I wanted to do.”

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58 The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching

When Ann arrived at the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, she wanted to get her degree as quickly as possible so she could start teaching and making a difference. As soon as she got to campus, she met with her academic advisor and proceeded to plan out each course so that she knew exactly what she had to do to graduate. But on the day she went to register, Ann was sur- prised to see an unexpected course added to her schedule: Multicultural Edu- cation. She made it very clear to the registrar that she had a plan all worked out and that she was not excited that one more course had been added to her plan.

Just then, Ann heard a voice coming from an adjoining office: “Young lady, please come in here for a moment.” Ann promptly went into the room, where she met Dr. Gwendolyn Calvert Baker, the director of affirmative action at the university. “I’m putting you in my class,” she told Ann without further ado.

Dr. Baker was a pioneer at the University of Michigan. In her autobiog- raphy, she describes herself as a “a spirited black woman in a white world” (2014, p. 5). Dr. Baker never told Ann what to do or think, but she set up the conditions for Ann to learn for herself. She handpicked an inner-city school in Detroit for Ann to do her practicum, and here Ann saw firsthand the impact of structural racism. Students encountered roadblocks in the school that she had never seen before. They were learning from poor-quality basal readers printed on black-and-white newsprint, not the glossy full-color ver- sions Ann had seen in suburban schools (she was shocked to hear them com- monly referred to as “ghetto versions”). Many children didn’t own coats, even though they came to school in the middle of frigid Detroit winters. At school, they sat in cold classrooms, often with boarded-up windows, as it was too costly to replace broken glass. In some classes, Ann watched students who had low spelling grades lined up in front of their classrooms and given the strap. “Students would start to cry as soon as they saw the grade on their test,” Ann told me.

Heartbroken by what she had seen, Ann went to Dr. Baker’s office in tears and asked naively, “Do you know what’s happening in those schools?” Unper- turbed, Dr. Baker answered, “Of course, I do; that’s why you’re there.”

Eventually, Ann chose to do her student teaching in that same school, where she said she learned “as much or more” from her students as they did from her. “Through it all, Dr. Baker allowed me to see things through my

Coaches as Leaders 59

eyes,” she said. “She always treated me as an equal. Never less than. She never lectured me. She always let me speak and listened to me with compassion.” Dr. Baker also invited Ann to join her family celebrations and brought her to conferences and lectures. Decades later, Ann still vividly remembers where she sat and what she heard about racism during those sessions. “Dr. Baker is the reason I wrote my first published paper on the topic of multiculturalism,” she told me.

Ann was a different person when she left the University of Michigan. She had chosen Michigan because of the famous education professors who were teaching there at the time, but it was Dr. Baker who had the greatest impact on her life. “She changed me,” Ann said. “My passion about fighting inequali- ties comes from her.” Ann has subsequently passed on what she learned from Dr. Baker to the thousands of educators she coaches around the world. And those educators, in turn, are communicating to their students the funda- mental beliefs that Ann shares—that every person matters and has dignity. Imagine the impact those tens of thousands of students will have with that knowledge and those values.

Dr. Gwendolyn Calvert Baker was only one person. But as her life shows, one person truly can make the world better. This is what leaders do. In criti- cal moments and in simple but powerful ways, they change people’s lives, and those changes affect others, and so on. As President Kennedy is reported to have said, “One person can make a difference, and every person should try.”

Few people in the world are better positioned to make such a difference than coaches. Each time a coach partners with a teacher to bring about pos- itive change, every student that teacher ever teaches benefits. In this way, in the course of just one year, one coach has a positive impact on thousands of children. A coach’s impact should be measured by lifetimes, not one year’s test scores!

The full extent of a coach’s impact, of course, varies significantly from one coach to another, and this book is meant to discuss the many factors that either enhance or inhibit coaching success. However, when I sit in a room with a group of coaches who work in systems that support them and I learn that some are flourishing while others are struggling, the reason for that dif- ference is often the same thing: leadership.

60 The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching

What is leadership? For many, leadership is about providing direction, clearly stating a vision or goal, and then motivating others to want to pursue that goal. Such a definition divides people into leaders and followers, suggest- ing that leadership is something people do to others by defining the direction they must take and motivating them to want to follow.

This definition is appropriate for some leaders, but for instructional coaches, a different model of leadership is more appropriate. Leadership based on the Partnership Principles involves helping others identify for themselves what they need to do rather than getting them to do what the leader has decided they should do. As such, leadership based on the Partner- ship Principles is an act of service, not control.

The leadership that coaches need to demonstrate involves two elements: leading yourself and leading others. We need to lead ourselves because, as Brené Brown (2018) writes, “who we are is how we lead” (p. 11). And we need to lead others so that, as educational consultant Kristin Anderson says, we can “help people unleash their brilliance.”

Leading Yourself Knowing Your Purpose

Simon Sinek’s (2009) TEDxPugetSound presentation isn’t that impres- sive if you only look at the external aspects of it. He is presenting at a small TEDx event, not the world-famous main conference. He is on a tiny stage, with a small audience, using a large handheld microphone instead of the more professional hands-free microphone that TED has made iconic. The lighting in the room is poor, and his only visual is a somewhat sloppy diagram he creates on chart paper. Truly, the overall look of the presentation doesn’t blow you away.

