Performance Development Conversations
Interview with Grant O’Sullivan
Subscribe to Podcast:Find us on your podcast app by searching for 'coaching in education'.
Transcript
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):Hello, and welcome to the Coaching in Education Podcast series. I'm Leigh Hatcher. I'm in a Skype conversation with Grant O'Sullivan on performance development conversations. Grant is co-director of Growth Coaching International in West Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory. Grant is a highly sought after executive coach, keynote speaker, facilitator and trainer who builds on a career background that's included general manager, board chair, Director of schools and School Principal.
So, what are we talking about with performance development conversations?
Grant O’Sullivan:
Performance conversation is the conversation between the various levels of leadership in the school right through to those delivering in the classroom, teachers, and it's a conversation about the school's goals, the evidence informed teaching practice that the school is going to embrace, and so the conversations are about how's that going to play out in this particular teacher's area of responsibility. And it's generally a conversation between a leader in the school and a teacher or it could be, in a very large school, a very senior leader and then a middle manager, but ultimately, it's a cascading conversation.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
And that's where it differs from peer coaching conversations?
Grant O’Sullivan:
Well that's right. Peer conversations, peer coaching conversations in the same context are then the conversation between a teacher and a colleague where it's much less formal. The accountability is probably not there, and if it is, it's minimal in comparison to the performance conversation. And the conversation's now about the micro-level goals and actions that that teacher might be putting into place tomorrow or within the next few days.
One way to see it is the performance conversations are talking about the large picture goals, you would hope the evidence-informed teaching practice that the school has decided is going to make the most impact for kids in this context, and the conversation is about how a teacher is going to develop themselves and what sort of outcomes they're looking for if they bring this new approach into their teaching.
And there'd be a bit of paperwork, a bit of accountability.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes. So, there's a range of key players in performance development conversations then?
Grant O’Sullivan:
Yes. In the schools that seem to have really embraced coaching as a way of supporting the best teaching practice happening in classrooms, it seems to be a cascading approach. So, in a very large school, the principal is probably having conversations with the senior leaders about how they might lead a particular new direction of the school or a new focus area that the school's decided on. Those middle managers, or senior managers, would then have a conversation with the people they directly manage, and the conversation would be cascading down to how's it going to play out in your responsibility, and then consequently, those middle managers would be having a conversation with individual teachers.
And we're sort of seeing that, in the schools where this is really embraced, each person probably isn't managing more than ten to a dozen people directly. That way they can have quite regular conversations. The relationship's good.
When it goes down to the peer level, it's teacher to teacher, and in some schools, that's been chose your own peer. In others, they've had a pool of peer coaches that want to be peer coaches. They're trained in peer coaching, and they might support a number of partners.
So, yeah, in the performance conversation, it's generally someone that has some leadership role, plus there's an understanding that whatever you're talking to your leader about is also being, to some extent, reported up so that the very senior leadership in the team knows what you're goal areas are and what your broad strategy is. At the peer level, there's generally no reporting to anyone. It's a very collegiate arrangement.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
So we're talking here about whole school performance or individual performance, and what's the difference between them?
Grant O’Sullivan:
Yes, well it's to try and bring the individual's commitment, small step actions into line with what the whole school direction is. Of course, a school is only as good as the sum of its parts. So, you can set whole school direction, whole school target, but at the end of the day, it's any number of teachers that have to get individually get that into their context and have goals that align.
I could give an example, Leigh, where you might have a school that says, "We've decided that a particular teaching strategy is going to have the most impact. It could be, for example, we think by being explicit about the learning intentions, we think this is going to have the most impact on our students."
That would be articulated in perhaps their business plan, their operational plans. As the conversations cascade through down to a teacher level, that might look like a teacher setting a goal for one particular class, even one particular group of children and taking very small steps the next few days to try out a new strategy. At the level in the performance conversation, it's probably not at that fine grain detail of action.
In actual fact, where we've seen it really picked up is the performance conversation gives direction for the peer conversations.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes. So, can you flesh out exactly how is a coaching approach useful in these types of conversations, Grant?
