Building more aligned school leadership teams through coaching

Coaching for school leadership teams

SLT group coaching focusses on strengthening trust, clarity and shared leadership for headteachers who want to build higher functioning senior teams.

School leadership teams need to deliver consistency in increasingly complex environments. However, even high-performing SLTs can find themselves working hard individually and not always working effectively as a team.

SLT group coaching provides structured, confidential space for senior leadership teams to step back from operational pressures, strengthen relationships and develop a more aligned and reflective approach to leadership.

It helps SLTs build shared clarity and improve communication so they can lead change well across a school or trust.

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Group coaching principles

SLT group coaching is a structured, professionally facilitated form of leadership development based on established coaching principles. It focuses on improving how leadership teams think, relate, communicate and make decisions together.

At its core, group coaching is grounded in the belief that leadership teams already hold the knowledge and experience needed to solve their own challenges. The role of the coach is to create the conditions for high-quality thinking and open dialogue so that collective intelligence can be accessed more effectively.

In practice, this means the coach supports the SLT to slow down reactive thinking, surface assumptions, explore different perspectives and develop greater shared clarity around leadership priorities and behaviours. The emphasis is on active listening, constructive challenge and accountability within a psychologically safe environment.

Applied to school leadership teams, this approach helps SLTs move beyond fragmented or individualised leadership towards more coherent, aligned and intentional team leadership. It enables headteachers, deputies and senior leaders to understand not only their own thinking, but how their thinking interacts with others across the team.

For SLTs and MAT leadership teams, this translates into stronger alignment on strategic priorities as well as improved communication and decision-making. It also leads to a more connected leadership culture where trust and clarity are actively developed rather than assumed.

Destino Coaching works with school leadership teams and MAT leadership teams to apply these principles in the real context of school improvement, organisational change and day-to-day operational complexity.

Common challenges we work with in SLT coaching

Many leadership teams come to coaching when they recognise that, although everyone is working hard, the team is not always working together as effectively as it could.

Common challenges include:

your SLT is working hard but not always working together
communication feels reactive or inconsistent
middle leaders need more confidence and support
the headteacher is carrying too much alone
change is happening quickly and the team needs alignment
the team needs space to reflect together

Supporting school improvement and implementation of change

SLT group coaching is particularly powerful during periods of school improvement, restructuring or organisational change. It helps leadership teams stay aligned and avoid fragmented decision-making during times of pressure.

Coaching supports teams to develop a more consistent leadership approach across the organisation. Over time, it leads to clearer communication, stronger relationships and more shared leadership.

How SLT group coaching is different to training

Training typically focuses on delivering content, strategies or frameworks. SLT group coaching focuses on the lived experience of leadership within your team.

Instead of being taught what to do, your SLT is supported to:

reflect on real leadership challenges
explore different perspectives
strengthen collective thinking
develop your own solutions as a team

It is practical, reflective and directly connected to your school context.

We have worked with Nadia for the last year to establish and successfully embed a whole Trust coaching programme. The sessions she has delivered to our coaching champions have been enlightening and we have all been incredibly appreciative of the new skills that we have learnt through coaching and more importantly have recognised the impact in terms of developing teachers' pedagogy. Without reservation, I would wholeheartedly recommend and look forward to continuing to work with Nadia In the future.

Anna MackenzieChief Education Director, Northern Star Academies Trust

Nadia is a creative. This, together with her leadership skills and her knowledge pf teaching and learning has allowed us to be more creative in our solutions. Whenever we’ve worked with Nadia there is such energy in the room. With her support we have developed both strategy and operational programmes to put instructional coaching at the heart of our professional development approach. Nadia’s ability to open up avenues of discussion and exploration, constantly challenging you to think again and find out your why, has been pivotal to our work over the last two years. At times, our ‘destination’ hasn’t always been clear but with her skilful coaching, we have loved the journey and been empowered to find our way!

Christine Reynolds Deputy CEO, Oak Learning Partnership

Nadia and her team have been working with our school for over a year now. She has supported and challenged us as leaders and has guided us to develop a coaching approach that fully meets the needs of our 2-19 Special School. She has helped us to balance strategic and operational priorities and to really focus on higher impact activities that make a difference. She fully understands the complexities of the education system and our unique challenges and has worked with us to plan and execute strategies that have helped us to improve teaching and learning and to empower our staff team. We have developed rubrics together that are now followed by all class staff and these have provided real clarity of expectation to support staff to enable our learners to reach their full potential. We are working with Nadia and her team again this year on our identified areas for development. The passion and enthusiasm from the team at Destino shines through in all our communication and we are excited for the next stage of our journey knowing that the team will fully challenge and support us to meet our goals.

Kathryn BryanHeadteacher, Broomfield SILC

How SLT group coaching sessions are organised

The number of sessions depends on your goals and context, and we always agree a structure with you based on your leadership priorities.

Most leadership teams engage in a series of 4, 5 or 6 sessions of 3 hours over a full academic year. This allows time to build trust, deepen reflection and embed change in practice. We sometimes incorporate data gathering such as confidential feedback from staff about their experience of the senior team, to support you to understand impact of the team and gaps in consistency. This involves a day or half day of your coach working with groups of staff in your school.

Destino Coaching works with both individual schools and multi-academy trust leadership teams. We support MAT executive teams, regional leadership groups and cross-school leadership structures to strengthen alignment and strategic clarity across the organisation

Ready to strengthen your school leadership team?

If you want to explore how SLT group coaching could support your leadership team, we would be happy to have a conversation. Book a call to discuss group coaching for your school or trust

SLT Group Coaching