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TWO

TRANSPARENCY

Coaches are able to create trusting, positive, and sharing environments when they are transparent about their intentions, their goals, and even their own flaws and mistakes in teaching.

Instructional coaches start off at a disadvantage in some ways when teachers associate the coach’s role with change at the classroom level. Even inside a positive culture, if people think you, as a coach, might be attempting change to the structure of norms, defenses go up. But if teachers work in a climate where they feel coaches are trying to help them and learn alongside them, and when coaches transparently share their own flaws and weaknesses in teaching, teachers will open up to their coaches. Teachers will then want to listen and even welcome you with open arms. Author Simon Sinek (2009) articulates the connection between transparency and collaboration by making the distinction that a team is not just a group of people who work together but a group of people who trust each other. And trust can only exist through transparency.

Transparency drives action because it allows all stakeholders to drop their defenses and be palpably honest in their current understanding and practice. It advocates full disclosure and trust, which helps remove some of the most difficult barriers in communication and team culture. This chapter explores the transparency concept of naked service, offers a tool to help gauge transparency levels, and provides strategies to develop greater transparency with teachers.

Naked Service

In a culture of unconventionally high levels of transparency that enable us to redefine and rewrite the legacy and role of impactful teaching, everything is up for questioning, and nothing is off-limits. This higher echelon of transparency encourages principals, coaches, and teachers to quickly share failures and mishaps as often as they would want to share kudos and wins. Teachers have the ability to vocalize challenges in the classroom so they may receive support from coaches to help students achieve success. Everyone wins in this new realm of transparency. We must acknowledge, however, that this kind of transparency also requires a great deal of trust from all stakeholders due to the vulnerability this level of sharing creates.

Author Patrick Lencioni (2010) coined the term naked service to describe the vulnerability a service provider should have with its clients and customers. Lencioni’s work has helped leaders and their teams create thriving organizations, and their collective achievements reveal that by having complete transparency and vulnerability with their clients, leaders can build radical levels of trust and loyalty that far surpass anything they have previously experienced. Uniquely, this degree of service questions the traditional approach of service providers, trying to convince their customers that they know all the right answers and that they don’t make mistakes. Customers find this “perfect” persona inauthentic and often manipulative.

Why do people resist being transparent? They resist because of fear. Lencioni (2010) specifies three fears that, if not addressed, create barriers against trust, loyalty, and transparency between organizations and their customers.