Grant O’Sullivan:
Given that the teachers are the ultimate provider of the teaching and learning for the children, it lets them have a conversation with leadership, and we're talking here performance conversations that's very relational. It's contextualised. It takes account of their experiences, their strengths, where their own professional development would need to go, and it has an accountability side to it.
At the peer level, it gives the conversation a structure that means it's more than a friendly chat between teachers. It's aligned to the teacher's performance development goals that they're setting with whoever is directly managing them, and they're getting support by a peer who doesn't have to be seen as the expert.
And this is one of the greatest, liberating aspects of the coaching approach, is the coach does not have to be the content expert. They just need some skills in coaching that will enable their coachee to find the solutions and the actions that they might take within themselves. They might be a resource, but they don't have to be.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yeah. What would you say, are the kind of pre-conditions that enable peer conversations to flourish in schools, Grant?
Grant O’Sullivan:
It's the same as a performance conversation. The first instance, it's a high level of trust between the two people, and that's fundamentally based around who's going to be talking to who about our conversations, so if a peer has a peer coach, and the contract of that relationship is there is no conversations happening outside of the peer conversation, then that's privileged. It's also, a precondition would be that the coach needs a certain level of skill and knowledge on how to coach so that they stay within a coaching approach.
Another precondition we've found is that peer coaching seems to flourish best when the teachers have experienced the same sort of approach through the performance conversations. So if the leaders in the school are modelling it, the teachers are more likely to get an understanding of this is a supportive approach. We've heard teachers say things like, "It's all about me. It's all about me being the professional and setting the goals and actions as a professional rather than being told what to do and going through a compliance-based process.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You're listening to the Coaching and Education Podcast series. I'm in a Skype conversation with Grant O'Sullivan on performance development conversations. Coming up, where the rubber hits the road, three inspiring case studies where this approach is making a real difference. But for now, do these goals always need to be set by the school leadership? Is there a place for teachers to set their own goals?
Grant O’Sullivan:
Well in the peer coaching space, they would be setting their goals, and as I said, they may not be necessarily reported to anyone. The goals they establish with their manager through the performance conversation, it would be self directed, but aligned with the whole school direction, the whole school goal or whole school focus area. In essence, we're saying if the school has made a decision, for example, to bring in something learning intentions as a focus in teaching, then you would expect, through the performance conversations, teachers would be setting goals that pay attention to that, but each teacher's goal could be customised around their own needs and context and experience, so there would be an alignment.
But we're talking about the bulk of teachers. There are exceptions, of course, where someone is having performance concerns, where they may be needing a lot more direction from leadership then that might see a more directed goal setting from the leader, but if we assume that the vast majority of teachers are white-collar professional people who can be trusted to set good goals that are in the best interest of students, then they will.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes. I suppose it's probably worth asking, are their exceptions at all to these kind of conversations, Grant?
Grant O’Sullivan:
I think so, Leigh. I was a Principal for 18 years. My first principalship was in a very remote community with very inexperienced teachers that they needed a lot more direction and what we might call mentoring than coaching, so under some circumstances, the leadership might have to make an exception to this. In even large schools with the range of staff, there might be some teachers who need more direction, where there are teachers are having say a performance concern and they're receiving some pretty direct feedback from leadership about where they're emphasis should be, then that would be a place where the leadership would be directing the goal setting and possibly even directing the actions the teacher's going to be taking.
But we're talking about the very small percentage of teachers that are in that serious under performance issue. A coaching approach done well can often turn teachers around before they drift into what we call the point end, where it's very directed and very consequential based. If they don't make some changes, things are ... There's a consequence sooner or later.
But we're only talking about a minority. The bulk of teachers want to be professional. They have the best interest of their kids at heart, and if they're encouraged to talk in a higher relationship with a manager in a coaching relationship and then be trusted to talk to a peer about the day to day ways of bringing this new approach to their teaching in for example, then our experience is the vast majority will.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Here's a question. With this cascading dynamic of conversation through the school, I wonder whether there is an information flow the other way, that is from the peer conversations between teachers back up to senior leadership?
