Coaching our game - Guest Column - training of school principals and superintendents - Brief Article

School Administrator, May, 2002 by Leonard Lubinsky

Many school superintendents used to be varsity coaches. I am a coach who used to be a school superintendent. I am not coaching football or wrestling (the sport of choice in our house). Instead, I am coaching principals and superintendents to improve their leadership and their problem-solving skills.

I work one-on-one, listening, questioning, pushing and occasionally advising my clients on matters before them. I meet with them or speak with them three or four times a month. And I believe they look forward to their time with me.

Coaching executives has become pretty common in the corporate world. It's rare in K-12 or higher education, but not unknown. One of the most successful Massachusetts superintendents attributes his successful transition into his job 13 years ago to his use of a coach whom he continued to work with after the transition was over.

Confidence Builder

The work of coaching can be similar but still quite different from the work of a superintendent. Recently, I coached a principal who came to me troubled about the extent to which one teacher--and later, he acknowledged, several teachers--was developing a "union mentality."

The principal thought there was a basis for their feelings, if not their actions. A contractual goal associated with scheduling was not being achieved. He thought it could be. He had been reluctant, however, to ask the superintendent for the resources or even the flexibility in the use of staff that would permit the goal to be achieved.

A thoroughly competent educator with a strong and capable superintendent, this principal finds it difficult to ask for what he needs from authority. Just in recognizing that fact, he was able to see how important it was to his school and to him to complete his job successfully that he find a way to overcome that discomfort, become clear about just what he needed and ask for it.

It is unlikely this principal could have gotten the support he needed and developed the self-understanding that made a difference from someone he worked for. He benefited enormously from coaching by an outsider whom he could trust, with whom he could discuss his problems and his weaknesses frankly. As his coach, my commitment was to him and his needs. I could be dispassionate, non-judgmental and non-supervisory.

A Shared Language

The purpose of coaching is not for self-understanding in and of itself. It is to achieve a successful action. In another experience, I worked with the head of a private day school. She had a commitment from a well-known author to co-author a book that promised substantial revenues for the school. She was very concerned, however, about her ability to schedule time to write.

During coaching, she realized that insufficient time was not really what was troubling her. She was uncertain about what to write. Knowing that, she focused on the problem in an entirely different way. Three weeks later, she had completed two chapters of the book and sent them to her co-author.

Would superintendents benefit from being coached? Undoubtedly. I know I would have benefited enormously from a coach. I envy that Massachusetts superintendent's transition experience. I learned the hard way the extent to which budgets are far more than budgets--they are expressions of a school district's philosophy and direction.

I also could have used support and counsel when parents were angry about a personnel matter during my third year. I was much better prepared for such a problem in my 23rd year. Even as an experienced superintendent, however, I would have benefited from having a coach. As Massachusetts moved into standards-based approaches with high-stakes testing, there were requirements I had to make of my schools. Counseling and support from someone who could speak my language and who was separate from my school system would have been invaluable as I thought about what requirements I had to set and how to set them.

The best-intentioned school boards are rarely successful as supervisors. Superintendents sometimes get help from colleagues. More often, we find ourselves in charge of our fiefdoms, telling colleagues war stories, but not really looking for help. Our professional associations can help, but we often don't ask for that help until it is legal advice or legal aid that we need.

Who's the Boss?

How can a superintendent find a coach? One good way is through the International Coach Federation. The ICF (www.coachfederation.org) has a referral service for coaches that contains information about the specialties of various coaches nationwide. Many coaches included in this service also have their own websites that provide more comprehensive information.

In coaching school executives, I have had to learn a new lesson. I am not the boss. (In retrospect, it's not altogether clear that I was the boss when I was superintendent, either.)

My job as a coach is to help people understand what is getting in the way of them achieving their goals. I help them realize what their real goals are. When my clients understand what they want to accomplish, their capacity for action and success is increased enormously. When I stay with them as they work to achieve those goals, the likelihood of success is even greater. That is what my coaching is about.