Education

“Coaching helped me articulate my vision for my subject within the school to myself and then communicate it to various stakeholders. It was a challenging year—extremely so at certain times—and the coaching sessions offered the opportunity to take stock, take care of myself, consider my priorities and look at wider issues.

We also considered my communication style and influencing and networking skills. Coaching helped me to think through the best way of ‘managing upwards’ within the organizational hierarchy, deal with possible conflicts and hone my written communications so that I was likely to get optimum results.

My coaching took place over the course of a year of my working as the sole teacher of music in a challenging state school environment.

Coaching assisted me in thinking through the specifics of a major project I wanted to put on for the school both in terms of practical matters, such as considering the range of internal and external resource I had available, time management and advance preparation, but also more generally in terms of strategic benefits for the children, my school and my own personal and professional development.

There was a period after Christmas where I dreaded returning to work. We considered how to manage potentially difficult relationship with my line manager. We thought through the reasons she might be failing to support me and how I could most effectively explain what I needed from her.” (teacher in sole person department)