Individual practitioner account: coaching case studies – from the new coach’s casebook

Practitioner account developed by Jo Hensel

Since graduating from the Guildhall School in 1991 as a horn player, I have enjoyed a successful and varied career in the music profession. I have toured, performed and recorded with many of the UK’s and Europe’s leading orchestras and chamber ensembles including the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Composers Ensemble, BBC Symphony and Concert Orchestras. I have been a member of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ horn section since 1998, and I also play an active role in the orchestra’s education and outreach work - combining my passion for music with a fascination for how people learn and develop. Early in my horn playing career, when I was a member of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia – and away on tour a lot, I undertook a BSc (Hons) in Psychology with the Open University. My education work includes projects in schools, prisons, hospitals, banks, businesses and many other community and corporate settings. I was appointed as Deputy Head of Wind, Brass and Percussion at the Guildhall School in January 2011. I started the mentoring-coaching course for staff in September 2013, undertook the Five Day Intensive Coaching course with Linden Learning run by Jane Cook and Jenny Rogers in October 2014, followed by the ILM Level 7 Diploma in Executive Coaching and Mentoring (including a minimum of 100 hours of coaching or mentoring at a senior or executive level) with Consult East which I completed in April 2016. The opportunity to develop my coaching skills within a conservatoire setting seemed to me to be the most perfect way to bring together the parallel strands of my career thus far – using coaching tools to enable my students and others working in my department and beyond to close the gap between performance and potential.

I am using the skills and tools gained in my coaching training in every area of my work at the Guildhall School. Sometimes this takes place in contracted 1:1 coaching with students or staff. At other times, I use a coaching-informed approach, for example, in my day-to-day work with students and colleagues.

For the purposes of this account, I will look at four different areas of my work – aiming to capture where, how and what impact coaching is having on my work and on the people with whom I am working:

Students

  1. The use of coaching tools in routine review meetings with students
  2. One-off coaching sessions as and when the need arises
  1. A series of 1:1 coaching sessions with students who have specific issues which they want to explore. In this account there is an example of how this can be used to support 1:1 teaching with a principal study instrumental professor.
  • Colleagues - both from within my department and beyond

Often the uniquely confidential and safe environment which coaching offers enables the exploration of issues which the experienced professionals who work in a conservatoire environment may feel unable to explore anywhere else. In my experience – as both a coach and coachee - the resulting insights can lead to profound and lasting positive change.

  • In my work with my line manager – who has also undertaken a year of the Guildhall’s mentoring-coaching course

In our partnership, we have sought to establish a coaching culture – and this has had a really positive impact on our ability to work effectively together.

  • In another area of the organisation

This totally unexpected positive outcome in another part of the organisation came about when I offered coaching more widely across the school in order to fulfill 100 hours of coaching at a senior or executive level for my ILM coaching diploma. This account documents the positive impact of the coaching on the coachee, and on the work of the department as a whole – with the voice of both the coachee and his head of department captured in the account.

For the purposes of the account, I have anonymized all my case studies (which have been approved by my clients), with the exception of my account of my work with my line manager who has agreed to the publication of this non-anonymized account.

Supporting students’ resourcefulness in their learning and career development

With 140+ students in my department, I am in the privileged position of seeing them all in scheduled group and 1:1 meetings throughout the year. In addition to this, the door is always open for students who have questions, concerns and ideas. The nature and quality of my contact time with the students has developed significantly over the past 2.5 years, in the light of the mentoring-coaching development in the school. I will try to capture some examples (by no means an exhaustive review) of the ways in which I am using coaching with the students – and also the exciting and transformative effect which it is having on them and their learning – particularly on those who I am able to see for either a one off, or a series of 1:1 coaching sessions:

How can I have a really meaningful 15 minute review meeting with a student which can result in change and action?

In an “action learning set” (Revans 2011) in the context of a group coaching and mentoring training session at Guildhall led by Jane Cook in early 2014, the issue I presented was:

“We have 147 students in our department, and between us, Richard and I see them all 1:1 for 15 minutes in the space of a week or two in February.

At the moment, it feels a bit unsatisfactory, with not enough time to have a meaningful discussion – so it often feels that we achieve very little in those meetings, and/ or we run terribly late.” From this starting point, and through the skillful questioning, challenge and support of my colleagues, came the idea of developing a balance wheel (see Appendix) which could be sent to the students in advance of the session in order to enable them to reflect in a structured way on the whole of their Conservatoire life prior to the meeting. The hope was that in the 15 minute meeting, they could then share some of their insights from this exercise, followed by a brief coaching session that could lead to change and action as appropriate.

