Transforming Conversations with a Coach-Like Mindset

Conversations, whether one to one, or in groups, are the expression of your school culture. Yet too often, they become routine, transactional, or draining. What if your conversations could become consistent spaces of genuine collaboration, clear thinking, and true connection?

Designed for anyone leading a team or facilitating dialogue in an international school setting — including year leaders, phase leaders, middle and senior leaders, classroom teachers, and those working closely with parents — this session offers a practical reframe of how to shift your approach to conversations, and invite others into a transformational space.

We’ll explore the core qualities of a coaching mindset — trust, curiosity, courage, humility, and self-awareness — and apply them to the way we prepare, or don’t prepare for conversations. Drawing on the work of Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment®, you’ll be introduced to three high-impact tools that can shift the dynamic in any room, whether you’re working with staff, students, or parents.

“The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. The quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking.” — Nancy Kline

Through hands-on practice and reflective discussion, you’ll walk away with practical strategies to co-create conversations that become catalysts for belonging, fresh insight, and change.

Key Outcomes:

• Learn three tools to increase engagement, clarity, and co-creation in conversations
  
  

• Apply each tool through live, interactive practice
  
  

• Commit to using at least one approach in your next leadership conversation
  
  

Take away a practical guide to share and implement with colleagues.

Delegate fees:

£150 per COBIS Member delegate
£187.50 per Non-Member delegate

If you are based in the UK, the delegate fee will be liable for VAT. Please email events@cobis.org.uk to process your registration.
If you are based outside the UK, but you are booking and paying for your place as an individual (rather than having the booking paid for by the school), you may also be liable for VAT. Please email events@cobis.org.uk to process your booking.
In all other situations, please tick the ‘organisation’ box when asked if the payee is an organisation or an individual.