Coaching Approaches at a Conservatoire
In spring 2010 I was offered the privilege of participating in a coaching course together with 15 colleagues from my Academy. As the contents and ideology of the course were in line with the goals and approaches of our Innovative Conservatoire Seminars, I seized the opportunity.
But what is coaching, exactly? Nowadays, innumerable consultants, therapists and others call themselves coaches, but what they mean by that title varies greatly. My course was run by two coaches certified by the International Coach Federation, who both adhered to the strict guidelines and definitions of their organization. These guidelines determine aspects including the form, ideology, ethics, goals and rules of coaching sessions. Although we practiced and based our discussions on a dialogue of a strictly coaching nature, the stated goal of the course for us was to develop constructive forms of communication and to be able to integrate a coaching approach into our professional roles, in my case as teacher and head of the chamber music department.
Let me begin with the concept of team coaching where the leader of a group assumes the role of a coach. At my coaching course, which ended with a session about team coaching, I realized that I had recently and inadvertently practiced successful team coaching on an informal basis. This was with my granddaughters a couple of weeks ago. I was on the way to the playground with these two 5-year-old cousins and one of them had their little bike. They were bickering about who got to use the bike, and neither was very happy, to say the least. There didn’t seem to be a solution in sight despite the presence of adults who, including me, were all proposing numerous ways of resolving this problem and who all meant well. When things had wound down a bit and I found myself alone with the girls, I said, “Look here, we have one bike and we have two cousins and the three of us want to go to the playground together. What do you think we should do?” One of the girls immediately came up with a proposal, “One of us bikes the first half of the way and the other runs along, and then the other takes over the bike. Then we’ll do the same on the way back.” The other cousin enthusiastically accepted the plan and off we happily went, back and forth to the playground, my role being to determine the half way mark.
As the team coach, I had presented the conditions and prerequisites for action and asked the group to come up with a plan or solution. The group owned the problem together, and the responsibility of making choices rested with those involved.
Teaching contexts: chamber music by Ibert
There is great potential and creativity in groups, and a coaching approach empowers them. Whatever decisions are made will have been derived from the group and will therefore be well anchored there. These basic principles apply to individual coaching as well, and such an approach can have wide-ranging consequences in musical and instrumental teaching contexts.
Inspired by my further training course, I experimented with a team coaching approach in my next lesson with a chamber music group who had begun to rehearse Deux Interludes by Jacques Ibert for flute, violin and harp. It’s a quite brief and uncomplicated work, as its title implies. Needless to say, however, after a closer look at the score, it proved to be interesting to create an overview of the form and characteristics of the first Interlude. This I did on my own the evening before the first lesson.
Jacques Ibert, Deux Interludes for flute, violin and harp
First movement overview:
A Andante espress.
B Meno lento
A Tempo I
fl melody,
vi second part melody,
ha harmonic acc.
vi melody (4 bars), then fl melody (9) with vi second part, ha harmonic and rhythmic acc., then vi melody fifth higher (4) then a variant (6) with fl second part, successively more melody in ha (first in bass); B’s coda (9): vi melody, fl second part, harp hinting A, harp + vi transition to A
exact repeat of A but vi main melody (10), fl second part melody; then fl main melody (10), vi second part, ha same harmonic acc.
3 + 3 + 4 + 6 + (1 +) 4 bars
B1, B2, coda
3 + 3 + 4 + 6 + (1 +) 4 + 2 new bars
p mf p
mf sost f , mf f p, mf sost
p (pp) mf p + pp
F major, c minor, F major
d minor etc., a minor, d minor… C7 sus
F major, c minor, F major
At the lesson, I first listened to the students play through the two movements. Although they are all advanced master’s students, I was struck by how little chamber music understanding they demonstrated in their first version even though I understood of course that they had just recently begun their rehearsal work. Who had the melody and where, what is the form and where are the repeats, where is the harmony taking us, and how do the titles of the work and movements affect attitude and approach?
I then “took over” the lesson and handed out my overview of the first movement. Here we are, this is what it’s about, this is what’s happening and where. What are the consequences in your interpretation? What ideas do you get from this overview? What is an “interlude”, and how will you play Andante espressivo? This was an eye opener and the students, of course, had loads of suggestions. I didn’t say much and their immediate next version of the first Interlude was so different, so interesting, and so much more aware and together. They had their own ideas and they were listening to one another and to the whole. The lesson ended with an “assignment”. They were to write a comparable overview of the second Interlude together and present it at the next lesson, which they proudly did.
