As a coach, I know the importance of building trust. No one will grow alongside me if they don’t feel valued, if they don’t feel I see their strengths and capacity for growth. Being consistent and reliable, genuine and authentic, and giving space while asking intentional questions all build trust. Last week I made a mistake that diminished the trust I had started to build with one of my colleagues. This week I made it my goal to rebuild trust with his teacher. Today’s post is a reflection on this process.
I want to preface this post by saying that I am feeling a great deal of emotion as I look back on this experience. And I am acknowledging that it takes courage to share with others. However, I hope that my reflection helps to support the idea that coaching is a journey, not a destination. And that I will sometimes make missteps – when I do, it is critical that I learn from these in order to improve my practice for future conversations.
The mistake was made when I went in to have a conversation with a teacher about something that made me feel very uncomfortable in our previous conversation. Underneath my discomfort was a recognition that the feeling came from my beliefs around culture and language, and a sense of fear of having a “hard conversation.” I realized, though, as I talked to the teacher, that my interpretation and discomfort were based on some assumptions I made:
I apologized to the teacher, listened to their reaction, and restated my commitment to supporting them as a teacher.
Over the next several meetings with the teacher, I used Elena Aguilar’s How to Build Trust. My focus was on: intention to my language, tone-of-voice, and body language; and listening with curiosity. I took notes, recognizing that if I had been better at taking notes in initial conversation, I would have captured what happened with more accuracy and less assumption. In the notes, I try to capture exact phrases that a teacher says, which can be a rich source of data for follow up questions and planning the next conversation.
What did I learn? I learned that I need to take notes in every conversation, not just the formal, planned conversations. I learned that I need to give myself time before and after each conversation, to plan and to synthesize and reflect. This has been a challenge for me as I have developed into a coach, because there are always so many things to do and I want to be seen as actively supporting teachers all the time. No longer is this something I can skip. In planning, I can come back to my core values and my colleague’s core values and goals. I can plan for language that will both build trust and lead to my colleague’s self-awareness and growth.
In the past I have referred to the conversations I had as “difficult conversations” or “hard conversations,” but I prefer what Aguilar says, that the conversations that challenge us are “healing conversations.” We are all healing and when we care enough to have these conversations, we promote healing. These are important conversations to have. Before my eyes over the last couple of weeks I have seen that when I have healing conversations and really stand up for what I believe in a kind and gentle way, the ripples are felt.