5 Important Questions for Instructional Coaching Role Clarity

Unclear role expectations are one of the fastest ways to undermine coaching effectiveness as a system. Whether you're considering a coaching position, managing a coaching program, or communicating with stakeholders, these five questions can help cut through the ambiguity.

Questions everyone should be able to answer about instructional coaching in their setting:

1. What is the primary purpose of this coaching role?

Sometimes coaches or school leaders start with talking about the coaching model or framework. The challenge with starting there is that different members of a school system don't always have a shared understanding of what the different terms and approaches related to coaching mean in practice. So developing a shared understanding of a coach's purpose can help broaden the conversation to a definition that everyone needs to understand: what's our point of view on why we have instructional coaches to begin with?

Is the focus on improving instruction in a particular content area, supporting teacher retention, implementing curriculum, improving a specific school-wide metric, or something else? A clear, shared purpose drives everything else from daily priorities to scope of work to success criteria.

2. Who determines coaching goals and priorities?

Do coaches and teachers collaboratively set goals? Does administration assign them? Do district initiatives drive the agenda? Or is there some other approach? How we set goals shapes the entire coaching relationship and approach, and clarity in this area also helps align expectations between coaches, teachers, and school and system leaders.

3. What data and evidence will measure success?

Are you accountable for student outcomes, teacher satisfaction, implementation fidelity, participation levels, or observation scores? Understanding success criteria helps align efforts, open up opportunities for analysis of efficacy, and allow for informed adjustments. When success metrics aren't clear, the question of whether or not coaching is effective can end up being a conversation about vibes and opinions, resulting not only in missed opportunities, but erosion of trust, and changes that aren't grounded in evidence.

4. How do teachers come to work with a coach?

Are teachers automatically enrolled, do they opt in voluntarily, or are they referred based on specific criteria? Do they fill out a form? Email their coach? Follow up after PD for additional support? Do principals tell teachers when "they need coaching"? The entry process and clarity around it significantly impacts teacher receptivity, how coaching is perceived system-wide, and coaching dynamics.

5. What level of confidentiality, if any, does the coach hold?

Do coaching conversations remain private, or is there expectation to report back to administration? If so, what's reported, and to whom? Clarity around this boundary, wherever is lies, fundamentally affects trust and openness in the coaching relationship.

Using These Questions

These questions are essential whether you're interviewing for a position, designing a coaching program, clarifying your current role, making changes to your existing coaching program, or explaining coaching to teachers and administrators for the first (or tenth!) time. Clear answers prevent mismatched expectations and help smooth the path for effective coaching partnerships.

Just as in other team dynamics, we must go through norming. But we can't stay there.

The sooner we can align around role clarity around the most important decisions, the sooner we can move from norming into the core work of transforming.

Want to dive deeper into coaching role clarity? You can find the complete Instructional Coaching Role Clarity Checklist and webinar inside The Coaches' Circle.

In this guide and accompanying webinar, I provide an extensive checklist that coaches, managers, or teams can use to make decisions or clarify grey areas around how instructional coaches support school goals.

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