Self-Coaching Questions for Teachers

Teacher Wellbeing

Today I'm sharing with you 29 questions you can ask as part of a process of self-coaching. Coaching is just a conversation where one person takes on the role of asking questions that help the person being coached to uncover the answers for themselves and sometimes to break out of the thinking patterns and habits and mindsets that they might not have even realised was holding them back or getting in the way of getting what they want. Coaching takes many forms but essentially it’s just asking better questions, and you can do this for yourself. It’s obviously helpful to have an external person go through this process with you but it is a skill you can practice and improve on, and self-coaching can be a great tool in your wellbeing toolkit that can help you when you feel stuck, when you feel like something has to change, or when you come against a challenge and need to make some decisions.

So today I’m going to take you through 29 Questions that you can ask yourself as part of a self-coaching process, or you can also use these with a buddy and coach each other. These are questions that I commonly ask my clients. This is not an exhaustive list of questions you can ask as part of coaching or self-coaching, and of course you don’t need to ask all of these either—this is NOT an all or nothing activity. You might even just pick one or two of these questions that really feel like the best fit in the situation and just try them on for size. Some of the questions are in a set that help you look at a situation or topic from multiple angles and the questions go together in a series.

There are no right or wrong answers here. This is an exercise is imagination and creativity, in self-discovery, self-awareness and . There’s no perfection needed in the way you answer these questions. The way you answer them today might be different to how you answer them tomorrow and that’s fine. These questions are about helping you get out of the regular habits of thinking that we often fall into, the stories that we tell ourselves, and the narratives that we’re deciding and believing are true. However, these stories or narratives or beliefs are not necessarily reality or how other people involved perceive the situation. So by challenging our habits of thinking we’re actually able to see more possibilities than we already can and perhaps to make better or different choices.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• The book ‘The Dance of Anger’ by Harriet Lerner
• The Freebies Library at www.selfcareforteachers.com.au/library
• Cultivating Extraordinary Wellbeing Video Training www.selfcareforteachers.com.au/cultivating
• Wellbeing Champions Meetup www.selfcareforteachers.com.au/wellbeingchampion
• School Staff Wellbeing & Resilience Sessions: taking bookings for 2021 now! Email [e-mail]