This approach has impacted on the quality of the mid-year reviews in a number of ways:

  1. Rather than starting with a rather general “how are things going?” it is possible to see immediately how things are – and consequently, meaningful conversation leading to change and action can begin earlier. This results in both a more productive meeting and in better time keeping
  2. Whilst we manage the process and the time keeping, the agenda remains in the hands of the student. We are there as a resource for the student, who we may challenge and support in any number of ways which may include giving information, advice or feedback if it is asked for (or asking permission to give feedback if it is not requested by the student but may be helpful), or helping them to explore one area in more depth. Because the student has more ownership of the process and has done some thinking in advance, we find that any agreed change and action is owned by them and is therefore far more likely to be effective.
  3. I no longer come out of the review meetings with a “to do” list as long as my arm, as the students now have the responsibility for change and action. This is far more sustainable – both in terms of the students’ education and development, and in my ability to have time and energy for some of the more strategic things in the department.

One-off coaching which transforms surviving into thriving

Students often pop in to ask for some advice, or to use me as a sounding board. Whilst I am happy to give information and / or share my experience of a particular issue as appropriate, following my coaching training, I am much less inclined to make assumptions about what the students need from me. Instead, I use a coaching approach to find out more. Often a “five minute coaching” ensues; sometimes I give information or advice as requested, and occasionally, I offer the student a coaching session in order to explore the issue in more depth.

An example of this came with a student - Lily - who popped in a few weeks into the Autumn term to ask if it was OK if she put a deputy in for a couple of repertoire sessions to which she was assigned. She didn’t feel that she had enough time to prepare the material. In the past, I might have agreed to her putting a “dep” in and spent a couple of minutes suggesting who she could ask.

On this occasion, I asked her a few more questions, the responses to which led me to offer her a coaching session, which we arranged for later that day.

Lily’s goal which we established in the first part of the coaching session was: “If this session was useful, I would go away with a plan for how to cope over the next few months.” In the course of the one hour coaching session, we explored Lily’s expectations of herself, and her feelings when she failed to meet these expectations; we also looked at her coping mechanisms when she was feeling overwhelmed – and the assumptions she was making about what others might feel if she shared her feelings with them (she realised these went right back to a situation which had occurred when she was 16 years old). Having reflected on her current situation and shone a light on the assumptions she was making based on past experiences, Lily was able to come up with a short list of actions, about which she felt positive. Incidentally, she chose to stay in the repertoire sessions.

I did not see Lily in a 1:1 meeting again until her “end of year review”, in which she talked enthusiastically about the year and how, more than anything, it had been a voyage of self-discovery which had been set in motion by the coaching session and the insights which she had gained in that short session.

Transformative support for one to one teaching

In October 2014, I had a phone call from a professor who was calling me to tell me that her student, Katie, was “in bits” following her lesson, and to let me know that she had sent her to come and see me. Katie was performing a concerto that night – but was experiencing a crisis of confidence. Later that day, we spent an hour exploring the issues and Katie went away having devised a plan of action for the performance, which she later reported went well.

I left her with an invitation to come back for another session if she wanted to, but she did not take me up on that until January 2015, when I had a very similar phone call from the professor who had, again, asked Katie to come and see me following a lesson in which she became quite upset. This time when I offered Katie a series of coaching sessions, she took me up on the offer quite readily.

Overarching Objective agreed for the coaching:

“I (Katie) would like to get to a place where I can feel positive about my lessons and my work in order that I can be productive. I would like to feel more motivated to practise properly.”

Session 1. (30mins)

Objective: “To go away with a plan for the coaching and sessions in the diary.”

Session 2. (75 mins)

Objective: “To find a way to organise my practice so that I feel positive at the end of it.”

Session 3. (60 mins)

Objective: “To work out how to approach the coming week.”

Session 4. (60 mins)

Objective: “A plan for how to approach my 1:1 lessons positively so that I can get the most from them.”

Session 5. (20 mins)

Objective: “To reflect on progress and have a plan going forwards.”

Whilst the focus of all these sessions was “the work” (in the present and the future), in the course of the coaching, we touched on the past as I challenged some of Katie’s self-limiting beliefs:

“My parents spent months trying to persuade me not to come to Conservatoire because they said that I would not have the self-motivation and discipline to be successful…they were right in a way.”

Katie’s reflection on the coaching at her last session:

“I am amazed how much coaching has turned things around. I couldn’t possibly have imagined what a difference it would make if I think back to the first session and how I was then. Normally I might have just refused to do something like this, but because things had got so bad, I knew that I needed to.”