Nevertheless, Sinek’s TED Talk is one of the most popular ever. When I checked the TED website in early August 2020, it had been watched 51,002,062 times. That’s twice the population of Australia! What makes it so popular? I believe it’s the fact that it touches on a universal desire for a life that, as Sinek says, “starts with why.”

Although Sinek’s talk is about how leaders inspire action in organizations, his central idea—“start with why”—is, in the view of many, fundamental to

Coaches as Leaders 61

living a fulfilling life. For example, Richard Leider asked thousands of peo- ple over the age of 65 to name one thing they wished they could do over in their lives. He ended up hearing so much about purpose that he wrote a book about it, The Power of Purpose (1997). And in one of the most powerful books of the 20th century, Man’s Search for Meaning (1959), Viktor Frankl con- cluded that only purpose could get people through the ghastly, dehumanizing experiences of German concentration camps during World War II. Echo- ing Nietzsche, Frankl wrote that people “who know the why for [their] exis- tence . . . will be able to bear almost any ‘how’” (p. 88).

One simple and powerful way to identify purpose comes from the island of Okinawa, Japan, home to the greatest number of centenarians in the world. Studying the residents on the island, Héctor García and Francesc Miralles found that the secret of a long and worthwhile life in Okinawa is wrapped up in one word: ikigai. “Our ikigai,” the authors write in Ikigai (2016), “is hidden deep inside each of us. . . . According to those born on Okinawa, our ikigai can be simply understood as ‘the reason we get up in the morning’” (p. 9). Fig- ure 3.1, based on a diagram by Marc Winn, illustrates the four components of ikigai:

FIGURE 3.1

Ikigai Diagram

That which you are good at

That which you love

Ikigai

That which you can be paid for

That which the world needs

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Understanding and embracing a purpose that is bigger than ourselves, like working to improve the quality of children’s lives, moves us beyond our egos as we avoid the trap of worrying too much about our own interests. Try- ing to live a life motivated by ego is always a soul-crushing experience. By contrast, living a life of purpose helps us be more effective coaches and, more important, better people.

Managing Time

Coaches who understand their purpose increase the likelihood that they will have a positive impact on educators and students. However, they need to have the time to coach. It is hard to do the right thing when you don’t have any time to do it.

Over the past few years, my colleagues and I at ICG have surveyed hun- dreds of coaches to learn about their experiences working in school, and the most frequent comment we have heard is that they simply don’t have enough time to coach. Many coaches feel like they are trying to do the impossible, and faced with such a challenge, they try to multitask, cut corners, try harder, and work longer. Unfortunately, a lot of them end up feeling that they don’t have time to do anything well. In fact, lack of time is likely one of the main reasons coaches end up leaving the profession.

Effective time management involves two kinds of dimensions: external and internal. The external dimension refers to all the tasks we must do that are outside our control. In Chapter 7, I explain in detail why administrators must partner with coaches to ensure that external demands on their time don’t sabotage coaching efforts.

The internal dimension of time management refers to factors that coaches can control—the strategies they can use to set intentions, make plans, organize their calendars, reflect, and learn. There are at least five lev- els to this dimension: (1) big picture, (2) middle view, (3) weekly, (4) daily, and (5) review.

Big picture. Most time management experts suggest you start organiz- ing your time by imagining a big picture of everything you want and need to do. If you have considered the four elements of ikigai depicted in Figure 3.1, you have already done a lot of this work.

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In her book Design the Life You Love (2015), Ayse Birsel suggests design- ing a life map that depicts the most important parts of our lives to get an idea of “the big picture.” Birsel suggests we start our map by listing the “ingredi- ents” of our lives, then expanding on each ingredient by adding key words on a map, much like the learning maps that begin each chapter of this book. Maps and lists help us see the broad sweep of our lives before we write down what we have to do in the years, months, weeks, and days ahead.

Middle view. Once you understand your big picture, you can start to make more specific action plans for the coming year, quarter, and month. One way to do this is to create an annual list of benchmarks for the ingredients of your life. Of course, you may not want—or have the time—to do this kind of planning, so you may want to skip to weekly or daily planning. Each person has to create a system that works best for them.

One powerful strategy is to make appointments with yourself on your planner pages that show when you will actually do the actions you have iden- tified. Nir Eyal (Eyal & Li, 2019) refers to this as “timeboxing.” If you want to learn about a new strategy, create a video, write a paper for a graduate course, or even plan your year, you need to make time for that as an appointment on your calendar. If there’s a scheduling conflict, then you need to reflect on your priorities and identify what you have to give up to be sure that you are doing what’s most important or necessary. An appointment with yourself is just as important as any other appointment on your calendar. Once you make one, you have to show up and do what you have committed to do.

