Liza Leonard: Hi everyone, and welcome. I’m really glad you’re here. 

I’m Liza Leonard and I’m an implementation coordinator at the Lastinger Center. I’m here to talk to you today about some core coaching practices. 

Today’s session is titled Building Trust Through Listening, Strengthening Coaching Practice and Early Learning. The session connects deeply to the work you’re already doing as coaches. 

As we get started, we’re going to begin with what we call an opening move. An opening move is a quick reflection, prompt or activity that helps ground us in the work, connects it to our own experiences and gets us thinking to start the session. 

So think of a time when you felt truly heard. What made that experience different? 

I’m going to pause for a minute so you can think about that. When did you feel truly heard? You might have felt understood, not rushed and not judged. 

Maybe the person was fully present with you. That’s what we’re really getting at today. 

So a key idea here is: trust isn’t built just through strategies–it’s built through how we show up. 

And one of the most powerful ways we show up is through how we listen to someone else. 

So as we go through our work today, I’m going to consistently connect this work back to all the stages of coaching and specifically the Lastinger Early Childhood Coaching Model. 

Because listening and trust are not just one part of the model, they are skills we use throughout all our work with educators. 

So we’re going to start looking at why trust matters in coaching. When we look at the Lastinger Coaching Model, you’ll see that exploration in relationship building is foundational, but it’s also ongoing. 

Relationship building and trust don’t just get checked off. It’s not something that we just do at the beginning. 

It’s something we build throughout the coaching relationship and maintain across every phase when we’re identifying a coaching focus, when we’re analyzing data and especially during coaching conversations. 

Trust is what allows teachers to be vulnerable and to really share with us, to reflect honestly and feel like they can be open and take risks in their practice and try something new. 

So what does the research in the literature tell us? 

Elena Aguilar and Jim Knight have written a lot about coaching over the years. 

Elena Aguilar discusses the importance of trust as it relates to an educator’s willingness to hear and receive feedback from us. 

If they trust us, then they’re more open and willing to hear what we think and what we have to say and to really think together with us. 

Jim Knight’s research points to the relationship between strong coaching partnerships and improved implementation outcomes, better teaching practice and better outcomes for kids. 

And one of the fastest ways to build trust, or break it, is how we listen to someone. 

Without trust, we get compliant. Someone might be willing to do what we say while we’re there, but are they really changing their practice? 

With trust, you work together with your coachee to get real transformational change. Those deep changes in practice that we all want to see. 

So now we’re going to spend a little time looking at communication and body language. 

Let’s think a little bit more about communication. 

We’re always communicating in three different ways: verbally, what we say as far as the words and the specific words we use in; vocal, right as our intonation, how we say them, how we express ourselves; and non verbal, what we’re showing other ways through our body. 

So even if we say I’m listening, but we’re looking at our notes, we’re typing, we’re distracted, the disconnect is felt. Your coachee knows it. If you’re thinking about lunch or what you have to do later or something that happened in the morning, they’re going to know that you’re not really listening to them. 

And teachers are paying attention to all of these during a conversation. 

And when they don’t align, people tend to trust what they see and hear over the words you’re saying. 

So if you’re saying you’re there and you’re listening, but your body language and your tone of voice isn’t communicating that, they’re not going to believe you. 

So let’s break this down a little bit more. 

Nonverbal communication includes eye contact, posture, nodding, your facial expressions and your physical positioning. 

A small shift in any of these can either build trust or erode it. 

So let’s take a moment to reflect again. What might your body language be communicating during a coaching conversation? What are your coachees seeing in your body language? 

So at the center of all of this is listening. Listening is not just one skill, it’s a core coaching skill. 

And it requires a shift from listening to respond, right? 

Listening to think about how that matches something that happened to you, how that could be solved, what you want to say next. 

And instead listening to understand, to really, truly think about what someone’s saying, what the words are saying and what’s the meaning behind it. 

This is where presence comes in. 

So presence means you’re fully focused. You’re not planning your next question. You’re not solving the problem while the person is talking. 

One way to think about it is like a photograph. When you’re truly present, the speaker is in sharp focus and everything else fades into the background. You’re just focused on seeing and hearing them and really listening to them. 

This kind of presence creates what some people call resonance, where the conversations deepen and thinking really expands. 

This is especially critical during coaching conversations, but it also impacts how effectively we move through data collection, identifying a focus, planning next steps, presence improves clarity, promotes empathy and responsiveness. 

