"Effective communication is an essential skill for a fulfilled life, and we can't teach it to students if we don't know how to do it ourselves." In this podcast, Leigh Hatcher interviews Dr Jim Knight about his new book, Better Conversations Coaching Ourselves and Each Other to Be More Credible, Caring, and Connected. He is joined by Gray Ryan, our Senior Consultant based in Victoria. Jim explores the beliefs and habits that are necessary to promote better communication leading to positive change. Gray talks about the benefits of better communication and how our new program, Better Conversations, is based on this book.

In this podcast, Leigh talks to John Campbell, GCI Executive Director, on the topic of schools as conversational communities. John talks about conversational contexts in schools and where the coaching style conversation could make a difference.

Do students have the emotional intelligence to coach their peers? And what would some of the other key considerations be for schools interested in implementing a student peer coaching program. In this short interview, we talk to Ben Calleja, Co-Director at GCI WA, SA & NT, who explains what others have found in this exciting new area of coaching.

Over the last 18 months GCI Director, Annette Gray, helped initiate and embed a coaching culture to improve safety at Laing O'Rourke, a multinational construction company. Laing O'Rourke is a quite a different setting to the education sector that GCI mostly works in. But in this conversation, Rob and Suzy share a lot of transferrable insights for educators. Listen to how taking a different approach to safety and changing the conversation to be more solution-focussed has helped Laing O'Rourke. In this podcast, Rob Mitchell, Coaching Lead at Laing O'Rourke and Suzy Ivy, Training Coordinator at Laing O'Rourke share the impact coaching has had on their organisation.

Growth Coaching International (GCI) is excited to announce a new partnership with Dr Jim Knight and the Instructional Coaching Group (ICG). This partnership will enable GCI to deliver the world-leading instructional coaching programs to educators in Australia and New Zealand. In this interview, we talk with Jim about his work and what he's discovered in over twenty years' of studying professional learning.

Staff and students at Santa Maria College in Western Australia are encouraged to focus on growth. In this interview, Anthony Phillips and Shani Andrews share practical implementation tips and discuss the significant benefits of the Teacher Growth and Development Framework (GROW) program, a program designed to develop a culture of improvement with coaching and feedback in education.

Schools are complex environments faced with unique issues. In order for staff and students to flourish, relationships within the school need to be really highly connected. Hale School in Perth WA has embraced coaching as a platform to enable people to connect more deeply, to talk about professional practice and to be able to rely on one another's opinions when challenged with complex issues. In this interview, Richard Goater, Director of Staff Development, explains how Hale uses a coaching approach to enable a platform for trust, development and growth

Peter Macbeth is passionate about building belief in young people. At the core of this drive to meet the needs of young people in their context is the focus on building relationships and on good communication, something which can be challenging in the far-flung areas of the Far West of New South Wales, Australia. In this interview,

Peter explains how coaching has become a key strategy in the way in which they build the capacity, cooperation and confidence in the Far West.

Change happens from very small steps - those small steps can make a huge impact. This is a follow-up interview with Elena Joli, a science teacher who went to Antarctica to help make an impact on climate change and in the process discovered a new, more personal understanding of the concept of 'leadership'. You will hear how Elena, with the encouragement of coach Annette Gray, dared to step out of her comfort zone and explore her own resourcefulness, taking her transformation beyond the experience of the journey itself.

Exposing graduate teachers to models of good practice involves navigating along the conversational continuum between mentoring and coaching. This is a school-based story about how using a blended approach to mentoring and coaching, as needed, supports beginning teachers. In this interview, Sue Richards, a former school leader with 40 years' experience and current GCI coach, explains how she changed her default approach from mentoring beginning teachers to coaching them, allowing them to take greater ownership of their practice development and maintain their energy and enthusiasm for their important role.