Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Hello and welcome to the Growth Coaching International Case Study Podcast series. I'm Leigh Hatcher with some great stories of the difference the GCI is making in all sorts of schools and school systems. I'm in conversation with Kate Grayson, Deputy Principal of Churchlands Senior High School in Western Australia. She's had a wealth of experience in the Growth Coaching International model in a range of educational contexts. As you'll hear in our Skype conversation she's a real believer.

Kate Grayson:
My first experience with Growth Coaching was as a Head of Arts at Canning Vale College. I started there after they'd had an executive review group go through and that had established that there were some issues with staff and results and such. The Principal really saw it as a really important way of capacity-building his middle management team. He really saw it as a way that we could work with typically some of our younger and more experienced staff but even our more established staff to really try and effect the change that needed to happen that was established out of that.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
So people were quite accepting of the idea?

Kate Grayson:
Yeah. Look, it did take a while. And I think with coaching it does. It was important that we were trained in the process, but were also coached ourselves and I think that was the real key to the success. And it was also a slow roll out. We did a lot of work with our staff to prepare them so they understood what a coaching conversation was. For us at Canning Vale College it was really about the way the HOLA (Head Of Learning Area) interacted with the staff member. And it was about moving from the HOLA being the repertoire of all knowledge and the HOLA fixing everyone's problems…Moving to a way where teacher's grant to power to solve problems for themselves. So a whole lot of work had to be done with the staff. Because the staff are not gonna accept a fundamental change like that without a whole lot of time and work being done with them. And so, in my capacity, I worker really really closely with my staff and I'd even say to them, "Okay, I'm going to have a coaching conversation with you now." So, they are really clear about the type of conversation we're about to enter in on. And it got to the point where I didn't have to say that and at the end of the conversation they would go, "I've just been coached, haven't I?" And I'd go, "Yeah, you have." And so, it became a little bit of a joke.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yeah.

Kate Grayson:
But I have to really really work with my staff because it was a really really big change in the role of the HOLA going from problem solver to actually capacity-builder.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yeah, it's very significant.
So, fast forward to today. Give us a sketch of Churchlands's Senior High School. Where you are now…

Kate Grayson:
Okay, so ... I am now in my second year of being at Churchlands Senior High School. Churchlands Senior High School is one of the biggest single campus high schools in Australia, and certainly the biggest in WA by far. We have two thousand six hundred students and we're expected to grow to about three thousand two hundred over the next few years. We've got over two hundred teaching staff alone.
My role is Deputy Principal Human Resources so my portfolio is solely looking after the staff, working with aspirant development, women in leadership, mentoring graduate teachers, mentoring re-entry teachers. But one of my big portfolio areas is teaching performance development and that's an area that I've been doing a lot of work in as well, particularly around initiating reflective conversations for staff through their performance development meetings. We've got a high number of graduates here because we have a really experienced staff body. Probably in three years we have brought on in excess of fifty graduate teachers and so we've had really good strong mentoring programs to work with those teachers. But, you know, once they're in their first or second year then you can actually start coaching them as well.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You can hear the passion in you for this. What fires you up for this kind of coaching, Kate?

Kate Grayson:
I think for me it's about capacity-building, and I was really lucky that very early in my leadership career that I had some really fantastic people who coached me. And so having been through that process as an early career leader it's really inspired me to now sort of, I guess, pay it forward in a respect and to be heavily involved in the leadership development of other aspiring leaders now. If I hadn't have had people that put all that time and effort into me early on, you know, I wouldn't be in the position I was. You know, I had these phenomenal people around me when I was at Lakeland Senior High School. I had Kyle Graves and I had a few other really influential people who worked with me and helped develop me, and if I hadn't have had that I wouldn't be where I was so now I feel the need to really ... to help develop other people now as well and I'm really lucky, I'm in a position where I can do that.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
How inspiring. Let's get practical. How did you set up the coaching plan? How was it initiated?

Kate Grayson:
Yeah, we're doing it in several different ways. We really turned around the way we do our senior staff meetings. So instead of our senior staff meetings be, "Meet this deadline and do this and don't forget these." We actually capacity build our middle management, and so we've had Growth Coaching come out and do some taster sessions around difficult conversations, coaching conversations. I've done some work around performance development conversations. We are slowly getting our heads of learning area through the full four-day Growth Coaching program.
But I've also done a lot of work with my work force committee around the whole way we're looking at performance development, so we don't want the performance management meetings anymore. It's not a one-off meeting. It's an ongoing process which is based on reflective questioning and that's what's really key to our whole process around working with our staff. It's celebrate the success, okay, where's the need area? You know, where have you faced these problems before? And drawing on people's strengths and working that way with people. It's not a critique, it's not a one hour 'tell me all the things you've done wrong'. It's incidental, it's ongoing, it's a cycle, and it's reflective.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You're listening to the Growth Coaching International Case Study Podcast series. I'm with Kate Grayson, Deputy Principal of Churchlands's Senior High School in Western Australia.
Now all this sounds great, of course. But here's a critical question: how have staff leaders responded to this entirely different approach?

Kate Grayson:
With Churchlands it has been a really different way at looking at performance development from that sort of one off meeting to it being a really ongoing process. But the way we went about setting it all up was people had lots of opportunity to go and do training, to look at the draft documents and some of the draught conversation models that we were giving them. So there was lots and lots of opportunities for feedback. It was a slow and gradual process over the entirety of last year. Last year was development and trialling year, and this is an implementation year. So, because people were provided with the opportunity for input, the opportunity to ask questions, the opportunity for training, I think when you put that amount of time and energy into a change management process it's always going to be far more successful if you've given people the opportunity to respond and reflect and to think about and process and to trial, to then provide more feedback and to get training. You can't implement any change in any organisation unless you're gonna really train people and follow a really good process. So, I think that was the key to our success for our new performance development process, was that it was a slow and gradual process provided with training and time and all of those sort of things.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Here's a challenging question, though. How are you going to sustain it do you think?

Kate Grayson:
Ahh. So, we have to continue the conversations. So what I have been working on is putting together the schedule for all of our senior staff meetings, and so every few weeks we're going to keep going back to coaching and keep going back to performance development. So we're going to keep that conversation going so that every four to five weeks we're going back, we're not forgetting about it, we're always talking about it. So that's one of our methods of sustaining it.
We're continuing with our aspirant development program as well, so we're into our second cohort of that. We're putting significant resources into our people and into training our people. I mean we have, in three years, we've lost one permanent teacher to a like position. We don't lose our people. Our people stay with us.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
How significant.

Kate Grayson:
We're very confident in putting huge financial investment into our people because they stay and they get great results.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yeah. Is there anything that you would advise people about this approach? Even caution them about this model of coaching, Kate?

Kate Grayson:
I think you've got to be really really clear with your staff. They have to know what the conversation is not only going to look like, but the why. Staff need to understand that why. Because if they don't get that this is about developing them ...
And, I mean, one of the big things is when people come to you with a problem is that often, they've already got the answer. They already think they have the answer, they're just not confident that it's the right one. So, if you build your staff and you talk to them in a way that is respectful but is also saying to them, "Actually, you're a really capable human being. You're a really experienced teacher. You've done this all before. You do know how to do this." And if you turn that conversation around so that they're empowered and they're going, "Well here's the problem, actually. Here's what I think the solution is." And just using you as a sounding board, you've got a really empowered workforce there, instead of people that are just always asking, "Am I doing this right? Am I doing this right?" You guys are doing this right. You are capable, you know. But you've got to do that ground work first with staff because it can be a big shock to come with a problem and to then be coached if you're not expecting it.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
In practical terms, what would be your recommendations about how to put this to work? How to set it up in a way?

