Senior Leadership Certification Coaching Programme

This Senior Leadership Programme is for senior, middle and subject leader who will learn how coaching is an essential leadership skill that unlocks the potential of others and cascades the highest quality learning and teaching

Leading Excellence through Coaching for Senior Leadership Teams in Schools

This programme is for teams of senior, middle or subject leaders who will learn how coaching is an essential leadership skill that unlocks the potential of others and cascades the highest quality learning and teaching

What does the Senior Leadership Coaching Programme consists of:

• Work with expert coaches to enhance your leadership and coaching skills and focus on how to create and maintain a coaching culture within a school, college, trust or alliance
• Maintain the presence that ensures you lead others to accept responsibility for change and challenge
• Develop as a coach and empower others to know their own strengths, find their own solutions and create teams that deliver the vision and ambition for all learners
• Create professional learning communities that work together to ensure there is a cohesive and collaborative approach to the planning and delivery of the curriculum and other essential elements of leading an organisation in an education setting
• Learn the feedback and feed forward techniques that mean all staff are part of a process that leads to the highest quality learning outcomes and where continuing professional development is an integral part of the planning process
• Be a part of a growing number of educators who can see that coaching is the way to create an outstanding school where there is a synergy and belief in excellence and high – quality outcomes for all

Why learn to lead a Coaching Culture?

• Supports the management of change and challenge across the organisation
• Builds strong teams that work together to achieve carefully crafted goals and priorities
• Allows individuals to find their own solutions and become more self-aware and positive in their roles and with their colleagues
• Creates an atmosphere of trust where all staff are focused on how to build a culture of high quality learning and teaching, well-being and behavior
• Ensures existing staff feel valued and an essential part of the success of the organisation and therefore want to stay and where new and prospective staff want to join an organisation that will value them

How the Senior Leadership Coaching Programme is structured?

Module 1 – Leading and empowering to achieve the vision

Content:  The first of three in-depth and challenging training opportunities that make up our Coaching for Leadership Programme.  It will be delivered either as a full day or as two half days and we have the flexibility to offer in-house or online depending on circumstance and need.

This first module sets the scene by focusing on the vision for change, challenge and impact. Have the coaching language, the confidence and the commitment to clearly state the purpose and communicate the vision and ambition for continuous and purposeful improvement. Foster in others the realisation that they have the potential to share in ambitious strategies for systems and people transformation. Reflect on your own strengths, know your gaps and your own learning agenda. Plan how to build on your skills as a leader and be a visible and determined advocate for excellence and continuous improvement. Be aware of yours and others’ potential. Reflect on how well-defined the vision for change, challenge and impact is and ensure there is sufficient clarity so that teams and individuals can translate it and turn it into reality.

Overview

How will this module be of benefit in you as a leader?

Leadership in education is unique and different. The foundations and structures you work with are already in place and are defined by existing policy, accountability and systems that frequently change as a result of external influences. Leaders who foster excellence in their school or college do so by building their own unique leadership style that is predicated on a belief that all individuals within the organisation can achieve their full potential working together within the confines of the system.

Leadership is about empowering others to have the confidence to deliver the vision for change and challenge, be trusted to be innovative and different and be aware always of their own unique potential. Developing the coaching skills aligned to excellence in leadership create for the Principal, the Headteacher, the CEO or the aspiring school or college leader to have the ability, the creativity and the confidence to deliver excellence and improvement across the whole organisation.

Module 2 – Create a culture of excellence and deep learning

Content: This second module focuses on how coaching helps leaders to build a compelling and confident presence to support them to empower others towards change and challenge. We guide participants towards learning and using some highly effective coaching skills and strategies. We look at how to create a culture of excellence that focuses on ensuring learning is at the heart of every strategic decision linked to all aspects of running a school or college including developing and maintaining quality systems, curriculum planning and implementation, teaching and learning, behaviour, pastoral care and well-being or organisational change and continuous professional development.

Leaders taking part will use a range of coaching models and tools and techniques to focus on imaginative approaches to managing change and challenge and build resilient and effective teams that ignite the spark of innovation, creativity and continuous improvement. We look to facilitate the creation of a culture where the power of conversation through the development of the professional learning community builds cohesion and a collaborative approach to whole organisation excellence.

We want participants to develop the leadership skills that will empower others to find their own solutions, be resilient and positive in their interactions with learners, colleagues and stakeholders and deliver positive and productive change and challenge.

How will this module be of benefit in you as a leader?

