Abstract    

Identity and competence building of school leaders is an enormously complex process that occurs through interplay of feedback, reflection and human experiences which in this paper is referred to as growth factors. This article reports on findings from a group coaching approach developed for the National Principal Programme at the University of Oslo, which explores the potential of improving the participants’ motivation and competencies with respect to exercise leadership. By using the reflections from the students reported in student texts and surveys prior to and after the programme, we  found that bringing school leaders from different schools together in coaching sessions seems to be a very potent way to build and strengthen their leadership identity, self-efficacy and competences. We argue that many factors contributing to growth in therapeutic groups are the same factors contributing to identity and competence building of school leaders. In this paper we suggest six.

Theoretical framework: A study on a leadership programme offered by a university to support graduates as they moved into new school leadership roles indicated how coaching could contribute to the development of leadership identity (Silver et al. 2009). The researchers found that new principals viewed coaching positively and emphasised it as a useful and unique form of professional development. A similar finding was reported by Robertson (2008). In her study of peer coaching, she found that the participants took ownership of the leadership role, and gained greater intellectual independence and agency as well as political empowerment. These benefits gave the graduates the confidence to improve learning opportunities in their institutions. The participants moved from reactive and isolated states to proactive ones. Close (2013) argued for the development of a conceptual framework for coaches wishing to help school leaders develop political astuteness in their leadership judgments (Close 2013). factors which are especially active in group coaching sessions for school leaders. Theories of therapeutic groups describe 11 different factors contributing to strengthen group members' self-efficacy. Six of these factors are probably also active in group coaching sessions: 1)installation of hope 2)universality 3)sharing information 4)altruism 5)imitate behaviour 6)process learning and process commentary. All these factors are used in our study.

Research question: How can group coaching promote self-efficacy and role clarity in school leadership?

Literature: - Argyris, C. 1982: Reasoning, Learning and Action. San Francisco, Jossey Bass. - Bion, W. 1970: Attention and Interpretation. London, Karnac. - Britton Jennifer J. 2009: Effective Group Coaching. Wiley. - Chen, S. and Andersen S. M. 1999: Relationships from the past in the present: Significant other reorientation and transference in interpersonal life. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 31 123-190. San Diego, CA, Academic Press. - Goleman, D. 1996: Emotional Intelligence: Why it matter more than IQ. London, Bloomsbury - Hawkins, P. 2010: The interpersonal relationship in the training and supervision of coaches, in (eds) S Palmer and a McDowell, The Coaching Relationships- Putting people first Routledge, London - Lee, G. 2001: The relationship dimension in management development. Organisations and People, vo. 8 No 3: 32-40 - Liu, Y and Phillips, JP. 2011: Examining th4e antecedents of knowledge sharing in facilitation team innovativeness from a multilevel perspective. International Journal of Information Management, 31 (1): 44-52 - Lee, G. 2007: From personal insight to organizational performance. CIPD, London Zhu, W., Avolio, B.J., Riggio, R.E. and Sosik, J.J. 2011: The effect of authentic transformational leadership on follower and group ethics, Leadership Quarterly 22: 801-817 - Vinogradow Sophia & Yalom Irwin D. 1989: I concise guide to group psychotherapy. American Psychiatric Press, Inc. - Wales, S. 2003: Why coaching? Journal of Change Management, Vol. 3, February, 275-282.