Coaching has probably kept me in leadership

After training with us in 2007, Olivia built her career at the same school, progressing through a range of leadership roles. As she considered what came next, coaching provided the space to reflect, challenge her assumptions and explore her future with confidence. In her own words, she shares how coaching shaped her leadership journey, supported her decision-making and helped her stay in a role where she can make a difference.

I am an Associate Deputy Head and I've been at the school for 15 years. I trained with Teach First in 2007 and it's only the second school that I've ever worked in.

There is sometimes a challenging feeling for me in relation to coaching. I have this feeling of being happy to be in a school where I'm comfortable, where I know everything and where I recognise the ease of that. But I also sometimes feel like I need to move and to find professional development from somewhere outside of this organisation that I've been in for a long time. Coaching provides me with the space to discuss these thoughts and make decisions about my next steps.

Finding the coaching programme

The reason for seeking out coaching is to support me to continue making an active choice to stay or to do something else. I wanted it to help me to think carefully and clearly about the nature of that choice and to be contented with it.

I had an amazing coach through Teach First about five years ago, just before I stepped into senior leadership, who was brilliant. He helped me to get through difficult thinking about myself and my capacity to be a leader. I'd see him every month and it really empowered me to be able to take the next step in my career.

I felt in a similar position 18 months ago when I started coaching with Janet. I was trying to decide whether I was going to apply for jobs, and then she helped me through the process and how I felt about it.

Because of all of this, I've just stepped up to the deputy head role in my current school.

Exploring my leadership

It was leadership and my own orientation towards myself as a leader that I wanted to explore. The blockers and barriers about my own leadership and desire for leadership, and about the organisation in which I work and the things that I love about it or find frustrating.

The process of being coached, when it's done really well like this, is about empowering me to make my own decisions.

It's hard to quantify or articulate how much it helps, because it's all coming from me, but having that space to find that in myself has been so transformational.

Coaching with Janet has probably kept me in leadership.

There have been times when I've really doubted my capacity to do it well enough alongside being a mum to two kids and have given serious thought to stepping down.

The coaching process has really reinforced my confidence that I can do it, that I love it and that I am making a positive impact.

A transformational shift

I remember clearly one of the things we talked about – once you're in leadership, you shouldn't be expecting somebody to tell you what to do. You're a team. Those people are there to support you and advise you, but you're the one doing the leading.

That was a big shift in my attitude to leadership, and feeling empowered about doing things for myself.

Building a trusted coaching relationship

I feel like I've got to know Janet. You get to know who someone is as a person through the coaching process and through the kinds of questions they ask and the reflective mechanisms they have. There is a mutual admiration there.

Our sessions were at 8:00 on a Saturday morning, and that isn't who I am as a person; I hate getting up early at the weekends. But I wanted to make time for it because it was so valuable.

I told her about my promotion and it was so nice. She was genuinely delighted for me.

The benefit of an outside perspective

Being coached by someone outside of the school is a completely different thing.

Janet had this thought about me seeing myself as a deputy. If you start to behave like a deputy, then they will see you as a deputy and that's what will happen next.

I was already doing elements of the role of deputy head, but I was intimidated to put myself out there.

I was manifesting it and she helped me to unlock my own belief that I could do it.

Then the head saw that I was ready to take this step up. There's no way that that would have happened the year before I started my coaching.

Why I'd recommend coaching

Just do it. Even if it's 8:00am. Even if you don't see yourself as somebody who needs a coach or it doesn't seem to be very you. It's so helpful because it's about taking some time for yourself to reflect.

School is always 100 miles an hour. And there's no space to really think about your positioning in relation to the organisation and the people in the organisation, because we're constantly thinking about our positioning in relation to the children.

I love my job, but I also find it really challenging. It's so important to have time to reflect and think about why it's brilliant on an intellectual level and what it's doing for me as a person and as a leader.

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