This module build on the learning in module 1. Here we focus on how to use coaching skills as the basis for developing teams and other groups or departments to translate the vision into strategies for continuous improvement. The focus could be on curriculum implementation, behaviour, pastoral care and well-being, pupil premium, teaching and learning or quality for instance. It is for the leader to develop the coaching skills to empower others to share in structured and productive professional dialogue that will lead to high quality outcomes that echo the school ethos and vision for excellence.

It is through exceptional leadership that change leads to having the evidence that what is intended is actually delivered with outstanding results. Creating the culture defined by coaching empowers your teams to take the baton of responsibility and feel trusted to create, innovative and build high-quality learning for staff, pupils and others.

Overview

• Focus on your own leadership style and reflect on how you build relationships, create opportunities for others to take ownership and foster a culture where others take responsibility for delivering and implementing the vision for change and challenge
• Understand the nature of positive feedback linked to active listening and having presence and positive leadership without imposition or didactic leadership
• Define quality in education linked to the seven pillars of quality assurance in education and how to build strategies that allow others to know what success will look like and the impact that high-quality expectations for all have on learning and continuous improvement
• Learn some of the strategies and techniques that support the development of resilient and effective teams. Understand the nature of teams and the roles that support effective team working and delve into the science of team coaching. Know the value of the Professional Learning Community and Action Learning Sets and how fostering their development can build outstanding and sustainable change
• Use some tools and techniques to continue to learn or refine your coaching skills and reflect on how coaching is impacting on your relationship with the teams and individuals you lead. Share ideas and thoughts on how to influence those who continue to doubt or to block the process of change and challenge

Module 3: Sustain and grow powerful systems and structures

Content: This module creates opportunities to focus on the leadership role in relation to how through developing positive and powerful systems and structures a leader and their teams work together to develop strategies for quality assurance and coaching approaches that create a sustainable and lasting impact on learning, progression and continuous improvement across all areas of the organisation.

It is through the development of powerful systems and structures that leaders can lead their teams to deliver the highest quality outcomes. Maintaining the momentum so that talented, resourceful and resilient teams continue to translate the vision, rationale and ambition to deliver high quality learning for all is an essential outcome and continuing to strengthen coaching within the leadership teams will reap benefits.

It is at this stage that leaders can look in detail at the next steps in their quest to create a coaching culture where excellence and outstanding teaching and learning are cascaded across the whole organisation.

Coaching is about trust and creates for the leader the ability to be able to lead with confidence, to be able to nurture the potential of others and have the power to elevate and accelerate everyone within the organisation towards being an integral part of a learning culture.

How will this module be of benefit in you as a leader?

This module provides the senior leader with the opportunity to reflect on current strengths that create effective systems and structures within and across their organisation in order to delve deeply into what needs to change and how leaders can reflect on how what is currently working well can influence aspects of the school or college where change or challenge would be beneficial for whatever reason.

The opportunity to use coaching tools and techniques to look in detail at the management of change create for the leader an opportunity to build and sustain resilient and resourceful teams who will work together to build strong systems and structures.

This module asks leaders to focus on the context within which their school or college is placed and the different elements that need to be a part of a holistic improvement model. These include, learning and teaching, professional development, coherence and consistency, working with parents, governors and the wider community and building powerful curriculum strategies that deliver excellence across all learning and for every learner.

Overview

• Reflecting on the strengths and improvement needs for different aspects of the school or college. Use a change model to focus on your sense of urgency and build your vision through SMART goal setting and deep reflection. Consider the implications and advantages of systems redesign for your organisation and the teams you lead
• Focus on the drivers that power effective systems that create tangible and strong structures and how to empower others to work in synergy to drive positive change that will have an impact on continuous school or college improvement
• Consider the different options available in the pursuit of developing a coaching culture across the whole organisation that will sustain the realisation of the school or college vision including the introduction of Professional Learning Communities and high quality coaching related CPD
• Share your long term vision through coaching conversations and reflect on your own ability to empower change across the different elements of the school system
• Take away action planning tools and techniques to continue to build strong systems that rely on a leader who has high expectations of all those within the organisation, has the confidence to trust in teams to make change happen and who has a positive impact on learning for all pupils and staff across the whole organisation

On Completion of the course

We offer a Certificate in Leadership from Learning Cultures Limited on completion of this programme.

The programme will provide evidence of up to 30 hours of CPD for those who take part. The content complements but will not duplicate any of the National Professional Qualifications.