In this episode, we speak with best-selling author Elena Aguilar about her forthcoming book, Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching. While the book is written with academic coaches in mind, the strategies and messages apply to anyone working in education. Our conversation ranges from the need to fulfill core human needs—like belonging, autonomy, self-esteem, and purpose—to the skills and strategies that can help us all meet those needs. As Elena states, by attending to these core human needs, “We can heal and transform our world.”
Every human being desires belonging and connectedness, autonomy, mastery and competence, genuine self-esteem, trust in oneself, and purpose and meaning.
Elena Aguilar, from the introduction to her book, Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching
Resources
The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:
- Relationships: The Secret Ingredient in the Recipe of Success, with Robin Ilac (podcast episode)
- Mentoring Beginning Educators, with Annie Kirking (podcast episode)
- Connect With Colleagues (article)
- Accelerate Learning With Successful Student Conferencing (article)
Transformation Through Empowerment
“I think we’re facing a crisis of disempowerment in our country and in our world, in teachers, and in children,” says our guest, Elena Aguilar. In her new book, Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching, Elena offers us a positive, actionable solution.
Elena has two hopes for this new book. She says, “One is that people feel inspired, and hopeful, and that they feel like we don’t have to live with the way the world is right now, or our relationships, or how we are inside. We don’t have to live with this kind of disconnect, or anxiety, or feeling unappreciated or ineffective. There is hope. There are other ways we can do living, and relationships, and community, and school.” She then adds, “And the second big hope is that people will have countless actionable tools to turn the first goal into reality.”
Throughout her book, and in our conversation, Elena discusses how we need to do things differently if we want to get different results. She explains, “In traditional coaching, we give a lot of answers. . . . In transformational coaching, we cultivate agency. We invite people to explore their beliefs.” Elena says, “In order to evoke transformation, we need to help people tap into their sense of power and agency, [their] ability to take action on what they think, believe, and know.”
Elena exudes a deep caring for educators and students as she shares some of the strategies offered in her book—strategies that we can use to empower others around us. And through that empowerment, she says, we can transform the world. The following are a few highlights from our conversation:
- About Our Guest: Elena Aguilar is a writer, leader, teacher, coach, podcaster, and founder and CEO of Bright Morning Consulting. She is the author of eight highly acclaimed books, including her forthcoming book, Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching.
- Core Human Needs: Elena opens her book by identifying core human needs as identified in scientific research. She says, “Every human being desires belonging and connectedness, autonomy, mastery and competence, genuine self-esteem, trust in oneself, and purpose and meaning.” During our conversation, Elena explains that meeting these needs helps us deal with “loss, and transition, and change.”
- The Need for a New Approach: Elena began her coaching career applying traditional coaching practices. However, she found that while those practices are essential to teacher improvement, they are not enough. Those approaches didn’t take into account a teacher who was “completely overwhelmed and could not stop crying.” Elena introspectively shares, “I don’t have any tools in my tool kit to respond to that, and the strategies I did use just weren’t very effective.”
- Transformational Coaching: In response to the needs she identified, Elena developed a model for transformational coaching. When using more traditional coaching methods, Elena was the one offering ideas and solutions to problems. With her new approach, she focuses on empowering those being coached to identify and solve their own problems.
- Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching: Elena shares, “Arise is my eighth book. It is a compilation of everything I’ve learned, really, in the last 20 years about coaching, but perhaps in the last 30 years in education about how we not only develop individually but develop as communities. Because ultimately, we are social creatures, human beings. Our harm and hurt happen in relationship to other human beings, and the only way that we can heal and transform our world is by changing our relationships with each other. And so, I’m committed to helping individuals reflect and grow so that we can come together as a community to support all children and really create the kind of just, humane, joyful world that I know we long to live in.”
- Not Just for Coaches: Elena says her book is “intended for coaches, for school leaders, for teacher leaders, for mentors—for anybody, I would say, who is focused on adult development—and I actually think there is a tremendous amount that can be relevant to cultivating the social, emotional, and academic growth of children, as well as perhaps, more broadly, more healthy and resilient communities in the world.”
- Love: Elena says that in this book, “I write a lot about love.” She adds, “I hope that people will feel more deeply anchored in, and connected to, the power of love and that they’ll have 50 new things they can say in a conversation tomorrow that might help someone reflect on what they’re doing and ultimately return to the connection of love.”
- Empowerment: Elena says, “In order to evoke transformation, we need to help people tap into their sense of power and agency, [their] ability to take action on what they think, believe, and know. . . . In traditional coaching, we give a lot of answers. . . . In transformational coaching, we cultivate agency. We invite people to explore their beliefs.”
- The 3 Bs: Transformational coaching explores the three Bs: Behaviors, Beliefs, and ways of Being. Elena explains, “Every action we take, every behavior we enact comes from beliefs, whether we’re conscious of it or not, and unless we address those beliefs—just surface them, explore them, sometimes shift them—we just tend to do the same things over and over.”
- Dispositions: Anyone in a coaching role needs to possess dispositions, such as curiosity, compassion, humility, and a trust in the process. Elena says, “You have to believe people can change. You have to believe that there’s goodness within everyone. You have to believe there is a way to explore what’s coming up and to shift behaviors.” She continues, saying, “We don’t need to fix people. We don’t need to give people answers. We need to be curious. We need to activate their agency. We need to help them connect to who they want to be. We need to help them meet their core human needs, their sense of purpose and belonging, their need for connectedness, their need for mastery or competence. Those are core human needs.”
- Listening: Elena describes listening as a skill that can change your life. She says, “There is no true communication without listening, so there’s really no way to create deep belonging without listening to each other.” Listening well means that we are fully present with others in conversation.
- Transforming the World: Elena says, “I want to see people connect with each other more authentically, more fully. I do think it is the pathway to transforming our world. When we truly listen to each other, on both sides—when we experience that kind of empathy for another and when someone truly listens to us—it’s transformative. It’s really incredible.”
- Enjoy the Good: Elena says, “We need to learn to regulate or respond to the difficult or uncomfortable emotions, but we also need to learn how to experience more of the ones that are pleasant and enjoyable. The love, the connection, the joy, the belonging. . . . I love listening to people. It’s the most incredible feeling to connect with someone like that.”
- Connect with Elena and Preorder the Book: Connect with Elena Aguilar through her free Weekly Wisdom Newsletter; preorder her forthcoming book, Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching; and access up to three bonus mini-workshops with Elena this summer!
Guiding Questions
If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:
- What would you describe as basic human needs?
- What type of coaching have you received in the past?
- What is the best coaching experience you’ve had, and what made it successful?
- How is transformational coaching different from traditional coaching?
- How do the 3 Bs—behaviors, beliefs, and ways of being—impact transformational coaching?
- How can effective listening improve relationships?
- How can we empower others to be able to solve their own problems?
- What is your biggest takeaway from this episode?
Extend Your Learning
- Books by Elena (Bright Morning)
- Bright Morning (Elena Aguilar)
- The Bright Morning Podcast (Elena Aguilar)