Weekly. You can use strategies like reviewing your ikigai, mapping, mak- ing lists, and timeboxing for weekly planning. I often make lists that include the people, roles, and projects I need to deal with. Many coaches list all the teachers they are partnering with and then write down the tasks they have to complete with each. In my experience, timeboxing is the most important part of the weekly plan because if you fail to schedule time for the most import- ant tasks, the open slots will be picked off by less important tasks before you know it.

Daily. Almost every time management expert suggests identifying the two to four most important tasks (MITs) you need to accomplish every day, and then making sure that you do them no matter what else happens each

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day. Coaches may also want to identify MVPs—the most valuable people with whom they need to partner.

Review. Before you plan your day, you may want to look back on the previous day to see if you need to change anything. So-called “after-action review” (AAR) questions may be all you need for this reflection: “What was supposed to happen?” “What really happened?” “What accounts for the dif- ference?” “What will I do differently today?” Alternatively, you may want to consider Martin Seligman’s (2011) “PERMA” questions for a flourishing life:

• How positive was my day?

• How engaged was I?

• How healthy were my relationships? • How meaningful were my activities? • What did I accomplish?

As with every other aspect of adaptive time management, you’ll want to tailor these questions (or choose your own) to create a system that works best for you.

One last thing to consider is the extent to which you hurried through your day. Theologian and University of Southern California philosophy pro- fessor Dallas Willard said that we should take it as our aim to live our lives entirely without hurry, which he calls “a state of frantic effort one falls into in response to inadequacy, fear, and guilt” (cited in Comer, 2019, p. xiii).

Fortunately, there are concrete steps we can take to reduce the hurry in our lives. We can build space into our calendar by giving ourselves extra time to reach appointments or complete tasks. We can find some kind of sanctuary where we can unplug and take a mental break. We can adopt a ritual, such as a sabbath or a retreat. We can create no-screen zones in our homes, where phones, tablets, laptops, and video games are not allowed. Perhaps most important, we can develop an effective strategy for saying no. (See William Ury’s 2007 book The Power of a Positive No for suggestions on how to decline invitations.) When we have the freedom and confidence to say no to others’ demands on our time, we can start to have the impact and life we really want to have.

Building Habits

Turning ideas into action is a messy and complex affair that often leads to failure. Too often, there is a huge gap between what we know and what we do. As Maya Angelou (2018) once beautifully wrote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” The trouble is that, too often, we don’t do better, even though we know we should.

One reason we fail to turn ideas into action is that we assume willpower is all we need to change. We buy the gym membership and count on willpower to get us to the gym; then, when our enthusiasm for exercise fizzles out, we blame ourselves for not having the grit to actually do what we know we need do to. But willpower usually isn’t enough. If we really want to turn ideas into actions, we need a structure that will ensure that we do what we know we need to do, and that structure is what we call a habit. In The Power of Habit (2012), Charles Duhigg writes that “a habit is a formula our brain automat- ically follows . . . a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing, often every day” (pp. 284–285). If we keep dropping the ball when it comes to change, the problem is not that we lack grit, but that we lack a structure—a habit.

Contemporary researchers and journalists such as Duhigg, James Clear (2018), Wendy Wood (2019), and B. J. Fogg (2020) have clarified what hab- its are and why they are so important for leading ourselves. These authors’ research will help any coach who wants to adopt new behaviors or support others who choose to change.

Although the researchers use different words to describe how habits work, the descriptions themselves are fairly consistent. A habit begins with a cue—some prompt that triggers an action, like a green light in traffic. Next there is a routine—a response to the cue or prompt. Finally, there is a reward for the action.

Here’s an example. I have a habit of drinking coffee each morning. Walk- ing into the kitchen is my cue. The routine is the complicated way I prepare my coffee. The reward is the scent of fresh-ground coffee, the taste of a just- brewed cup, and the pleasant sensation of becoming more awake and alert as I drink.

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66 The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching

If a coach wants to develop a habit, a good place to start is to identify the cue. For example, a coach who wants to implement the time management strategies in this chapter might consider the bell at end of the school day as a cue to sit down and plan the next day. After identifying the cue, the coach needs to develop a routine—a simple action or set of actions to do the same way each day. Research (Wood, 2019) suggests that we increase our chances of successfully adopting habits by thinking about how our context enhances or inhibits our ability to form a habit. For example, if you want to engage in time management at the end of the day but find that many teachers want to have a coaching conversation at that time, it’s probably best to set aside a dif- ferent time to implement that habit.

B. J. Fogg (2020) of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University sug- gests keeping things simple when it comes to change. We may be tempted to mix planning our day with many other actions, but the more complex those actions are, the less likely it is that planning will stick as a habit.

For many years, people cited Maxwell Maltz’s suggestion in Psycho- Cybernetics (1989), first published in 1960, that it takes 21 days to make a habit. Unfortunately, more recent research suggests that it actually takes much longer. Wendy Wood (2019) and her colleagues at the University of Southern California have conducted several studies that suggest the time span is closer to two to three months. If we want to turn an action into a habit, we need to “keep doing it . . . until [we] aren’t doing it anymore” (p. 102), Wood writes.