And on looking back some time after the coaching:

“The style of coaching was noticeably different to other counselling and support sessions I have had in the past. The largest difference for me was the focus on thinking for myself - I was strongly encouraged by Jo to identify issues and potential solutions…using my own words. My previous experience of traditional counselling involved instead the counsellor taking almost full responsibility for identifying the possible issues and solutions.

This meant that I found the coaching sessions with Jo more challenging than traditional counselling… but I was able to quickly move past the barrier of feeling stuck.

The coaching has significantly improved my progress with my principal study professor. We worked through issues I had been having with attitudes to my own progress, practice and lessons. Working through these issues has transformed my relationship with my professor and has meant that I can freely and confidently progress through the course in this area.

Personally I feel that having experienced this style of coaching I am much more able to think for myself when it comes to resolving issues as a musician.

The coaching has genuinely helped me to be more optimistic and proactive when I am in a difficult place, and the techniques I have worked through with Jo have also helped me to become more organised and therefore more focused on my own progress and development as a musician.”

Her teacher’s reflections:

“At the point when I encouraged Katie to come and see you, I was totally treading on eggshells, avoiding any kind of discussion about anything that might need improving. In her playing she would recognise those things but it was totally like “everything is so bad that what’s the point of moving on?” and treading on eggshells to avoid tears. The lesson couldn’t take its natural course because she had an agenda of some sort that stopped that happening.

Having seen you, Katie got herself into a better place and seemed to be feeling more confident about her playing. She was happier, there were no tears. The situation now is that she is able to consider more things that might need looking at. She gets a little bit frustrated, but it’s not the dissolving of the lesson now. When that happens, I am able to offer up suggestions as to how she might work on it, what she might look at, what exercises she could do – so discussion can happen now without tears and negativity. It’s mostly about her having control back. If she notices something she doesn't like and I agree with that, it doesn't compound into “therefore I can’t play the instrument”. She is able to isolate something and what she can do to work on it.

Katie now comes with a much more positive attitude about the week’s work, even if it hasn't been a good week. She’ll tell me “I don’t think I practised that well this week and we are able to have a discussion about why that might be instead of “that’s because I’m rubbish.” She also generally has a more positive attitude as a person and we can talk about other things – she is more open.

The long term impact of the coaching is perhaps even greater than the short term. It has enabled progress to snowball for her. Long term, this will enable her to really hone her playing. The fact that she has addressed that successfully herself must be quite empowering I think.”

I asked the professor (who has over 20 years of teaching experience) how her experience of the impact of the coaching was different to that of other interventions such as counselling.

“It was quicker. She had some kind of strategy to put into place quite quickly. It was an understanding or something that happened quickly – I noticed changes even as soon as the next lesson.”

Having read an early draft of this case study, a colleague asked me whether I thought that the coaching was effective in this case because I wasn’t the student’s principal study teacher. She was thinking about a student of hers who she felt might benefit from some coaching, and wondered whether she should be the one to offer the coaching, or indeed, whether it might be a better idea to ask someone else “more neutral” to coach the student. This question highlighted a couple of things about this particular case:

  1. The professor who asked me to see her student had a relatively good understanding of the coaching development at Guildhall because I had talked about it within the department. The impact of this was that having referred the student on to me, she trusted the process enough to feel comfortable with the confidential nature of the coaching. I did not discuss the coaching with her, except to confirm that the student had come to see me as agreed – although I was very happy to hear that within the lessons, things were so much more positive.
  2. It was clear to me that the principal study teacher felt that by enabling her student to get some help outside of the one to one setting, she could continue to spend her time in the lessons focusing on “the work” (the instrument and the music). This separation was healthy in enabling the student to move forwards in both areas (personally and musically) – on a parallel track. I believe that the majority of students with whom I have worked have appreciated this separation too. That is not to say that there cannot be “coaching moments” within the 1:1 lesson, but when there is a bigger issue and coaching in its purest form is required, perhaps this is best dealt with outside the 1:1 lesson.
  3. As a full time member of staff with a duty of care to the students within my department, I am able to make time to coach a student who would particularly benefit from this intervention – not least because, in my experience, a relatively short amount of time spent coaching at the point of need, can save hours further down the line when things may have moved beyond the point where coaching might be effective or appropriate. I recognize that this is a privileged position to be in -privileged for me because I have and am receiving training in coaching at the Guildhall School, and for my colleagues and their students because they can refer their students to me as appropriate and necessary.

Empowering colleagues in their professional roles

At the Guildhall School, there are a number of ways in which professors can engage in Continuing Professional Development. Receiving coaching has been a powerful, personalized development opportunity for two principal study professors with whom I have worked since starting my coaching training. I have also personally found the coaching that I have received as part of the Guildhall’s coaching development programme incredibly powerful, for a number of reasons: