The Cathartic Approach

Think back to your first year teaching. What are your predominant memories of that time? Perhaps you remember the exhaustion, the responsibility, or the joy. For me it was: “This is so hard! I'm overwhelmed by what I am learning about my students' lives, and the daunting task before me. I'm afraid I'm not competent, that I'll fail them.” My memory is of the emotions. This didn't really change after the first year because working in underfunded public schools located in communities in crisis and engaging in transformation is, by definition, an emotional experience. It's an unstated part of the job description of being an educator: you will have many emotions in this work.

Julian Weissglass, who developed the constructivist listening structure called the dyad (discussed in Chapter Eight) insists that educators deserve support in processing emotions. He writes, “Reform programs that address only the cognitive and behavioral aspects of educators' professional lives neglect an important part of their humanness and fall short of fully attending to the empowerment of teachers” (Weissglass, 1990, p. 351). Our feelings affect our actions and we need to attend to them.

Coaching is one structure within which emotions can be expressed. When we take a cathartic stance, we intend to help the client release emotions which block her progress. Sometimes, as a coach, it can feel frustrating to work from this stance, especially if our clients have a lot of emotions to process or often want this kind of support. However, we need to remember that without clearing emotions or working through them we often can't impact real behavioral change.

A cathartic approach allows the client to release and express painful emotions. This can be useful if a client is afraid of risk or failure, if he feels incompetent, or if he is frustrated or unmotivated. Emotions can also be a powerful source of energy—we can use them to move forward into what we want to be. One of the most powerful questions to offer a client a cathartic space is simply to invite emotions into the conversation. For example, let's say a principal is describing a staff professional development session that he planned all weekend that did not go well. He's relayed every step he took and wants to plan next week's meeting together. Before moving on, it can be helpful to ask, “I'm wondering what that felt like for you. Is that something we could talk about for a minute?” The client may exhale loudly, sigh, drop his shoulders, or communicate some other kind of relief at the invitation, and then he'll talk. In this case, without processing the emotional experience, the feelings of embarrassment, frustration, or annoyance at his staff might emerge at the next meeting and result in unintended consequences.

Cathartic questions can sound like:

1. I'm noticing that you're experiencing some feelings. Would it be OK to explore those for a few minutes?
2. What's coming up for you right now? Would you like to talk about your feelings?
3. Wow I imagine I'd have some emotions if that happened to me. Are you experiencing strong feelings?

In Appendix B, you'll find a compiled list of questions organized by coaching stance.

In order for a coach to invite emotions we need to be attuned to nonverbal cues. We could be talking about an upcoming unit plan or workshop and notice that the client seems distracted, fidgety, or tired; the expression on his face, the movement of his hands, or his distant tone indicates that something is off. A transformational coach is acutely observant of nonverbal communication and listens to her intuition. Sometimes we need to ask, “Is something coming up for you that you'd like to talk about?” That can be all a client needs in order to share some of the feelings that might be getting in the way of engaging in reflective conversations and learning activities. Following you'll find an exercise that I adapted from Facilitative Coaching (Schwarz and Davidson, 2008, p. 135) to help clients process emotions.

The authors of Facilitative Coaching suggest that this process works because often we don't know what we think or feel until we hear ourselves say it out loud (Schwarz and Davidson, 2008, p. 136). When we give clients an opportunity to talk through an issue in this way, their understanding can deepen, they feel affirmed hearing a coach echo their experience, and negative emotions can be identified and often released.

It's important to remember that we want to help our clients fully absorb their positive feelings as well as release the ones that might be blocks. The positive experiences—successes, accomplishments—are the ones that give us the strength to go on. However, there are few venues in which these get a chance to be expressed. Using this exercise to share positive feelings can be powerful—and be warned—the tears can flow just as fast hearing a coach echo back, “It felt amazing … I was so happy … I am proud of myself … I never thought I could do that.”

The Catalytic Approach

A catalyst is a stimulus to change. In science terminology, it is a substance that speeds up the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed by the reaction. As coaches, it can be very effective to use a catalytic approach with our clients—we offer questions to stimulate change, not to force, push, or mandate. We design questions based on our understanding of where a client is and where he can go, and if we're right with our assessment, and if the question is offered with care, transformation is possible.

