Coaching isn’t just for instructional coaches or administrators— it’s something all educators do.
Every time we give feedback, reflect with a colleague, support a paraprofessional, or guide a student, we’re coaching. These moments shape school culture, relationships, and learning outcomes, so how we show up in them matters.
In many ways, coaching with compassion is like teaching with compassion.
It’s about more than helping someone improve, it’s about being a positive model for reflection, courage, and connection. When we lead with care, curiosity, and possibility, we create the kind of learning environments where everyone can thrive.
Are Your Coaching Conversations Rooted in Compliance— or Compassion?
Instead of focusing on what’s wrong or needs fixing, more and more educators are embracing coaching that’s grounded in human potential, possibility, and sustainable growth.
But take a moment to reflect:
When you think of coaching, what comes to mind?
For many of us, coaching conversations have historically centered on performance and behavior change, often framed around what isn’t working. This approach can unintentionally focus on external motivators or organizational goals, rather than honoring the person being coached. While the intention may be positive, the result is often short-term change— or no real change at all— because it can create feelings of fear, judgment, or inadequacy.
Now think about compassion. What comes to mind there?
Compassion is more than responding to someone’s pain or struggle. It’s also about seeing the whole person—their values, dreams, and humanity. In coaching, this means noticing the person behind the behavior, understanding the stories they carry, and acknowledging that they’re doing the best they can with the tools they have.
At Inclusive Schooling, we advocate for coaching with compassion. This model shifts the goal from compliance to connection. It emphasizes growth that’s aligned with the person’s own hopes, strengths, and needs. Rather than trying to “get” someone to change, we focus on helping them thrive.
Why does this matter?
Because change rooted in compliance doesn’t last.
But change rooted in connection and purpose does.
When we listen for what matters to the other person— not just what matters to us— we create the conditions for real, sustainable transformation. It’s about supporting each other in ways that are emotionally safe, strengths-based, and grounded in dignity.
When we not only have compassion for another by understanding their pain and struggles, but we want to hear and honor their dreams and hopes, this is the ground for a transforming shift in the coaching relationship that brings real and long-lasting behavior changes.
So how do we make this shift?
One helpful way to think about it is balancing two emotional systems in the brain:
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The Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA), which is activated by hope, joy, compassion, and creativity (Coaching with Compassion).
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The Negative Emotional Attractor (NEA), which is activated by stress, fear, guilt, or anxiety (Coaching for Compliance).
Both are necessary. NEA helps us respond to problems and challenges, but PEA is what opens us up to new ideas and lasting growth. If we want sustainable results, we want thriving. And because NEA is so much stronger, largely due to the constant pressures that add up in a day, this means we need to activate PEA at least three times more than NEA to combat the effects of negative experiences.
As a coach, educator, or leader, you can help spark these positive moments. Ask questions about what someone hopes for. Reflect their strengths back to them. Honor their values. Bring playfulness and curiosity into the space. And just as importantly, tend to your own well-being. Emotions are contagious, and the energy you bring matters.
When coaching, we can create these opportunities by asking questions that focus on moving the individual toward her dreams and desires (their Ideal Self), recognizing core values, and giving more attention to strengths rather than weaknesses.
Because we’re trained from the time we’re young to solve problems, and we gravitate toward fixing weaknesses more than focusing on strengths, it takes more positive emotional experiences to create the balance we need for effective change.
Negative emotions and our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) are aroused all day long by little stressors that add up, like forgetting your cell phone, being stuck in traffic, losing an important communication, being bombarded with constant emails and messages, or worrying about a quickly approaching deadline. This constant activation leads to anxious thoughts and feelings, exhaustion, and potentially burnout, which closes us off to potential and possibility.
That means, in order to balance this constant pressure, we need to include positive events that arouse our Parasympathetic Nervous System (PSNS) anywhere from three to six times for every negative event. Experiences that get positive emotions flowing create an opportunity for renewal and include mindfulness & meditation routines, spending time with a pet, playing with your children, taking a moment to breathe, thinking of someone who’s helped you along the way, and exercise. All of these experiences arouse the PSNS, the part of our brain that opens us up to new ideas and possibilities— exactly what we want if we want someone receptive to change.
Here is a quick break down of the PEA vs. the NEA
So, while we do need NEA, because it can be a catalyst for change, and helps us to solve problems and complete tasks, the PEA is what brings the sustainable, desired change. If we know the ratio of PEA to NEA is generally 3:1, and we want resonant, engaged coaching conversations, we must always remember that emotions are contagious.
This means that shifting into PEA-focused coaching starts with you. If you’re coming from a place of compliance, judgment, or you’re suffering from your own imbalance of negative over positive emotions, you will affect the other and it will be much more difficult.
As a coach, leader, or teacher, it’s essential to be aware of your own need to activate the PEA.
Consider the experiences you have on a daily basis, and how often you are truly experiencing positive emotions in relation to those constant daily stressors. If those stressors are present, that means you have to counter them with a continuous cycle of renewal. You’ll need to intentionally engage in experiences that ignite your positive emotions and keep you open-minded and feeling a sense of hope, and overall well-being. You will notice that as you engage in your own renewal practices, it will become easier for you to activate this in others.
Before you enter your next coaching conversation, monitor your own PEA and NEA experiences for one week.
Throughout each day, notice when something arouses your positive or negative emotions. Write down what you were doing, what was happening around you, who was there, and how you felt. Just notice and observe for now. At the end of the week, you’ll be able to look at the experiences, and begin to notice where patterns emerge, your positive and negative emotional triggers, and what balance you hold in PEA to NEA. This insight will give you a chance to see what new patterns you can create to 1) sustain your balance if you are in PEA more than NEA, or 2) develop ways to enhance your positive emotions in your daily life.
Coaching is a process and takes time. It’s not a one-and-done event.
Your main goal is to unearth the good and possible, uncover and honor the individual’s desires, values and strengths; it is *not* to hunt for what’s wrong, not working, or needs fixing. You want to meet the person where they are, and create a positive and safe atmosphere that ignites PEA and opens up learning.
Remember: Coaching isn’t about fixing people. It’s about lifting them up.
By shifting from compliance to compassion, we create space for people to flourish— ourselves included.