The focus of this particular coachable moment I chose, or created, was interpretation. Of course, that was one of innumerable other issues that could have been spotlighted. Other choices could have been group dynamics, collective goals, technical questions of a musical or instrumental nature, concert preparation, etc.
Individual lessons also have numerous openings for a coaching approach and often contain “coachable moments”. A strictly designed coaching session, as opposed to a usual lesson situation, is characterized by many principles and approaches that can be applied in various teaching contexts. Here are some:
• First you establish the client’s (student’s/students’) goals for the session (lesson) and the prerequisites surrounding it.
• Together you ascertain the so-called gap: where are you now and where do you want to be (goals)? How do you sound now and what are you doing now, how does it feel (physically and emotionally) when you have arrived at your goal? Where are you then?
• The conversation is goal oriented rather than problem oriented.
• The agenda is the coachee’s. The coach is an active listener. Silence can be an important part of the dialogue.
• The responsibility for development, progress or change is clearly in the hands of the coachee. This also establishes a healthy distance to the teaching situation for the coach as well as a healthy problem-solving atmosphere.
• The coachee can often be helped to find his/her own solutions. Open-ended questions (rather than leading questions that often facilitate a yes-no answer) are the coach’s method.
• Summarizing by the coach and mirroring with the coachee are important techniques to check “accuracy”.
I believe that in our music teaching contexts, a coaching approach is also conducive to the use of imitation and accompaniment. Role modeling (for example imitation, or call and response) and playing together (for example accompaniment, or duets) can inspire the coachee to gain important insights. Among other things, it can contribute to defining the gap, which is so central to the coaching approach. Perhaps role-modeling and playing together are our non-verbal means of posing open-ended questions at lessons.
Teaching contexts: chamber music by Shostakovich
Shortly after my experience with the Ibert trio, I began lessons with an undergraduate string quartet who were playing the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8. Compared to the Deux Interludes, this work is of course long and complicated. It represents one of the milestones of the twentieth Century chamber music canon. As far as non-vocal chamber music is concerned, there is hardly a work with more overt and covert meanings and references, not in the least its ominous subtitle on page one: “To the memory of the victims of fascism and war”.
Thus, this work can be placed in innumerable contexts making it a group-coaching goldmine in the eyes of an eager chamber music teacher searching for coachable moments. In preparation, I read the excellent and comprehensive book Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 by David Fanning (Ashgate). It offered me extensive information on, and a thorough analysis of, the piece. (I presented this book to the students at the first lesson and handed out copies of a few pages concerning the forms of the movements, but none of them pursued further reading on their own though I did encourage it and received a positive response to the suggestion.)
Even though the students were very well aware of the significance and strong, underpinning message of the Quartet, our first lesson seemed to be an eye-opener for them as we delved into the opening movement’s initial incomplete fugue (which is completed some 20 minutes later in the final movement) and three ariosos. In addition, I was surprised to hear one of the students state at the outset of the lesson that the opening of the work is “undramatic”, a finding that was non-verbally refuted and disproven in their two subsequent, highly charged performances.
As a non-string player myself, I was especially keen on, and prone to, using a group-coaching approach since I was not able to be as specific in my “solutions” and instructions as I would have been if coaching a flute or wind ensemble. I concentrated on interpretation through the prerequisites and frameworks of the piece in question, gave some suggestions, and encouraged the students to make their own personal and collective choices. The very structure of the movements, for example, awakens pertinent questions. As mentioned previously, the last movement completes the first, demanding a holistic awareness and approach, and the second and third movements comprise two consecutive scherzos. The two consecutive, and in some respects similar, movements thus pose a special challenge. In order to facilitate their rehearsals, I gave the students the following written question and guidelines:
Here we have two consecutive Scherzos. How are they different and how are they similar as to there their primary character and dynamics, keys, instrumentation, references (musical quotes), form, direction (descending or ascending), articulation, role in the “story”, etc.?
Some time following our first couple of classes, the students took the initiative of having a lesson on the same quartet with one of the foremost cellists of Sweden. I knew nothing about their plans to have this lesson, and they told me excitedly afterwards about how they had had a fantastic few hours with him. They were extremely inspired and enthusiastic, and full of ideas.
At our next lesson, it became apparent that my suggestions, questioning and coaching approach did not suit the mood of the students. I felt that every word I uttered was challenged or contradicted by them. I found it quite uncomfortable and was in fact at odds as to how I should go ahead with my teaching, eventually saying something like “Well, this is my idea or way of questioning what you are doing. It is for you to accept or reject my thoughts within the quartet.” I felt my self-confidence diminish and self-doubt grow as the lesson progressed. I was not present at the lesson with the cellist, but I imagine that as a string player himself who had performed this all-important work many times, his teaching differed drastically from the coaching approach I had been experimenting with. I am convinced that he had many excellent “solutions” and pointers at hand.