A catalytic approach is most useful to help another person reflect, work through feelings and thoughts, and learn for herself. From this stance, a coach elicits self-discovery and problem-solving, encouraging the client to take responsibility for her learning and future actions. Clarifying questions can help a client make sense of something that happened, but probing questions are our basic tools when using a catalytic approach.

Catalytic questions can sound like these:

1. Tell me about a previous time when you worked with a challenging person. How did you deal with that?
2. hear you're really struggling with organizing your classroom. How do you intend to start?
3. It sounds like you're unsatisfied with the way that parent conference went. What would you do differently next time?
4. You've just talked about five different things you want to work on this week. The last thing you mentioned is your grading system. How important is this to you?

A catalytic approach can be used to explore the systemic issues that might be at play when a challenge presents itself. An exercise called The Five Whys can be used with an individual or a team as a catalyst for surfacing root causes to recurring problems. This exercise can be found on the National School Reform Faculty website (www.nsrfharmony.org).

Here's what the strategy might sound like when coaching a teacher who is frustrated by low parent turnout at report card conferences.

When we use The Five Whys strategy (which can extend beyond five whys) we try to move clients form focusing blame on events and individuals to look for the underlying systemic explanations for the dilemmas they're facing. Often what emerges is that a number of different problems trace back to a few systemic issues. These systemic issues often affect the entire organization—the above mentioned teacher with undeveloped communication systems might also experience other frustrations that have the same systemic breakdown at their core.

The Supportive Approach

I had a hard time with this stance as a new coach. It felt dangerous to venture into the realm of judgment. Being supportive felt like casting positive judgment on someone and I worried that perhaps the flip side of being supportive was being critical, which was a door I never wanted to open.

Then one day, a principal I was coaching broke down. She'd been subtly asking me to be supportive and I hadn't responded. “Everyone around me is telling me what a bad principal I am,” she said. “My teachers, my boss, my staff are all telling me what a weak leader I am, what a bad job I've done. Can't you just tell me something I'm doing well?”

I saw how much this principal worked, how hard she tried; my heart softened. “Of course,” I said. “I can help you identify the things you are doing which are leading toward your goals. I see a lot of things you're doing well. I can share my observations with you.” I am grateful that this principal called my attention to this; I became much more effective with her when I coached from a supportive stance. Furthermore, once she felt supported I was able to use other approaches that deepened our coaching work.

Coaches often witness clients go through painful realizations, take huge risks and sometimes fail, and make difficult changes to their behaviors. From the supportive stance we provide confirmation, offer encouragement, and help our client maintain focus and motivation. We intend to build the client's self-esteem and self-confidence, help clients notice and experience their moments of success, and encourage risk-taking to promote further learning.

This is a critical role for a coach to play. It's not just about making another person feel good about himself (which is valid in its own right) but also about helping the client see all the micromovements toward meeting the goals he laid out in the work plan. Most likely, they are happening regularly but it is very hard to see daily growth because it's often so small. Our job as coaches is to identify all the little positive behavioral changes and draw attention to them. By acknowledging the behaviors that will lead to large-scale success, there is more of a likelihood that the client will repeat those behaviors.

The coach's main role deals with expanding the ability to see contexts, rather than supplying content. The person being coached then sees new ways to utilize existing skills.

Julio Olalla (Bloom, Castagna, Warren, and Moir, 2005, p. 4)

For this reason, when we make supportive comments, we must be very specific. For example, rather than saying, “You did great leading that meeting!” a coach might say, “The opening activity you led got everyone involved and grounded. They were all talking to each other as you'd asked. You closed that activity and reviewed the agenda for the afternoon and everyone was looking at you; many were nodding their heads … These are all indicators that you're on the path toward meeting your goals. How did it feel to you?”

Supportive questions or statements sound like the following:

1. noticed how when you … the students really … (To identify something that worked and why)
2. It sounds like you have a number of ideas to try out! It'll be exciting to see which works best for you!
3. What did you do to make the lesson so successful?
4. I'm interested in learning (or hearing) more about …
5. Your commitment is really inspiring to me.
6. It sounds like you handled that in a very confident way.
7. You did a great job at that meeting when you …
8. I'm confident that you'll be successful.