From school leadership to coaching supervision, Catherine Rees shares how Wise Goose training transformed her approach to supporting education professionals. Discover her journey from burnout prevention to empowering leaders and why coaching is vital for well-being and meaningful change in today’s demanding education landscape
What drew you to coaching? I was at a time of great strain and stress in my work, with dwindling resources, cuts to spending, cuts to funding and being expected to do more and more with less and less. That’s the case for many people, especially in public service. People are burning out; in education they’re losing teachers and head teachers at an alarming rate and unless we recognise that we have to invest in people, and make sure people are well and healthy, we cannot expect them to give to others. I needed help, so I went for 1-1 coaching with Helen who runs Wise Goose. In my field of education, coaching and supervision isn’t widely available; I believe strongly it should be, because in any demanding job you need to be able to talk through issues, concerns and problems. I was finding the pressures of the job enormous, and Helen helped me plan a way forward that was manageable. By seeking help, I avoided burnout. I met with her six times – it was so beneficial; it kept me in the job and kept me going. Then I decided I wanted to do the Wise Goose training.
How do you use your training now in your work? I’m a school improvement leader working with school leaders across a Trust with 17 schools. Although I’d used a coaching style in my work before, I’d never had any formal training. The training definitely improved the way I run meetings and the kind of conversations I have with heads and other school leaders. The focus is on realising the potential of people, helping them really feel valued in what they do, but also taking ownership for their decisions. Coaching is about support and challenge, so my work is about holding people to account for what they say they are going to do and supporting them on that journey. I use coaching right across my work and since graduation from Wise Goose have added to coach supervision to my qualifications. I also work with individuals from other organisations and plan to develop this further; that’s been a real joy, seeing how skills learned through Wise Goose apply to other organisations, groups or individuals.
Can you tell me more about your journey with Wise Goose? It’s been an incredible journey. It helped me through a time of transition, a time of re-evaluating my work and what matters most to me. My children were leaving home, and I wanted to achieve a better balance in my life. There’s a huge amount of support on the course, and I made quite a courageous decision in my life which I wouldn’t have been able to do without the training. The way it is set up and structured it’s about your own personal development as well as skilling you up to become a professional coach. You go through a journey of self-reflection and change, to be able to help others do the same.
It’s also challenging; you’re out of your comfort zone, often having to really dig deep. What the course does is enable you to think about what matters most and ask how you are living your life true to the values that you hold. For me it was life changing. The balance in all aspects of my life is much improved. I’ve created time to do the things that really matter to me, give me meaning, and enable me to look after myself and my own well-being, which enables me to do a good job in my work and share what I’ve learnt with colleagues.
Could you sum up what’s so unique about what Wise Goose offers? Wise Goose has an approach that brings together a focus on developing highly skilled professional coaches, whilst recognising the complexity of the world we live in, and also bringing in the ethical dimension. Time was given to thinking about tricky areas – dealing with ambiguity, the complexities of the fast-changing world we live in and the importance of our role as coaches in wider society, helping individuals and organisations become aware of their part in the bigger picture. I found that incredibly rewarding and I learnt a great deal about myself and about how to bring about meaningful change.
The other thing that really jumped out for me when I compared it with other courses I’d attended over the years, is the perfect balance between the reflective, personal development work that needs to be done in order to be able to work with other people, and learning about the theory and the skills that are required to become a professional coach. Something else that really shone out for me was being with people from a wide range of disciplines. I learnt so much from colleagues from different fields coming together; each person brought something unique and special and will be developing a style of coaching that is right for them, drawing on the wealth of expertise and skills that they’ve already developed in their professional lives.
The course is carefully constructed so there’s peer assessment, self-assessment, as well as assessment from outside. It is planned in a very thoughtful way; the values of the organisation come through in the way the training has been designed. It’s an incredibly robust and well thought through programme – that’s why it was so successful for me.