Coaching
Coaching for change, challenge and growth.
Coaching can improve your resilience as a leader.
Why coaching?
Coaching puts you back in control. Coaching is about positive change and action. A coach facilitates learning and enables a coachee to help themselves unlock their inner resources and their personal and professional potential.
The coach provides the structure and challenge, and the coachee sets the agenda and identifies their own goals and actions.
You work out what you want to focus on and how you will bring about your desired changes and actions.
Coaching improves your understanding of yourself and your resourcefulness. It develops your personal effectiveness, and your ability to handle change and challenge. It can help you focus and gain a better sense of direction or control.
School leadership can be lonely, and many leaders do not feel they have support. A coach is a supportive listener, an impartial sounding board, and a non-judgemental professional.
How can I help?
I am an accredited ILM Level 7 Executive Coach and Mentor with experience coaching educational leaders. I offer bespoke coaching packages for individuals and schools.
I am passionate about the power of coaching. I understand how to maximise this power in educational settings. I bring a wealth of experience from teaching and leading in a broad range of international and UK schools. I understand schools and the pressures that school leaders face.
As your coach, I facilitate learning and enable you to unlock your inner resources and your personal and professional potential by providing time, structure and challenge.
As your coach, I can help you reframe and refocus.
School leaders usually put others first. As your coach, I can give you space and time to discuss your ideas and challenges. Coaching has a trickle-down effect for your school: looking after yourself, and your needs, enables you to look after others better.
You are resourceful, you set the agenda and you identify your own goals and actions.
Why now?
School leader stress and burnout was on the rise, even before the pandemic. This has been widely documented. The National Education Union survey earlier this year, showed that 44% of teachers wanted to leave the profession within 5 years.
Excessive workload leading to poor work-life balance, numerous changes (as have been experienced over the past few years), inspection and accountability are the most common reasons for stress.
Investing in coaching is one of the most effective, and sustainable, ways to bring about change in yourself, and your school.
Coaching can help you identify ways to manage change and reduce stress by tackling workload and work-life balance.
What might you bring to coaching?
Since you set the agenda and we are all unique, coaching conversations are never the same. Even when two people bring the same topic to a coaching conversation, the challenges and actions will be different.
However, some common questions school leaders bring to coaching include:
- How can I improve and maintain balance in my life?
- What would make me feel more fulfilled and happier?
- What strategies can I develop for managing my inner critic?
- How closely aligned is my professional life to my values?
- How clear am I on my purpose and goals as a leader?
- How can I best communicate my vision and inspire others?
- What strengths do I bring to my role?
- How can I feel like I am making more of a difference?
- How can I manage difficult conversations and feedback?
- How do I best lead/manage change?
Interested? Questions? Get in touch …
What people say …
After every session with Ali, I’m more clear about the steps I need to take and what’s critical. She asks the right questions, so I can plan what needs to be done but also notice why things were not done in the first place. With such clarity and insight, I’ve become more organised and confident.
You are very good at not saying much, but getting me from the point where I think I can't see an answer to finding something and that is really useful.
Thank you so much for this morning - it has helped me think more clearly about the future, which was really useful. You asked some really good and challenging questions that made me re-assess.
You've kept my thinking really focused. And the last session triggered me into action and that's really helpful.