So we’re going to think a little bit more specifically about types of listening and what this really looks like in practice. 

So Robert Garmston and Bruce Wellman talk about key listening skills in their book The Adaptive School. 

And these include attending fully to the speaker, right? 

Some of the things that we’ve been talking about, are you really just focused on that person, trying to ignore all the distractions around and really thinking and, and listening to what they’re saying and what words they’re conveying and what meaning might be behind it? 

You’re managing your internal dialogue, right? I think all of us have kind of a running script in our head. 

So how are you quieting your mind so you can really focus?  Not thinking about what you did before, what you have to do after. Not thinking about how you’re going to fix things. Not thinking about all the things that you want to say to your coachee. 

How are you kind of quieting your mind so you can be really fully present and then suspending judgment, really listening to what the person is saying without judging them or thinking how you might have done something differently or how you don’t agree with what they’re saying. 

It’s hard to listen to someone when we’re judging their words. 

So from there we move on to committed listening. 

Committed listening is listening for the essence, not just the words someone is saying. 

You’re fully focused on the speaker, giving your undivided attention to the person speaking mentally and physically. You’re not planning your responses, multitasking or thinking ahead. Your attention stays on the speaker’s words, tone and meaning. 

Active presence. 

It means being fully engaged in and aware of the moment, attending to what is said and what isn’t said. 

You’re noticing tone, facial expressions, pausing and shifts in energy. You yourself are grounded, calm and responsive, but not reactive. 

Strategic silence is a part of committed listening, and this one can be tough for some people. It takes practice. Sometimes we call this wait time. Sometimes we call this protective time. 

But using that intentional pause to give the speaker time to think, process and continue. Silence doesn’t have to be awkward. It’s very productive, and it often leads to deeper reflection and more meaningful responses. If you pause, sometimes you’ll notice that someone will add more or go a little bit deeper than they did originally because they’re given some time to respond. 

And then we have reflective feedback. This is like paraphrasing and clarifying. 

It’s responding in a way that shows you’re actively making sense of what the speaker is sharing. 

Paraphrasing is when you restate the message in your own words, right? Restating what you heard the person say. That really helps you both be on the same page and make sure you’re understanding. 

Clarifying is when you ask questions to deepen or confirm your understanding. What’s coming up as an example of a coach practicing these skills. 

She’s a new coach. She’s working with a teacher. She’s just shared a data display showing the data she collected during an observation. 

And as I mentioned, this is a brand new coach, right? And this is her coaching conversation that she turns in for certification. So we’re going to be kind. She was kind enough to let us share this video. 

And so what I want you to do is just watch the video and just pay attention to the coach’s body language. 

[Video played in presentation]

Coach: Now looking at the data and looking at the first nine questions that you said were closed-ended and number ten which was open-ended, how is number ten different from the first nine? 

Teacher: OK, so the first nine are asking like, what did Cookie do on Monday, so there’s only one answer of what Cookie did. But on ten I asked the children how do you like to rest? 

So it’s giving them more options of telling me what they like to do and how they like to rest. 

Coach: So which do you think of these questions which provided more of an opportunity for the children to use their language? 

Teacher: It was number ten, how do you like to rest? Because now that’s letting them explain to me things that they do to rest on Sunday, I guess. 

The first ones were just just one answer, so it was just closed ended. 

Coach: So then you were, you gave the children time to think about their answers and you didn’t rush them. You let them have that pause and you let them think. 

Liza Leonard: OK, so just to recap, the committed listening approach keeps the focus on the teacher. 

It builds reflection and problem solving skills and it really helps strengthen the trust and the psychological safety between you and the teacher. 

Now we’re going to talk a little bit about some barriers to listening. 

Some barriers to listening include judgement, right, which shuts down someone’s thinking. If someone feels like they’re judged, then they’re not going to be able to continue the conversation really thoughtfully and really be open to sharing. 

It’s also autobiographical listening, right? I mentioned earlier it’s when you’re thinking about yourself and how this kind of relates to something that you know or something that happened to you, it shifts the focus away from the person speaking. So if you’re sharing your story, then you’re not really listening to the teacher.

Inquisitive listening that’s asking too many questions. That disrupts the flow. You kind of want that sweet spot, right? That’s where you’re asking questions to promote reflection, but not asking so many that the teacher isn’t talking, that the teacher doesn’t have the main airtime, and then listening for solutions. 

So not really listening to the teacher, but always thinking of how you can solve the problem. 

