COACHING
PROGRAMME
Leadership Edge firmly believe that coaching is a deeply empowering pedagogy, which can benefit school leaders, staff and students alike, a significant shift away from a top down, command and control direction, which is long overdue.
We are determined to challenge the many factors that work to prevent such a shift – attitudes, policy, budgets, time, training and more. We aim to help schools to build a coaching culture where not only is it ‘the way we do things around here’ but ‘that’s the way we are, we don’t even need to think about it”.
The Leadership Edge 3-tier Accreditation Programme for schools starts with the Foundation Level, and the journey continues into Practitioner Level and finally Master Level.
For coaching to be of value there must be recognition that it is SKILLS based and requires practice. The Leadership Edge model provides both coaching practice and supervision.
Everyone who starts on the Leadership Edge coaching journey begins at Foundation Stage. Here you will embed 3 essential coaching skills and experience being coached using the T-GROW model, one of the most popular and well known coaching models.
Participants will learn about coaching skills and practices, and will receive an electronic skills booklet and accreditation portfolio. They will experience coaching as coachee over four sessions, delivered by a Leadership Edge Practitioner or Master Coach.
Once the portfolio is complete, a final coach to coach conversation with a Leadership Edge Assessor is held in which the participant will articulate their reflections on the Foundation Stage and identify their next coaching step.
Participants will have gained a Leadership Edge Foundation Coach accreditation and will continue to develop their knowledge of coaching skills and practices and will receive an electronic skills booklet and accreditation portfolio. They are required to coach two people, at least one from within their organisation, and a Leadership Edge Associate Coach will provide supervision sessions during this stage.
The accreditation portfolio will evidence reflective feedback from both coach and coachee and a final coach to coach conversation with a Leadership Edge Assessor will help to determine the next coaching step.
Participants will have gained a Leadership Edge Practitioner Coach accreditation and you will receive electronically a models and think-piece booklet and accreditation portfolio. At Master Coach level participants will be building a coaching culture within their organisation, and will coach three people within their organisation and will have six coach supervision sessions, with a Leadership Edge Associate.
The accreditation portfolio requires them to provide reflective feedback on their coaching across their three coachees and for their coachees to provide feedback on their coaching.
Often in schools, the role and purpose of coaching is understood as being: "the passing on of professional skills and knowledge from a person more experienced and/or knowledgeable in the subject. This is often to correct poor performance or an intervention prior to competency.”
At Leadership Edge we call this strategy directional coaching or mentoring. Our aim is for coaching to be seen as an essential part of school life, an entitlement to have the opportunity to safely reflect upon their professional role or outside challenges which may impact on this.
There are ranges of different coaching models, which align to various points across the spectrum. Instructional coaching is a model, which aligns towards mentoring side of the coaching spectrum. This sometimes involving the use of IRIS technology to record practice and then a conversation is held to discuss this. One danger, as we perceive it is that this can be a dependency model, “Tell me what I need to do to improve so that I am not seen as lacking in competence?”
Leadership Edge endeavours to get coaches thinking in the non-directive range.
“Coaching is the belief that people have the answers to challenges within themselves; a coach provides an opportunity to hold a ‘thinking space’ for the coachee to think their challenges through, reflect upon their own thinking and identify a way forward that works for them.”
Are you ready to join us?
Contact us to arrange an appointment to discuss the Leadership Edge 3-tier Accreditation Programme.
You can find our pricing structure here.
The Leadership Edge 3-tier accreditation programme has also been influenced by world-renowned speakers and authors on the subject of leadership and coaching, including Ken Blanchard, Patrick Lencioni, Stephen Covey, Tom Rath and many more.