April 10, 2026

It's Not About You. It's About Them.

41 minutes

Steve Barkley and Bill Sommers are back on Coaching Done Well. A year after their first conversation with Shane Leaning and Jim Thompson, two of the most experienced voices in instructional coaching and educational leadership return for a LinkedIn Live episode that goes deep on what actually makes coaching work in schools.

Steve breaks down his coaching continuum, running from open-ended coaching questions through scaffolding to explicit, supervisory feedback. His take is clear: start open. You can always add scaffold. Taking it away once it's in place is much harder. He also makes the case for replacing feedback with feed forward, arguing that the only reason a coach is in a classroom today is because they're interested in tomorrow.

Bill introduces his concept of "arc builders" and asks a pointed question: if it's raining in education right now, who is actually building? He names his own arc builders, including Art Costa, John Saphier, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Sheridan, and pushes coaches and school leaders to think about who they surround themselves with and whether those people give energy or drain it.

Both guests keep coming back to the same principle: effective coaching is driven by the coachee, not the coach. Steve references Michael Bungay Stanier's phrase "caring enough not to care" as shorthand for what this looks like in practice. Bill connects it to Marshall Goldsmith's stakeholder centred coaching and the feed forward process.

The conversation also covers putting staff first so they can put students first, why stories matter more than policy binders, hope as a real strategy for school improvement, and how leaders create the conditions for a learning culture where coaching can actually land.

Whether you're an instructional coach, school leader, head of school, or anyone working in teacher development and professional learning, this episode is packed with practical wisdom from two people who've spent decades in the work.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Welcome and introductions 03:07 - Steve and Bill reintroduce themselves 04:10 - Steve on coaching driven by the coachee 08:46 - What do you now believe to be true about coaching done well? 10:50 - The modelling approach: watch the kids first, not the coach 12:13 - Michael Bungay Stanier: caring enough not to care 12:43 - Steve on the feedback continuum: from telling to thinking 16:44 - The scaffolding continuum: open, scaffolded, and explicit 22:06 - Bill on arc builders and feed forward 27:10 - Shane reflects: coaching as forward-looking and invitational 30:23 - Audience Q&A: standardisation vs personalisation 32:37 - Steve: personalisation in coaching means the coachee drives it 34:36 - Putting staff first so they can put students first 38:05 - Five years from now: hope, stories, and mattering 43:55 - Closing reflections

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