Grant O’Sullivan:
That's a great question, and you would hope in the ideal world where the culture is very supportive, that there would be some level of reporting up of goal areas so that at a senior leadership level, there's an understanding on where the needs over the whole school are so you can target professional development for the majority. However, whatever reporting up, and I'm talking about from a teacher up through the lines of management, the teacher just needs to be aware that's happening. As we say, one of the critical preconditions is trust, and if a teacher thinks there's reporting up outside of their agreement, then that will kill trust in an instant.
But, we would say that senior leaders would want to have a macro-level of the goal areas. They don't necessarily need to have the micro-level goals and actions because that's quite specific to the teacher, and what we've found is they probably are best having no connection to the peer coaching conversations as a reporting mechanism because those teachers are often talking very micro-level, and it might be at a very high trust relationship where things teachers are talking about could be the leadership of the school.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes. And so, how often do these performance conversations and peer coaching conversations need to happen, do you think, and how do you sustain this kind of approach in schools, Grant?
Grant O’Sullivan:
We've found that the performance conversations seem to fall about monthly, and we're talking maybe 20-minute conversations, 30-minute conversations. It depends where they are in the coaching cycle, and we're talking performance conversations here. So, if it's a goal setting type meeting, which might be at the beginning of a cycle, you know, start of the year, those meetings might be a little longer. And then if it's a check in, then a good manager would be moving around, having corridor coaching conversations, but we kind of see this about monthly. And as I said, we've found that the schools that are really embrace this have thought, no one should manage more than maybe ten to a dozen people so that they can get around and do this in a high relational, relatively informal space.
The peer coaching conversations, we find they're happening between peers on a very regular basis, but sometimes it's while they're on yard duty, or while they're talking in the staff room. It's the conversations good teachers have always had, but it just has a focus. It's aligned with their performance goals which are aligned with the school's direction, and they're evidenced informed things that they think that everyone should be embracing, and it's just a more productive way of having those every day conversations between colleagues. We would think they probably happen on a daily basis. Peers often want to do some classroom observations to get some data for themselves to give it a focus. That might happen every few weeks or a couple times a term, but the conversations are as they happen in a staff room, but occasionally with a coaching approach to it.
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
And really helpful I am sure. Can I ask you finally, Grant, we're always going to see how this practically works? Tell us about a school or a team of individuals where you've seen this make a real impact.
Grant O’Sullivan:
Well Leigh, there's now a number of schools around Australia and probably elsewhere that have now been approaching this over a large number of years. We're talking seven, eight years maybe. One particular school, Comet Bay College, a very large secondary college in Western Australia, has embraced an approach. It's in their context, but it's not dissimilar to what I've been talking about where they have management talking to teachers about whole school directions and then teachers supported to have their peer conversations. They have a bank or a pool of peer coaches, and they work on the philosophy that not every teacher will be a peer coach, but every teacher has access to a peer coach. They have this bank of people who are very interested, very passionate about being a coach and are willing to give up some of their time to do it. Actually, that particular school has a video case study that can be accessed through the Growth Coaching website.
Another school is a school called Djidi Djidi Aboriginal School, they're very focused in their teaching practice, and they have fundamentally turned that school around from what would be called a failing school to a flourishing school in their context
There’s a number of them, Leigh. Another one, Rangeway Primary School (video case study) in the town of Geraldton Western Australia. They had something like 80% of their students below national naplan benchmarks, and over the course of five or six years, have brought it up to virtually none. We're talking a school of 500 or 600 students, virtually no students below the national benchmark, and the leadership would say, "All we're doing is having relentless conversations about teaching practice with the people we manage and then helping them having conversations with their peers about changing their teaching practice to be more evidenced informed and have higher impact."
Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
What an impact. And I'm sure you love seeing it yourself.
Grant O’Sullivan:
It's terrific. Those schools now get some accolades, and as one of the principals just recently, the Principal of Djidi Djidi Aboriginal School said, "When you cut it down, we're just talking about teaching, high impact teaching strategies and student learning, and we're cutting out the conversations about the erroneous things that have little impact on children learning." It's not that complicated, but you need a framework to do it, and that's probably where the coaching approach sits and helps.
Leigh Hatcher:
You've been listening to the Coaching in Education podcast series. I'm Leigh Hatcher. Have a listen to a range of other inspiring stories in this series. They're at www.growthcoaching.com.au
Resources referred to in this podcast: