Cultivating a Coaching Mindset: Three Strategies for K-12 Education Leaders

Adopting a coaching mindset as a school or district leader helps your teachers, staff, and aspiring leaders see—and reach—their potential. Strengthen your mindset with these strategies.

If there’s one myth we’d love to do away with, it’s the school or district leader as a lone superhero: the one responsible for every facet of instructional leadership, teacher and staff professional development, budgeting and operations, parent relationships, and much more. 

The truth is, this kind of command-and-control leadership no longer works in education—if it ever did. As a result, we’re starting to see the role of education leaders shifting, too. Principals and superintendents now see coaching as one of the essential parts of their jobs. According to author and education coach Elena Aguilar, coaching can “build will, skill, knowledge, and capacity because it can go where no other professional development has gone before—into the intellect, behaviors, practices, beliefs, values, and feelings of an educator.”