The C@A Catalyst Cohort, 2023-24 School Year
In our third year of Coaching@Altitude, we are partnering with 75 leaders at 18 independent schools eager to lean into a year of growth and exploration. Thanks to the generous support of founding partner Stephen Badger, training in coaching skills and ongoing coaching by C@A is being offered at a notable discount.
The coaching experience is resonating with our client schools and leading to multi-year engagements. We are coaching many of our clients a second year, while other leaders at the same school are joining the coaching cohort for the first time. We have created team workshops to complement our work with individuals as well as found ways to connect leaders across the country in similar positions to share challenges and solutions.
If you would like your school’s leaders to be considered for the cohort we will create across the 2024-25 school year, please contact Jim Leonard, C@A Director, at jimleonard505@gmail.com to set up a time to talk. We plan to initiate discussions with prospective schools beginning in December of 2023.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our coaches partner individually with clients (independent school leaders) across a school year in an iterative process that inspires them to fulfill their personal and professional potential. Coaching sessions have a specific focus, articulated by the client, and meaningful outcomes: creating greater awareness, identifying desired actions, examining limiting beliefs or assumptions, and managing accountability.
Mentors rely on their “lived experience,” utilizing their skills and knowledge as they guide others. Coaches do not lead with their background but rather help a client identify and achieve desired goals. Therapy typically excavates deeply-held emotional issues as a means to work on personal healing. Coaching is about performance improvement, with a focus on the present and the future.
C@A coaches have been trained by iPEC–one of the leading coach training organizations in the world–and have deep leadership experience in independent schools. Few coaches serving the independent school market have training as rigorous as that offered by iPEC (over 500 hours.) Couple that training with a nuanced understanding of the particular challenges of independent school leadership . . . and you have the C@A coaching team!
For anyone eager to continue to grow, personally and professionally: their leadership capacities will be enhanced from a year-long relationship with a C@A coach. Together, you will increase awareness of the energy you bring to your interactions with others, examine assumptions that might be limiting, articulate areas for growth and development, manifest action plans, and establish accountability.
Our school clients report a host of benefits, including: greater levels of self-awareness, clarity about their values and how to live them more fully, gratitude for the time and space to be reflective and focus on themselves, improved communication with colleagues, becoming more systematic in their approach to challenges, and greater confidence going into difficult conversations.
The client sets the agenda for each coaching session, which lasts 50 minutes and is scheduled on the Zoom platform at the client’s convenience every 2-3 weeks (14 sessions across a school year.) Once the client identifies the topic, the coach and client together articulate a goal for the session, why that goal is important to the client, and–this is the heart of the matter–anything that needs to be resolved or addressed to achieve that goal. Finally, the coach and client partner to establish accountability.
Coaching is a professional relationship. Our coaches protect the confidentiality of all communication with clients and will not disclose what is discussed in sessions–not with each other, and not with anyone at your school–unless required to do so by law.
Yes, we coach individuals at schools 1-v-1 in a wide range of administrative positions. These coaching relationships can start any time with prorated fees. Just reach out to us via email to arrange a conversation: info@coachingaltitude.com