In the end, we really want teachers to think about how they can solve their own issues, right, and what happens when we’re not there. 

So it’s really helping the teacher be able to think through and solve their problems and dilemmas in a way that really improves their practice and really helps them when they’re teaching children. 

So we’re going to look into a few habits that we fall into that get in the way, right? Some other barriers. 

I mentioned sharing your story. Interrupting is a big one. 

Really interrupting when someone’s in the middle of sharing and not letting them fully finish and then steering a teacher as well. 

So not really following the teacher’s lead. Adults really want to be in charge of their own learning. 

And when you’re kind of gently and subtly guiding someone in a way that they feel like they’re not really being heard, right? 

So maybe it’s not so gentle, actually, maybe it’s sort of really kind of pushing a teacher in a direction that they weren’t heading. 

They’ll feel like they don’t trust you, that you’re not really listening. 

So these things come for a good place, right? We want teachers to improve their practice, but they can unintentionally reduce trust. 

So what to do instead? 

Paraphrase like we talked about before, repeating what you heard. Pausing that strategic silence is so powerful. Ask an open-ended question and then stay curious and just listen. 

These moves strengthen coaching conversations which lead to true changes in practice. 

So we’re going to watch another video here of a a new coach coaching a teacher. 

And I want you to think about what you notice here. What are some listening moves that she does to really help stay connected with this teacher? 

[Video played in presentation]

Coach: So what did you notice? Has anything stood out to you? 

Teacher: I’m engaging in a lot more conversations with my children and it seems to be coming more naturally to me. 

Coach: I like that it’s becoming more natural and that you’re engaging. What makes you feel like you are engaging in more conversations with your children? 

Teacher: Well, I think too with the open and ending questions and it’s, you know, just I feel like they’re like little adults in some sort of way because we’re talking. 

My children are becoming more verbal, I noticed too. So the back and forth conversation just seems to be the last couple weeks has really expanded with my kiddos and myself. 

Coach: OK, So what I hear you saying is for the last few weeks you’ve seen a little bit of a growth in word usage, vocabulary and language being used in your classroom and you feel like they are like for you it’s becoming more natural using language. 

Was there anything that is helping you use more language now as opposed to when we first started before? 

Liza Leonard: So now we’re going to think about a scenario. 

Let’s say you’re working with a pre-K teacher in a classroom of four year olds. 

During your observation you notice that during circle time several children are off task. Some are talking to peers, one child gets up and walks away, and a few seem disengaged. 

You share the data you collect with the teacher and during the coaching conversation the teacher says, “I can see here that many of the children were wandering or off task. I feel like circle time just isn’t working anymore. The kids aren’t engaged and I’m starting to dread that part of the day.”

So there’s lots of different ways you can handle this. A reactive fixing approach might be “You should try shortening circle time” or  “have you tried adding more movement or songs”? 

That happened to me too, but what worked was, this might feel helpful, but it shifts ownership away from the teacher, it limits the reflection, and it can unintentionally communicate, “I have the answers. You don’t have the answers.”

Instead, you might pause for a minute and say what I hear you saying is that circle time hasn’t been feeling engaging lately, and it’s a struggle. 

Pause again and then say,  “tell me more about what you’ve noticed from the data we’ve collected” 

From there, you might follow up with “what do you think is working well, even a little?” 

Or “what patterns are you noticing in the children’s behavior?” 

Why does this matter? 

It keeps the focus on the teacher, it builds reflection and problem solving and it strengthens trust and psychological safety. That’s the committed listening approach. 

So this is a strong example how these conversations and relationships building directly impact how effectively you can move through these stages, right? 

Through identifying a coaching focus through a coaching conversation and planning next steps. 

So today we explored a number of things.

We looked at why trust matters. We looked at how listening and presence really builds trust. How really being there for someone builds that trust and relationships so that they’re willing to take risks. And we looked at what this looked like in practice.

So a final take away is that all of this is especially critical during all of the parts of the model, but it’s really important to remember that listening is one of the fastest ways to build trust and one of the easiest to overlook. 

And in the Lastinger Coaching Model, trust isn’t just a step, it’s what strengthens every step. 

So I’m going to leave you with a reflection. What is one listening move you’ll intentionally practice this week? Of all the things we talked about, what is something that you want to try? 

Thank you all for listening to me. 

I hope this is helpful for you and I’ve enjoyed talking with you about this important topic today. 

Take care.