For repetition to work, it’s important to do the same action the same way each time. If I want to start the habit of planning my days, it is a good idea to plan at the same time every day. If I sometimes plan in the mornings and other times just before bed, and if I skip some days on top of that, I’m not really repeating the same action, which means I’m not really forming a habit.

Finally, if am going to stick with a habit, it’s a lot easier when the new habit is more rewarding than my old way of acting. To develop the habit of reflect- ing and planning my day, for example, doing those things needs to feel better than not planning. The best rewards are intrinsic. If the act of reflecting and planning is intellectually pleasing, or if at least seeing my plan for each day makes me feel more in control, then I’m more likely to form the habit.

Practicing Self-Care

The strategies for leading yourself hold the potential to help anyone live a more intentional, meaningful life, but there is one thing that can still sab- otage our efforts: self-criticism. As Kristin Neff, a researcher at the Univer- sity of Texas in Austin, has written, “There’s almost no one whom we treat as badly as ourselves” (2011, p. 6). To truly lead ourselves, we need to treat ourselves with compassion.

Self-compassion. In her book Self-Compassion (2011), Neff explains that we frequently limit our potential by internalizing criticism we’ve heard from people in our past—a parent, bully, ex-spouse, teacher, coach—and that this leads us to say and think horrible things about ourselves that we would never say to anyone else. A habit of self-criticism coupled with the challenges of doing the complex work of coaching can damage a coach’s mental and physi- cal health.

Our self-critical words—“I’m so stupid/undisciplined/weak/fat”—have the same effect on us that they would have if others said them. At its worst, Neff says, self-criticism leads to anxiety, insecurity, depression, and an over- all negative attitude toward life. We try to prop up our self-efficacy by com- paring ourselves with others, but we know there will always be someone who is faster, thinner, or more accomplished than us. That is why comparison cul- ture is unhealthy for everyone.

The first step in overcoming self-criticism is simply to recognize what we are doing. Just naming examples of self-criticism is a positive step for- ward. A much healthier response is self-compassion—treating ourselves with the compassion we would direct toward a dear friend. According to Neff, self-compassion involves letting go “of the need to feel better than others” (p. 19), “being kind to ourselves” (p. 41), and “recognizing our shared human condition, flawed and fragile as it is” (p. 10). At its heart, self-compassion is about showing ourselves the same kindness and grace we would show others.

Health. We all want to take care of our health. Too often, though, it feels like trying to be healthy is like trying to read a book of poetry while canoe- ing through wild rapids on a raging river—reading T. S. Eliot's Four Quar- tets might sound nice, but right now I just need to keep from going over this waterfall.

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68 The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching

Most of us have long lists of things we want to do to be healthier. We need to exercise more, eat a healthier diet, drink more water, get more sleep—and we want to do it all tomorrow. Indeed, we would do all these things today, but other things keep getting in the way—papers that need to be graded, visiting in-laws, the graduate course, the twins, and that lovely glass of sauvignon blanc we just poured ourselves.

Taking care of our health is one of the most important ways we can lead ourselves, and luckily a few simple adjustments—OK, some are not that simple—can have a very positive impact on our lives, our ability to lead our- selves, and our ability to lead others. But how do we do it? Much of the U.S. national debt could be paid off with the money we’ve all spent on stationary bikes, treadmills, and gym memberships that never got used once the novelty wore off.

To start eating a healthier diet, exercising, and cutting back on unhealthy habits, we likely need to use the other strategies I’ve mentioned above. We need to find the motivation to change by acquiring a deeper understanding of why we get up in the morning—our purpose. We need to block time to do whatever is most important. We need to develop habits so that we don’t have to rely on our unreliable willpower. Finally, we have to be compassionate toward ourselves, recognizing that we cannot do it all at once, but we can take one small step forward at a time to lead ourselves more effectively. And the more effectively we lead ourselves, the more effectively we will lead others.

Leading Others

When I did a Google search on leadership in August 2020, my search turned up more than 2,760,000,000 results. Such a staggering figure means at least two things. First, leadership is very important. Second, you’ve likely read about and applied a lot of key leadership concepts yourself.

According to the literature, effective leaders are emotionally intelli- gent, good at using their relationship-building skills to bring teams of people together around shared goals. They are great listeners, and they genuinely care about their employees. Their ego is not as important as the larger pur- pose that drives their actions. They understand organizational culture and treat each person uniquely. And they aren’t hypocrites—effective leaders walk the talk.

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Like all leaders, coaches are most effective when they demonstrate these leadership strategies. A lot can be learned from authors like Michael Fullan, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Brené Brown, and Pedro Noguera. But four leadership strategies are especially important for coaches, particularly when they work from the Partnership Principles:

1. Balancing ambition with humility

2. Being a Multiplier

3. Creating alignment

4. Making good decisions

Balancing Ambition with Humility

In the past, I’ve profiled various coaches and their successful and unsuc- cessful approaches to leading. In Unmistakable Impact (2011), for example, I wrote about two coaches I named John LeClair and Lauren Morgan, who were less successful than they had hoped. John did everything he could think of to push his teachers to act but found that “the more he pushed his colleagues, the less enthusiastic they became” (p. 125). In contrast to John, Lauren refused to force herself onto teachers, preferring to stay in the back- ground. She only worked with teachers who came to her for help: “She waited patiently, but the right time never seemed to come along” (p. 125). In the end, Lauren had no more impact than John did.

