Interested in Leadership Coaching? Apply Now!
If you think you have the skills to help support the next generation of leaders, apply to become a Leadership Coach here.
If you’re looking to develop your own leadership skills, apply to be coached here.
Laura Niemczyk
Principal, Sun Academy Bradwell
As a professional, coaching is something that excites me, working alongside colleague to continually enhance their practice. Having worked with colleagues using Instructional Coaching to improve the quality of education within the academy, making small and sustainable change to teaching practise, this has become embedded within our academy development. The next stage was to undertake training on becoming a Leadership Coach; this excited me and filled me with anxiety in equal amounts. I was nervous about the support I could give to the diverse leadership team that we have across our trust.
”I’m enjoying the opportunity to develop the next generation of leaders through my coaching”
Having now completed this training, my main learning was that my role as a Coach is not to provide leaders with the answers to their questions, it is my role to probe, question and challenge their thinking, supporting them to reach their own decision. To clarify and rephrase, supporting leaders in hearing their own words echoed back to them within the protected and precious hour where they can focus solely on the topic that they have bought for discussion. Becoming a coach has helped me to enhance my skills in really listening, unpicking and providing appropriate challenge to colleagues to encourage them to think deeply. When in this phase of discussion, I am now really conscious of pausing and allowing time to think; becoming much more comfortable not knowing if the session will end with more questions than when we first started (and also recognising that is okay.) Refining and developing these skills has really supported me in my daily role as an Academy Principal, as well as a Leadership Coach- I’m really enjoying the additional opportunity to enable leaders at all levels to think for themselves; beginning to develop the next generation of leaders through my coaching.
