We have admired from our ‘bubbles’ the care, fun, courageousness & adaptability that teachers & leaders continue to show their school communities. We want to sincerely thank you all for your tireless work during these uncertain times.
As we return to school under these new circumstances, we acknowledge the importance of your leadership, & express the confidence that we feel about education moving forward in your capable hands.
Over the past few weeks we have undertaken some new learning to ensure we are ready to continue our contact with edLead clients. Zoom, Skype, & FaceTime are options available to us. We understand & empathise with the challenges that you may have faced in order to establish online learning opportunities for your learners. We are ready to go….& just so you know, we may not have everything 100% right from the start, but we will continue to learn with & from you.
You may already know we are big fans of Michael Bungay-Stanier after reading his first book The Coaching Habit. Michael very recently released his second book; The Advice Trap, which we’ve fortunately had time to enjoy over the last two weeks. We loved this text & will be shortly bringing you our full review, however in the meantime here’s a taster of two of our highlights:
One of Nadia’s highlights: Although we definitely value time right now for “connecting” time is still precious & if we’re experiencing too much of what Michael refers to as “yarning” we could try this simple 4-step method for kindly interrupting:
Announce your intention: I’m just going to… Let me…
Then explain the action: ...jump in… interrupt you… cut in here.. stop you there… hit a pause button… edge in...
Which will be painless: ...quickly ...briefly… for a moment...
So that you can stay curious: ...and ask a question &/or move the conversation forward.
For example: I’m just going to hit a pause button for a moment. What’s the most important thing for us to act on here?
One of Carol’s highlights: Michael captures the essence of coaching in his simple “Coaching In A Nutshell’ diagram. It goes like this:
● Ask a question & shut up-( no fake questions & stop talking….really)
● Actually listen to the answer-(no fake listening)
● Acknowledge the answer- (not by offering advice)
The cycle repeats & you will know what question to ask next because you have really & truly listened to the answer to the previous question.
We have an additional copy of The Advice Trap to give away.
To enter all you need to do is comment below with one sentence that tells us one of your new learnings from the last fortnight. Please add your name to the post. We look forward to reading these, will draw the winner on Friday 24th April & will send the text out once this becomes possible.
Finally we acknowledge that you are working in a time of change & uncertainty & that you may be experiencing new demands as a leader. There may be things that you would like to talk over.
For our current clients you may wish to adapt our work to meet current needs in the short term. As the beginning of term unfolds we’ll be touching base with you individually.
Nga manaakitanga
Carol & Nadia
PS- we have added a new book review to our resource page- Innovate Inside The Box- by George Couros & Katie Novak & have also updated our bio pages under the ‘We’ tab on our website. You may wish to take a look.