In Instructional Coaching (Knight, 2007), I describe Jean Clark, who experienced more success than John and Lauren did. Jean “took a partner- ship approach with her teachers, but at the same time . . . was willful, delib- erate, and driven as she led change at her school” (p. 212). Jean’s efforts produced such significant gains in student achievement that her princi- pal, Joe Buckley, called me at the end of the school year just to read me the school’s test scores and to praise Jean.

Looking back at these three coaches, we see that John failed because, although he was ambitious, he was not responsive to teachers. Lauren failed for the opposite reason—though she was responsive, she was not ambitious. Jean succeeded because she was able to strike the right balance between ambition and responsiveness.

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I first heard about balancing ambition and humility in Jim Collins’s now legendary book Good to Great (2001). Collins compared “good” companies with “great” ones, finding that leaders in the latter are (1) capable people who (2) work well with teams, (3) manage people and resources effectively, (4) unite and motivate people to achieve a compelling vision, and (5) “embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will” (p. 39).

After Good to Great, Collins wrote Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005), about leadership in organizations like schools. The most effective leaders, Collins writes, “are ambitious first and foremost for the cause, the movement, the mission, the work—not themselves—and they have the will to do whatever it takes . . . to make good on this ambition.” A leader’s “compel- ling combination of personal humility and professional will,” he continues, “is a key factor in creating legitimacy and influence” (p. 11).

Based on my own experience, coaches need to balance ambition and humility just as much as CEOs of corporations do, and they demonstrate their ambition for change by using many of the strategies described in this chapter so far. They know their purpose, and they focus on doing what is nec- essary to ensure that all students flourish. They develop habits and use their time effectively to foster trust and make sure the most important work gets done. They take care of themselves so that they can do the challenging and incredibly important work of leading change in schools. Because they are organized, reliable, and ambitious for the greater good, they keep everyone’s focus on what matters, refusing to accept leaving anyone behind.

At the same time, coaches demonstrate humility by keeping their focus on what’s best for children, not what’s best for themselves. As instructional coach Angela Kolb told us, “Leadership means doing what is best for kids and staff even if it isn’t what is best for you. Leadership is about relationships and is not about ego.” Truly, when a person takes in the full complexity of teach- ing and sees how challenging it is to teach, a humble response is the only appropriate one. Coaches demonstrate their humility by becoming excellent listeners and engaging their will to do what is truly best for teachers and stu- dents. Effective coaches listen, learn, and respond in ways that honor teach- ers’ professional autonomy.

Both humility and ambition can be challenging for anyone to keep in check. We might be tempted to say things like “I’m not a good questioner” or

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“I’m not very organized, so I can’t be reliable.” But the positions we choose compel us to become the people we need to be to do the work we need to do. Just as we wouldn’t want an airplane mechanic to say, “I’m not really a details person,” teachers don’t want a coach to say, “I’m just not much of a listener.”

Being a Multiplier

Researchers Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown set out to discover bet- ter effective leadership by studying 150 leaders in 35 companies on 4 conti- nents. Their most important conclusion, described in their book Multipliers (2010), is that some leaders increase the intelligence, energy, and capabilities of those around them, ultimately guiding their employees to be two or three times more effective than they used to be. The authors label these leaders as Multipliers. Other leaders do the opposite: they decrease people’s confi- dence, energy, motivation, and self-efficacy. The authors label these leaders as Diminishers. The best coaches are Multipliers; the worst are Diminishers.

When we introduce the concepts of Multipliers and Diminishers in our workshops at the Instructional Coaching Group, participants can usually describe people they’ve known who fall into both categories. Multipliers are listeners—they see the strengths in others, are open to others’ ideas, and act in ways that show they are focused on the needs and interests of others. Dimin- ishers, in contrast, do most of the talking, see people’s weaknesses more than their strengths, shoot down others’ ideas, and keep the focus on themselves.

Wiseman and McKeown identify several characteristics of Multipliers and Diminishers, three of which seem especially relevant to coaches as lead- ers. Multipliers are Talent Finders, Liberators, and Challengers.

Talent Finders. Multipliers, suggest Wiseman and McKeown, see the talents in others even when others don’t see those talents in themselves and help them become more aware of their strengths. They acknowledge that different people have different strengths and weaknesses, but they believe everyone can improve. Simply put, Multipliers embrace what Carol Dweck (2007) refers to as a growth mindset. Wiseman and McKeown found that Multipliers have a knack for finding other people’s native genius— “something more specific than a strength . . . that people do not only excep- tionally well, but absolutely naturally” (p. 30).

