STRATEGY III Coaching and Mentoring: Help Along The Way “The job of the school leader is a messy business. School leaders’ days are spent reacting to unanticipated problems in a frantic environment. The beleaguered school leader needs a support system. His or her job is often a lonely job.” Alton Crews      An external coach is assigned to each team based on compatibility with the system’s goals. This skilled coach is a knowledgeable, veteran education leader who has demonstrated exemplary leadership skills. The coach serves as a technical advisor to the team as it pursues its goals, and of the individual members in their quest for personal improvement.      “When you think of our program’s four basic components, you have to merge the personal plan of improvement and the team, or peer, coach,” Crews says. “Those two components fuse into one. The peer coach has two roles.”      The first is to provide technical assistance to the team and the district in developing the best strategies to meet the district’s goals. The second is to collect information from leadership profiles, reflective learning journals and individual team members to help participants develop their plans for personal improvement. Team members share their leadership profiles and journal entries with the peer coach.      “For the peer coach to be effective he or she has to establish a bond with the team—a trust level, which is extremely important,” says Anderson, who serves as peer coach to three teams participating in the Academy.      “Our coach knows us,” says Broadnax, a member of the Newport News, Virginia, team coached by Anderson. “He knows our culture. He knows our business community. He understands. Because of that he can be a successful coach. I think the coaching component is a plus.”      She has called upon Anderson for personal as well as professional matters. “I value his opinion. He doesn’t tell me what I want to hear. He tells me what I need to hear and that’s why I can call him. I can speak to him in confidence. He’ll help me through, and if he can’t, he’ll tell me where I can get help.”      The coach attends training sessions with the team and visits members periodically in the home district. During the training sessions, the coach observes and advises team members about personal and team goals. Because the mentor is not part of the team’s school system, he or she is not perceived as threatening or judgmental.      “We have two site visits a year, and I think those are particularly important for being able to develop that level of understanding,” says Anderson. “Otherwise people are not going to be open with you either in regard to their district problems or certainly their own personal or professional problems.”      Anderson says it is important that the peer coach maintain regular contact with the team, especially since the coach often lives many miles from the team’s district.      “At least once a month, I send out a fax or memo to the team members, and I encourage them either to call or fax me if they have any problems, not just related to the SREB goals but in their own personal lives or professional work. And they do that after they establish that level of trust because so often, especially for the superintendents, there isn’t anyone for them to really converse with in this way.”      It is also important for the coach to be available without being intrusive. “I do everything possible to make certain that this is perceived as something that will be to their benefit rather than an imposition—an outsider coming in and taking up their valuable time,” Anderson says.      Davis, whose Carrollton/Farmer’s Branch team was also coached by Anderson, says the coaching component was tremendously valuable to him. “I think he helped me grow as a person. I had him to bounce ideas off. Superintendents often don’t have that, and I found it extremely helpful to have someone like that. He is still a friend, and I still call on him.”      Coaches also are careful to offer advice only when it is sought or in such a way that it is not perceived as advice, says Cowles, who coaches the Columbia County, Florida, team.      “My biggest contribution to that group has been to be a steadying force,” she says. “I listen to them and offer suggestions to them when they don’t even know that I’m offering suggestions. Most of the time people are not aware of how much it helps them to have somebody listen to them.”      Lane, of Columbia County, says Cowles’ assistance has been essential. “She’s been an absolutely invaluable sounding board as an objective outside-the-district person to help us work through some of the challenges that our leadership team has faced. I think that is a critical element of the whole process. It’s so nice to have somebody who is removed from the district, who has no vested interest in what’s going on here other than that she cares about us.”      Floyd Hall, veteran educator, former superintendent and coach of the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County, North Carolina, team, says team members often called him with a variety of concerns. “They would call me about job-related things and personal things. I know in one or two situations it was even something dealing with their families they wanted to talk over. I feel like we became very close,” Hall says.      “The coaching and mentoring component was excellent,” says Gentry of the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth team. ”We could not have asked for a better mentor. He was just fantastic. He was just what our team needed. I called upon him for some personal things. He kept us going, particularly when we were down on ourselves.”      Wilhelm, also of Winston-Salem/Forsyth, says the coaching and mentoring component is “by far the most unusual aspect of the program.” He adds, “You have to be very careful in an organization. You don’t want your boss to get involved, but with the coaches you can ask ‘Where did I mess up?’‘What are some possibilities I didn’t consider?’ Most of these coaches have been principals, superintendents, college professors. They’ve been down a lot of different roads.” Profiles Next—Strategy IV: Coaching and Mentoring: Help Along The Way