States of Being
Center for Coaching & Leading
Founding Director, Linda Belans, Ed.D.
Why A Center for Coaching & Leading?
I have long dreamed of creating a States of Being Center for Coaching and Leading. I had to get it right first –– to figure out a model that speaks to the times we're in –– our children are in, our schools and our country are in.
I am driven by a ferocious need to see the higher self in others, and the belief that schools should be centers of love, healing and dynamic teaching and learning for students and educators alike. We can create schools where…
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All who enter feel free to speak their truth and revel in their identities.
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Leaders, educators, administrators, maintenance crews, cafeteria employees, bus drivers —anyone who touches students’ lives—are steeped in the understanding that they are tending to students’ souls and hearts, as well as their minds and intellect.
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Students engage in high impact learning that prepares them for their imagined futures when rooted in compassion, culturally relevant teaching and learning, robust curiosity.
This is how students and educators become their full, authentic bold selves.
The model that has emerged as most effective is to begin working directly with leadership teams then cascade throughout the system from senior leader to students. This infuses schools and organizations with States of Being, a strengths-based philosophical approach to coaching – anchored in belonging, benevolence, and seeing the higher self.
What’s clearer to me is that we have to care as much, if not more, about our students’ and teachers’ aspirations as we do about test scores and data. There must be a deliberate, clear-eyed practice of infusing equity and cultural respect into every decision and move that leaders make. We need to actively teach these skills, and the language of these skills, to all who have a stake in educating our students as we imagine them into their futures.
If we are going to deliver on our promises to all of our children, we have to discipline ourselves to see the higher self in the struggling first-year teacher as well as in the emerging and seasoned leader, bus drivers, custodians, board members, families —anyone who has contact with our students.
If we are going to save democracy, we have to collectively imagine and plan for the kind of world our children want to inherit and inhabit. We have to create schools that address this vision. There is too much at stake.
This is why I created the States of Being , the book, and this Center —to offer a coaching response to these pressing questions: What are schools for? How do we manifest them?
Why A Sense of Belonging?
A sense of belonging is critical to developing, nurturing, and sustaining trust. We have to have trust in one another in order to freely cooperate, build high functioning teams, and embody active empathy.
Belonging occurs when we feel free to participate in and contribute to the design and implementation of the world we inhabit or aspire to inhabit. In a Democracy, it means we have the right to make demands on institutions without barter, fear, or retaliation. It has become more urgent to establish and protect these guiding principles in our communities and in our workplaces.
A sense of belonging matters because perceived isolation –– feeling alone – can create a matrix of harm that undermines trust. Most frequently reported are a heightened vigilance for social threats, an increase in anxiety and hostility, and withdrawal. We have to feel that we matter. This cannot occur if we’re constantly scanning for threats, feel anxious, or managing hostility. People who feel lonely worry more about being evaluated negatively than those who feel a sense of belonging. When we’re feeling isolated and threatened, we withdraw further.
There are short and long-term consequences when there is a chronic sense of isolation. The matrix of behaviors described above most commonly leads to false interpretations of the person who feels isolated. Translated: they’re not prepared, engaged, confident, or worse –– not smart enough. The most significant consequence is the assumption that they have no potential or leadership qualities. This impacts promotions to top leadership positions, perpetuating the cycle of predominantly white-led schools and organizations, and the propensity for the proliferation of white- supremacist organizations.
Without intervention, the cycle continues. We can interrupt this pattern.
We can coach, lead and engage, anchored in a vision that promotes policies and a culture for colleagues and community to speak truth to power. We should commit to regularly revisit the vision and attendant policies as internal conditions are influenced and impacted by external events.We invite you to experience States of Being, a strengths-based philosophical approach to coaching – anchored in belonging, benevolence, and seeing the higher self – embodied in a practice that cascades throughout schools, organizations and communities.
We need an educational system that fosters a sense of belonging in our students so that, no matter what their background, they can envision themselves in positions of privilege, leadership, and power. We have to be part of creating a place of belonging that will allow them to be fearless
and vulnerable in order to become their best selves.– Donnell Bailey, Excerpt: States of Being: Leadership Coaching for Equitable Schools
Why Coach and Lead to Strengths?
Learning from our failures can be useful. But identifying what we’re doing wrong only tells us what not to do again and does little to help us understand what we’re doing right so we can continue to do it. By focusing on what we do well (perhaps intuitively or instinctively), we learn to exercise our strengths intentionally, and strategically.
Coaching to leaders’ assets, strengths, and talents provides them with information about what they already know how to do, and hones their ability to use their assets in other situations. When we coach to people’s strengths, we build loyalty and trust, which makes it possible for us to Be Bold when we need to be.
Unless we can truly see the higher self in others (and in ourselves), and anchor our coaching sessions in successes and strengths, we will fall into the seductive trap of defining our leaders by what we and they come to believe are their weaknesses. We and they will view them as “less than,” at best, and “broken,” at worst—and we will be in a constant state of trying to fix them. We will have no image of them flying, only flailing or failing.
Employees need to sense themselves succeeding if we want them to stay on the job long enough to build expertise and institutional memory, two critical links to counter student attrition and the opportunity gap in schools that serve primarily children of color.
Coaching to assets offers collaborative access to what employees bring to their work, what they excel in, and what their dreams are. We coach leaders and teachers to infuse their community with its aspirational vision of serving students.
As coaches, we imagine the leader at her best, regularly see the promise in her — her highest self. We imbue the leader or teacher with her own intelligence and help her connect the dots from previous successful experiences she has had, especially with those new to teaching or leading. Perhaps her experiences might have been as a member of an affinity organization, a sports team, or any other group she has led. These successes and strengths can be translated to her current work using the Coach to Assets guide.
It takes everything we can muster not to put our attention on the things that aren’t working, but it’s a discipline that must be practiced in order to be successful. This isn’t to say that the leader or coach shouldn’t notice areas where further development is needed. It means that we coach to notice what people do well so that they can call upon these strengths in other areas of development.
As coaches, we want to model this practice and be transparent about it so that our leaders can learn how to do this with the people they supervise and coach.
The big end in mind is to create conditions in which students feel free to have a full voice in their education, and that they have the right to make cultural demands on institutions without barter, fear, or retaliation. It means that they participate and contribute in the design of the world they will inhabit.