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Coaches who are Talent Finders carefully observe those with whom they work to identify their native genius and communicate it to others. As Wise- man and McKeown explain, “If people aren’t aware of their genius, they are not in a position to deliberately utilize it. By telling people what you see you can raise their awareness and confidence, allowing them to provide their capability more fully” (p. 32).

Liberators. Even when people become aware of their strengths, they may encounter obstacles that keep them from flourishing. “Multipliers lib- erate people from the too-often oppressive forces within institutional hierar- chy,” write Wiseman and McKeown. “They liberate people to think, to speak, and to act with reason. They give people permission to think” (p. 47).

Coaches who are Liberators can promote learning by building psycholog- ically safe learning partnerships that free teachers to experiment, take risks, iterate, and use a coaching cycle such as the Impact Cycle.

Challengers. Multipliers challenge people to improve. By contrast, Wiseman and McKeown write, “know-it-alls” hold others back in order to maintain their expert status. “At the core of the Challenger’s logic is the belief that people grow through challenge and, hence, want to be stretched” (p. 72).

Coaches and other leaders can challenge others by offering questions instead of answers. A good question puts the ball in the collaborating teach- ers’ court, positioning them as the decision makers, and powerful questions often generate new insights.

Effective instructional coaching is structured to create the very kind of challenge Wiseman and McKeown describe. Teachers, in partnership with coaches, get a clear picture of reality and set a goal, with the gap between where they are now and where they want to be creating an essential creative tension (more on this later in this chapter).

The Accidental Diminisher. Even with the best intentions, we can become what Wiseman and McKeown refer to as Accidental Diminishers. For example, we might offer so many ideas that we silence collaborating teachers, or we might always be “on,” projecting so much energy that we exhaust those around us. We can also be Accidental Diminishers by stepping in to rescue people whenever we see them struggle (inadvertently creating dependency or resentment), or when we push people to move forward at too acceler- ated a pace. We can even be Accidental Diminishers by being too optimistic,

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glossing over challenges and assuming that every problem can be solved with hard work.

To determine whether you are an Accidental Diminisher, show a trusted advisor a video of a coaching session and ask for feedback. “Leading like a Multiplier,” write Wiseman and McKeown, “is a choice we encounter daily or perhaps in every moment . . . a single Accidental Diminisher turned Mul- tiplier could have a profound and far-reaching impact in a world where the challenges are so great and our full intelligence underutilized” (p. 166).

Creating Alignment

Coaches who take the partnership approach do not see their job as one of motivating teachers to do what they, in their role as coaches, have deter- mined teachers should do. Rather, they see their work as supporting teachers as they set goals. I call this “coaching in alignment.”

Coaching in alignment embodies the principle of equality. When a coach and a teacher are in alignment, the teacher has as much power as the coach. The teacher and coach are fully invested in work that they both believe is important for the teacher (and, especially, for student learning). Coaching in alignment is never imposed on a teacher; it is truly an act of service for both coaches and teachers.

The Partnership Principles help establish alignment between coaches and teachers. When coaches have an authentic, humble desire to learn from teachers, see and affirm teachers’ strengths, and demonstrate that they truly have teachers’ best interest at heart, teachers are more likely to engage fully in coaching. Additionally, coaches who ask powerful questions and genuinely listen will better understand teachers’ goals, needs, and concerns.

Alignment and motivation. Of course, alignment isn’t possible if the teacher isn’t interested in collaborating in the first place. But coaching is not about motivating others or overcoming their resistance. That is, the question is not, as Deci and Flaste (2013) remind us, “how can people motivate others” but, rather, “how can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves” (p. 10).

In my workshops, I often ask participants to describe times when they have been truly motivated to make positive changes. They almost always report that they are motivated either because they are experiencing a

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problem and want to get better (e.g., they’re motivated to cut out junk food because they are unhappy with their level of health) or because they have a positive vision of what they could be (e.g., they’re motivated to create highly engaging learning experiences because they have a positive vision of their students in love with learning). Sometimes people are motivated by both these factors at the same time.

When coaches work in alignment with teachers, they help them get a clearer picture of their current reality and set an attractive goal so that they can see the discrepancy between the two for themselves. Coaches don’t tell teachers what to do, but provide opportunities for teachers to realize what they really want to do, and through the entire process they ensure that teach- ers are the decision makers. As instructional coach Lorrie Cariaga says, “Leaders help people see potential within themselves.”

Making Good Decisions

To establish and maintain alignment with others, coaches must make good decisions, which will in turn lead to better coaching. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s (2011) insights into decision making illuminate the complex nature of thinking while coaching. Kahneman contends that deci- sions usually involve two completely different cognitive processes: thinking fast and thinking slow. Thinking fast refers to decisions we make so quickly that we don’t even consciously pay attention to them, whereas thinking slow refers to decisions we are able to think about beforehand. Hitting the brakes when a car cuts in front of us is thinking fast; deciding whether to sue the other driver after the accident is thinking slow. Both ways of making deci- sions are important, and both are a part of every coach’s life.

