To Be a Good Coach, You Have to Be You

by Shelley Burgess

In all of the roles I’ve had as an educational leader, one of my favorite parts of the work has always been the coaching. Honestly – I love it. There is almost nothing I would rather do in my work life than to be fully engaged with other educators in conversations about exceptional teaching, leading, and learning. Because of the passion I have for coaching, I’ve been a student of what good coaching is and isn’t for years. I have easily engaged in thousands of coaching conversations in my career, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it – at least that’s what I’ve been told.

I often find though, that in my work with principals or other leaders who are expected to take on a coaching role that some of them are hesitant. I have had several people share with me that coaching and giving feedback makes them nervous, they are afraid of doing it wrong, of not doing it well enough, or even of being “found out” that they aren’t actually an expert in everything. 

I am hoping over the course of the next few months to write a series of blog posts about coaching. I hope to share some highs, lows, celebrations, missteps and a variety of things I have learned along the way that have helped me evolve as a coach. I wanted to start by sharing this:

To be a good coach, you have to be authentic – you have to be you! 

You can learn a ton about how to coach from a myriad of experts out there, but at the end of the day, you need to take all of that learning and use it in your own unique way, like only you can do.

This became extremely evident to me the year I had an opportunity to work with one of THE BEST coaches I have ever known. Her name was Sue, and my work with her came at a time in my career when I already loved coaching, and was confident in my abilities. But when I had the opportunity to watch Sue coach teachers and principals, it became very clear to me that I was not good enough! She was amazing, and I knew I wanted to grow up a bit more and be a coach just like Sue. 

So I tried for a bit to be just like Sue, and I got worse at being a coach. I stumbled over my words, went off on too many tangents, lost focus in some of my conversations, I was nervous that I didn’t measure up, and my coaching conversations were much less impactful than they had been before I’d met Sue. And… I wasn’t having as much fun engaging in them anymore.

What I eventually realized was that I can’t be Sue. I have to be me. I am a worse Sue than Sue. Once I figured that out, I was able to take the SO many wonderful things that Sue taught me, mix them in with who I am, incorporate my own personal style, and interact with people like only I can.  In short, I finally let Sue help me be a better Shelley.

So to be an exceptional coach, start by just being YOU. 

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