Podcast 388, Coaching for Principals with Viv Grant (5-2-20)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

On this week's podcast I speak to Viv Grant who is Executive Coach and Director of Integrity Coaching. She was a keynote speaker at the 2020 annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals' Network. Among the topics we discuss are the following:

• Identifying your stories as a school leader: why are you in the profession? What motivates you? What inspires you? What brings you joy?


• Her story and how she began to articulate it for herself


• The importance for principals of recognising and articulating their inner, subconscious narrative


• How underlying thoughts and experiences can affect a principal’s ability to have difficult conversations


• Becoming aware of when the old narratives no longer serve us


• Getting our back stage narratives aligned with our front stage performance


• The role of the Centre for School Leadership


• What coaching for principals involves


• Just like social workers and psychologists get “supervision” in their work as a matter of course, so should school principals because as well as being leaders of curriculum and instruction, many of them are practising aspects of psychology and social work.


• Why school development and human growth and development go hand in hand and why offering coaching to principals is a way of appreciating their taking on this important role.


• Is coaching something that is needed on an ongoing or on a needs-only basis?


• How coaching for a principal works


• Qualities a coach needs to have in order to work with principals


• How coaching differs from mentoring


• Why supporting coaching for principals is a good investment for a school


• Why coaching is the norm in several other sectors


• How she turned around “failing” primary school


• How to bring about change at school level


• The source of a school’s vision


• Her book called Staying a head: The stress management secrets of successful school leaders


• The challenge of creating time to develop the inner work of school leadership


• Pauline Lysaght Jones and Mary Fuller


• David Whyte’s poetry


• John O’Donohue