Thinking slow

Many of the decisions that coaches make involve thinking slow—deciding whether to raise an issue with the principal, or to keep working with unco- operative teachers, or, indeed, to keep coaching at all. Fortunately, a body of knowledge has emerged to help us make sound, careful decisions over time.

Step 1: Identify options. A good first step toward making better deci- sions involves moving away from binary (yes/no) thinking by seeking as wide a variety of options as possible. To this end, Stephen Johnson (2018) suggests

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talking with people of different genders, races, sexual orientations, ages, per- spectives, and so on. Diverse teams are smarter teams.

We can also surface more options by discussing our situation with peo- ple outside our immediate group: experts, people who have succeeded where others have struggled, people who have given good suggestions in the past. Additionally, we can try to imagine what we would do if none of our current options were available. For example, a coach and teacher who are trying to identify the best strategy for hitting a goal might ask, “If we don’t use any of the strategies we’ve discussed, what else might we use?”

Step 2: Make predictions. After we have expanded our options, we need to predict which of them will prove to be best. This usually starts with gath- ering information (through internet searches, formal interviews, or informal conversations). Former Secretary of State Colin Powell suggests that in order to make good decisions, we need to have between 40 and 70 percent of avail- able information at our disposal (cited in Harrari, 2002).

Many also find it helpful to list all their assumptions before trying to make a decision. Chip and Dan Heath (2013) suggest we ask ourselves the question “What can I reasonably expect to happen if I make this choice?” (p. 121). For her part, Suzy Welch (2009) developed the 10-10-10 rule, which prompts us to ask, “How will this decision affect my life in 10 minutes, in 10 months, and in 10 years?” Still another approach, promoted by psychologist Gary Klein (2007), is to hold a mental “premortem” by asking, “Let’s assume the patient dies. What will it be that kills him?”

Step 3: Making the decision by reducing options. Eventually, we have to make a decision, and we usually do that by eliminating any options that don’t seem relevant. If we get lost in the details, we may end up with choice paralysis, so removing all the options we are certain we won’t choose can be very helpful.

For centuries, people have been making decisions by creating lists of pros and cons. In his book Farsighted (2018), Steven Johnson explains that Charles Darwin even created one to decide whether to get married. On the “Not Marry” side of his list, Darwin included such items as “Less money for books” (p. 8). On the “Marry” side, he wrote “Constant companion (and friend in old age).” Darwin was married six months after he created the list.

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The problem with a simple pros-and-cons list is that not all pros and cons are created equal. Darwin probably understood that a lifelong loving com- panion is more valuable than having a surplus of money for books. Jeff Bezos, founder and president of Amazon, uses a simple criterion to make a decision: if he is 70 percent certain of a positive outcome, he acts (Bezos, 2016).

I have made a lot of decisions based on two simple criteria: what is easiest and what is most powerful. When choosing a teaching strategy for the class- room, for example, I want to know which one will be easiest for the teacher to implement and which one will have the most positive impact on students’ lives. If it’s both powerful and easy, I’ve found, it’s usually a winning option.

Chip and Dan Heath (2013) recommend that people make decisions only after they clarify their principles or core priorities. A coach who knows that one of his or her core principles is to do what is best for children, for example, will find it easier to navigate many complex decisions.

Thinking fast

Much as it can be nice to have the luxury of time when making decisions, coaches need to think fast almost every time they interact with collaborating teachers. In a flash, they need to read teachers’ facial expressions and body language, assess whether teachers feel safe in a conversation, choose which questions to ask, and decide when to move back and forth between facilita- tive and dialogical approaches to interaction.

One aspect of thinking fast is to apply the coaching skill of noticing. In particular, coaches need to notice the nonverbal communication of their collaborating teacher (see also p. 47). Does the teacher’s tone of voice sound enthusiastic? Does she sit up straighter when she talks about certain topics? Does she make appropriate eye contact? Is she energized? Does she respond enthusiastically to questions or hesitate for a half-second before responding? In short, the coach should always be assessing whether the teacher feels safe, is open, and is focused on a goal that matters.

Additionally, coaches need to be self-aware. Do they feel at ease in the conversation? Do they feel the teacher is open and candid? Are they ener- gized about partnering with the teacher to meet the identified goal? Do they feel positively about the conversation? Do they feel that their emotions are under control?

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If coaches determine that they are out of alignment with the collaborat- ing teacher, the first thing they ought to do is take a step back and listen. Once a coach fully understands the teacher’s needs and emotions, he can start to partner with the teacher to identify a powerful goal that she really wants to pursue.

Many coaches use single phrases, often referred to as mantras, to help them make better decisions when they have to think fast. Author, consul- tant, and coach Michelle Harris, for example, has found Susan Scott’s (2002) phrase “respect the sweet purity of silence” to be an incredibly helpful man- tra. “I say that mantra to myself over and over and over again in my head,” she said. “And to be quite honest, I also have to literally bite my tongue to honor silence.” Christian van Nieuwerburgh (2017) uses the mantra “It’s not about me” to help him resist the temptation to solve another person’s problem. Ann Hoffman shares Michael Bungay Stanier’s mantra “Be more curious” (2020) when she leads workshops on my book Better Conversations (Knight, 2015). These mantras all provide those who use them with a foundation for making better decisions when things are moving quickly.

Other Coaching Mantras

Don’t take sides. (William Miller and Stephen Rollnick) Put the teacher in the driver’s seat. (Ann Hoffman)

Let the other person sit in the big chair. (Dan Pink)

Do the right thing. (Spike Lee)

Let the teacher make the decisions. Let go of control.

Everyday decision making. When I talk with people about how they make decisions, very few of them describe a step-by-step process. Most peo- ple make decisions informally in the moments and days of their lives, but that doesn’t make the strategies they use any less powerful. In the moment, coaches can think carefully about their principles, consider the 10-10-10 rule, go to a wise friend for advice, or remind themselves that “it’s not about me.”

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Good decision making usually isn’t a linear or academic process, but it can be

strategic, leading to better outcomes.

To Sum Up

This chapter describes strategies for leading yourself and leading others.

We need to lead ourselves because it is difficult to be a force for good if we burn out. To lead ourselves, I suggest that we clarify our purpose, develop a personalized approach to managing our time, develop positive habits, and

take care of ourselves through self-compassion.

We need to lead others because life is short, and we want our days, weeks,

and years to count for something important. To lead others, we should bal- ance ambition with humility, be Multipliers, create alignment, and make good decisions.

Reflection Questions

Leading Yourself

1. Isyourworkenergizing?Areyoulivingoutyourlife’spurpose?Ifnot, what is one thing you can do to move closer to a purposeful life?

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well are you managing your time? Is there anything you should change to manage your time more effectively?

3. Arethereanygoodhabitsyouwanttoadoptorbadhabitsyouwantto

give up? Can you use the ideas about habits in this chapter to change

your behavior in any way?

4. Are you taking care of yourself? Do you treat yourself with the same

compassion you show to others? If not, why not, and when will you start to demonstrate self-compassion? Is there anything else you need to do to take care of yourself ?

Leading Others

1. How effectively do you balance ambition and humility? Should you do more to set up conditions for change to happen? Do you need to be more responsive to teachers?

2. Are you an Accidental Diminisher? What evidence do you have to support your thinking? Is there anything you can do to be more of a Multiplier?

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3. How often do you feel you are in alignment with the teachers you coach? Is there anything you or others need to change to increase the alignment between coaches and teachers?

4. How effectively do you think fast and slow? Are there any coaching mantras that you would like to adopt? Do you want to change anything else about how you make decisions?

Going Deeper

This chapter was a bear to write. I looked at more than 75 books and struggled to summarize all that I learned from those authors, the 100-plus coaches ICG researcher Geoff Knight and I surveyed, and the two dozen coaches Geoff and I interviewed. But the struggle has been worth it. I’ve been shaped by the pro- cess of writing this chapter, and this means that there are a lot of resources you could read to deepen your understanding of the leadership ideas in this book.

• If you want to read more about purpose and the Japanese concept of ikigai, I recommend Héctor García and Francesc Miralles’s Ikigai (2016). I found the book to be inspiring, entertaining, and practical, and I applied the ideas right away.

• The classic work on time management is David Allen’s Getting Things Done (2015). People follow the GTD methodology with the same enthu- siasm Deadheads show for the Grateful Dead, and anyone interested in organizing their lives will benefit from reading the book. Allen’s ideas don’t always fit my personal style, but I’m convinced anyone can learn a great deal from them.

• Recently, there has been a proliferation of books on habits, influenced most likely by Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit (2012). I personally found Wendy Wood’s book Good Habits, Bad Habits (2019) to be espe- cially helpful because, along with providing practical tips on how to develop good habits, Wood includes the evidence to support her claims.

• If you are going to read just one book on taking care of yourself, I rec- ommend Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion (2011). Her primary message, that we should give ourselves the same compassion we would extend to a friend, is an important one for everyone to hear.

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• I’ve read a number of excellent books on decision making, and Chip and Dan Heath’s Decisive (2013) stands out for being entertaining, accessi- ble, and practical ( just like all their other books). In fact, I’ve used the book as my guide to making some important personal decisions.

• I recommend Wiseman, Allen, and Foster’s book The Multiplier Effect (2013) because they apply research about Multipliers to schools. Their research has helped me better understand what I need to do to be an effective leader.

• Finally, the classic book on motivation and change is Miller and Roll- nick’s Motivational Interviewing (2013), which has profoundly shaped the way I understand coaching.

What’s Next?

There are many suggestions for change in this chapter, but you should start by implementing no more than one or two of them. For example, you might want to implement the ideas about habits to make a change in your health or personal development, or you might want to use the strategies described to create more aligned interactions with teachers.

One way to identify what to do is to review your answers to the reflec- tion questions above and make a list of all the things you could change. Once you’ve made your list, apply the criteria I suggest in this chapter to identify your next steps. Ask yourself, “What is the one thing I see on my list that both is easy and has a high potential to have a positive outcome?”