Megan Tschannen-Moran’s new book Evoking Greatness: Coaching to Bring out the Best in Educational Leaders (2017, Corwin) equips those who coach educational leaders to host coaching conversations that are engaging, inspiring, and productive. Evocative coaching is a person-centered, no-fault, strengths-based coaching model, which is a refreshing change from the deficit mindset that has disheartened and demoralized so many educators in this era of accountability. This model invites people to explore and dream together, in a judgment-free space, in order to awaken a new and higher interest for change. Resting on strong, evidence-based practices, the evocative coaching model offers coaches the help they need to foster the capacities of educational leaders they coach. Leadership coaches are introduced to the evocative coaching model, structured around the acronym LEAD: Listen, Empathize, Appreciate, and Design. The evocative coaching model starts with the stories that coachees bring to their work as educational leaders and to the coaching context. By spending time with these stories, skillful coaches unearth the values and fears that both motivate and block educational leaders from achieving all that they hope to achieve. The evocative coaching model then incorporates a concrete, skills-based process for expressing empathy. Once connection, trust, and rapport have been established, coach and coachee engage in a search for strengths on which to build, and together design an experiment for moving forward. Through collaborative dialogue, people enhance not only their performance but also their enjoyment and engagement with their work.
Tschannen-Moran, M. & Tschannen-Moran, B. (2017). Evoking greatness: Coaching to bring out the best in educational leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Tschannen-Moran, M. & Tschannen-Moran, B. (2017). Evoking greatness: Coaching to bring out the best in educational leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.