Marion Stewart-Smith (Headteacher), Farley Junior School
[Coaching SLT] Managing Difficult Conversations With Colleagues in School Unifies Fragmented and Disgruntled Team
Headteacher Helps Member of SLT to Manage 'Difficult Conversations' Easily via Coaching
When you’re in a school leadership role it’s crucial that you’re able to have difficult conversations with the people you line-manage. But that was something this coachee (a senior leader) found very tricky!
Watch this video to discover how this Headteacher coached her Senior Leader to manage ‘difficult conversations’ with people in her team.
Case Study Transcript
“An example of using coaching, was coaching a colleague who was finding it very difficult in her leadership role to manage difficult conversations with people. And that was quite hard for her to admit ’cause I think she knew that people were seeing her as quite difficult. And it wasn’t. She wasn’t being difficult, she just hadn’t developed skills to do what she needed to do.
“As a result of coaching, she identified role models that she wants to look at. She identified some research that she wanted to do, and it has had a real impact on her team.
“A team that was quite fragmented and disgruntled is now a much more unified team that is giving the children a much better deal – because actually the friction between the team has gone.”