Insights and Challenges

Building a coaching culture is deeply rewarding, but it’s not without friction. It requires patience, presence, and a willingness to unlearn long-held habits. Along the way, I’ve encountered moments of clarity, resistance, progress, and pause. Here I have noted some of the key insights and challenges that have shaped the journey so far because building something meaningful rarely comes without complexity.

Insight 1: Coaching Is Caught as Much as Taught

While training is important, culture change happens through modelling. Coaching isn’t just a toolkit; it’s a way of being. The most powerful shifts often begin in small, informal conversations, when leaders ask reflective questions instead of giving answers, or when staff invite students to think, rather than comply. Over time, this way of relating becomes contagious.

Challenge

If leadership doesn’t embody the principles, initiatives can feel hollow. Authenticity and consistency are essential. It takes courage to pause, listen, and not rush to solve.

Insight 2: People Need Psychological Safety to Reflect Honestly

For coaching to be effective, people must feel safe enough to reflect without fear of judgement. In schools where performance has historically been monitored through targets or inspections, creating that safety takes time. Coaching conversations thrive when the message is clear: this space is about growth, not proving.

Challenge

Some staff may equate coaching with scrutiny. Building trust requires reassurance, boundary clarity, and genuine relational work, not just new policies.

Insight 3: Language Shapes Culture

How we speak to one another sets the tone for what’s possible. Adopting a coaching stance meant rethinking everyday language and swapping phrases like “you need to…” for “what would success look like for you?” or “what’s getting in the way?” These subtle shifts changed the nature of dialogue across teams and classrooms.

Challenge

Old habits die hard. Some may find coaching language awkward or inauthentic at first. Try to create space for experimentation, feedback, and adaptation to suit your setting.

Insight 4: Coaching Isn’t Just for the Confident

Often, the people who benefit most from coaching are those who doubt they deserve it. This includes neurodivergent students, struggling teachers, or quiet colleagues who are rarely offered leadership opportunities. Coaching helps unlock hidden brilliance, not by telling people who to be, but by helping them notice what’s already there.

Challenge

It can be easy to fall into the trap of only offering coaching to those already performing well. Building equity into access means being proactive and intentional in our design.

Insight 5: Culture Change Is Slow, Then Sudden

At first, change feels imperceptible, like planting seeds in hard soil. But over time, the roots take hold. New language, new behaviours, and new relationships begin to emerge. Eventually, what felt radical becomes routine: feedback becomes dialogue, leadership becomes shared, and students begin to coach themselves.

Challenge

It’s tempting to chase quick wins, but sustainable change takes time. Coaching culture isn't a product you launch, it’s a practice you live.

In the end, the greatest insight is this: coaching is not a solution, it’s a posture. It invites us to hold space for possibility, to listen more than we speak, and to believe in the capacity of others to grow on their own terms. And when that happens, schools don’t just function better, they feel different. Calmer. Braver. More human.