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Empowering Effective Leaders
By Roxi Funderburg, Harding Academy
Some of my favorite moments in life have come as unexpected surprises, experiences that challenged me in ways I never anticipated and ultimately proved to be incredibly rewarding. That is exactly what happened during a recent experience in my own educational and professional growth. I was challenged in more ways than I expected, and I came away seeing both myself and the people I serve differently.
I recently had the opportunity to invest in my professional growth by enrolling in the Executive and Workplace Coaching Certification program at Harding University. To be honest, when I began the program, I wasn’t entirely sure what life coaching or workplace coaching was or how it differed from my role as a school counselor. I initially signed up with the thought that, at the very least, I would gain skills that would make me a better school counselor. While that certainly happened, I walked away with something much greater. I learned how to see people in general – and my students specifically – in a new light.
Before completing the program, I often viewed myself as the expert in my interactions with students. Students came to me with struggles, questions or problems, and I felt a great deal of pressure to have the right answers and solutions to help them. If I didn’t know how to address a particular situation, I would often spend time outside of our meetings researching, asking questions or networking with others in an effort to find the answer for them.
Coaching taught me a better way.
I now see students as capable, resourceful individuals who are often more equipped to find solutions than they realize. Helping them discover their own answers is empowering for them and freeing for me.
As well-intentioned as I may have been before, drawing on my own life experiences and trying to guide students toward what I believed their solution should be was not always in their best interests. Coaching has shown me that my role does not always need to be the person who provides the answer. In fact, rarely should I be the person with the answer for someone else’s situation. Instead, I can walk alongside them, ask thoughtful and meaningful questions and give them space to process their thoughts out loud in a safe, nonjudgmental environment. That shift has been incredibly powerful.
There is something special about watching a student discover an answer for themselves. The confidence that comes when they realize, “I can figure this out,” is something I cannot give them by simply telling them what to do. I can encourage them, challenge their thinking and help them see possibilities, but ultimately, allowing them to own their decisions and solutions gives them something far more valuable: confidence in their own ability to navigate what comes next. And when I see the joy on a student’s face after they have implemented a solution they discovered for themselves, I know I have witnessed a true win.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons coaching has taught me: helping someone does not always mean giving them the answer. Sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is create the space for them to discover that they are capable of finding it themselves.
Roxi Funderburg serves as a school counselor at Harding Academy in Searcy, Arkansas, where she works with high school students.