Kate Grayson:
You've kind of gotta start talking to people and casually let those ... I think those hallway conversations are so so important, and spreading the word almost through word-of-mouth. And then training up key people. So, looking at not only who are your heads of learning area, but who are the teachers that people listen to. Your level three classroom teachers or your up-and-coming aspirants, who are the people that other staff go to. Who are your kind of go-to people, getting them trained up, getting them on side. I think those sort of things are really powerful ways of initiating a change.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Okay.
In this series, I love hearing stories of how this is impacting people, students and teachers. Can you give us a couple of perhaps scenarios or examples of how this is played out both in the life of a teacher and in the life of a student?

Kate Grayson:
When I was back at Canning Vale College as a Head of Learning Area, as a head of arts, I had some really young inexperienced teachers and I want to talk about one of them - Sarah, who had come from being in a really difficult school very early in her career - this was her first full-time job. And so she had lots and lots of questions and it got to the point where I would say to her, "Okay, you've got an hour on Thursdays to come with your questions." And we really slowly started off just me answering them, and I slowly turned around and started coaching her and really working very closely with her to develop her confidence, to develop her problem solving. Because she already had what she thought were, again, were the solutions, just wasn't sure.
And so working really closely with her she went off and she decided that one of her big goals--we did a lot of work around her goals--was to become a level three classroom teacher within the first four or five years of her career and she went off and did that. She went off ... One of her other big goals was to finish her Masters and so we worked around managing her work load and her stress and she went off and finished her Masters. She's just won the substantial visual art teaching role at Perth Modern, which is our gifted and talented school here in Perth. So, a really, really prestigious role. And for me seeing Sarah move from an early career teacher, to getting her Masters, getting her level three classroom teacher, and now winning a really really prestigious role, for me she's a really huge, huge success story. She's gone off and presented at international conferences and done all kinds of amazing, amazing things. And for me she's an incredible success story for someone that has made a huge transition and is now, in effect, a leader herself. So that's probably one really big what I see a success story as far as early career teachers goes.
I think one of the things ... I come from an arts teaching background and we are constantly coaching our students. And to be a really effective teacher I think those questioning skills that you learn through Growth Coaching can be applied in the classroom. So, if it's goal-setting, it's making them really really accountable for timelines and ‘how are you going to achieve this?’ Not how am I gonna do it, how are you going to change things? What's it going to take? So, I come from a background originally as a year eleven, year twelve deputy and so I did lots and lots of work with year elevens and year twelves around study skills and about goal-setting and subject selection and career planning and all those sort of things. I think those kind of conversation models can be really really effective particularly with those senior school students, but also in the classroom. You know, getting the students to say, "Okay, I can tell you what I think of it. But what do you think? Where are you at with this?"

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
So with the prospect of three thousand students at your school, what's your future look like there and the future of coaching in that context, Kate?

Kate Grayson:
Yeah, look, I think it's only going to expand. We've really opened up our aspirant leadership program now so that it's not just about teachers, but also school support staff. So what we're doing now is we've opened it up so that our PR and marketing staff can attend, our IT tech can attend. And we're now working with them and getting them some coaching training. So our aspirant program is twenty week programme. We start off with speed dating and leadership stories, and then we do some work around difficult conversations about where coaching sits within their position, and developing self, developing others, and those sort of things.
So, I think here at Churchlands things are only going to get better. The big numbers don't really scare us. I think we grew one thousand students in a matter of a few years and we ... because we put time and energy into our planning, I think we're going to do very well and I think things are only going to get better for us. So, no, I don't think there's going to be any problems, and I think it is sustainable the way that we do things and the way that we utilise and train and work with our people.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
What an enthusiast, and what a champion for this model and how inspiring it is to hear of what a difference it's making. Kate Grayson, thank you so much indeed for your time. It's been great talking.

Kate Grayson:
Thank you, thank you. I really enjoyed it.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You've been listening to the Growth Coaching International Case Study Podcast series. I'm Leigh Hatcher. This is just one of a range of inspiring stories in the series there atwww.growthcoaching.com.au