The atmosphere at the lesson with me, though not hostile in any sense, was extremely awkward and in some ways rude. As I left the room, I met the four students in the corridor in a lively discussion with one another. They pulled me over right away and profusely apologized for the situation that had arisen at our lesson. In a respectful and mature manner, they explained how they had not yet had time to digest the long and intensive lesson they had recently had with the cellist and that they were very sorry for the way they had acted during the lesson with me.
The causes of the friction at the lesson were certainly several, but I was reminded of how the coaching approach can be foreign and radical in our conservatoire environment. Do both teachers and students expect solutions and pointers to come from the coach, coupled with a more or less passive attitude on the part of the coachees? Is the coaching approach especially provocative in certain situations? Would it profit from its prerequisites and principles being clearly stated from the start? In what ways do learning outcomes differ from those of a more traditional approach?
After the students’ apology and our ensuing constructive conversation, we proceeded to have an incredibly rewarding semester together. They worked extremely independently and intently, which resulted in two powerfully moving performances at which they prefaced their playing by reading a page-long Swedish text from a novel concerning the holocaust. Their interpretation of the Quartet was a deep experience for me and many others in the audience.
Parallel to my work with the Quartet, I was also coaching undergraduates in the woodwind quintet by Carl Nielsen. In this case, it was interesting for me to combine a more traditional approach with “coachable moments” that arose. Similar to the Shostakovich, the Nielsen is a chamber music classic where knowledge of context, form and harmony is a prerequisite to lifting interpretation to a professional level – a new goldmine for the coaching-hungry teacher.
Teaching contexts: open coaching
A few weeks ago at our further training course, we teachers were introduced to a form of open coaching. In this method, the assigned coach and coachee have a short session on a topic chosen by the coachee. Here, the usual forms are followed, including establishing the goal of the specific session, and the gap and how to bridge it, all expressed by the coachee in dialogue with the coach. The “openness” of this session in this case comprised a handful of listeners (other teachers on the course) who “listened in”. At an appropriate time in the session, the coach interrupted the dialogue, pulled down an imaginary curtain between the coachee and the listeners, and instructed the listeners to discuss what they had heard and witnessed. Their discussion was not to be directed towards the coach and coachee. Rather, in a self-focused spirit, they were to confer about the matters at hand. After a while, the conversation was stopped by the coach and the session with the coachee was resumed, this time with the added input from the listeners as experienced by the coachee.
Last week, at my continuation course in Stage Presence with the master’s students in orchestral studies, I employed this exact form of open coaching. It was the first lesson after the summer. All the students had already had two semesters of stage presence and had elected to continue for a third. Instead of a traditional review at this first lesson, I chose to start by asking the group the following question: If you were to read a number of books on stage presence, performance stress or concentration, what would be the common themes of the books? We very quickly had an extensive list on the board which served as a good review of the topics we had dealt with previously in Stage Presence, and a basis for the rest of the lesson.
The students had also been asked in advance to be prepared to answer the following questions intended to establish a concrete gap and at the same time a goal and purpose for the stage presence course they were about to pursue:
1. Describe what you feel is your own present status as a performer in relation to the concept of Stage Presence and what you feel needs improvement or development.
2. Describe how you would like your status as a performer in relation to the concept of Stage Presence to be at the conclusion of this course.
I then held a short coach/coachee session individually with three of the students as the remaining handful of students listened in. We then followed the form of open coaching described above. The result, I felt, was astonishingly profound. One of the coachee students proclaimed “I have all this knowledge but don’t dare to use it,” the next said “I am never concentrated at the start of a concert. At my last concert I became focused for the first time after the interval,” and the third spoke of the fears of succeeding: “I thought that if I just succeeded, things would get much easier, but it was much more complicated than that.” All three then proceeded to answer question two above, establishing a gap for the next couple of months.
Needless to say, these important statements triggered lively and interesting discussions amongst the listeners. This gave significant feedback to the coachee who then established a gap in an open dialogue with me. Another student in the group was taking notes and gave them to the coachee after the session. My intention is for the students to have these notes and to be able to refer to them as the semester progresses. I used these open coaching sessions to establish the gap and my hope is to have open sessions in class about how they can suggest bridging it, primarily in connection with their mini-performances within this same group. Some students have chosen a rather modest gap considering the brevity of the course and the difficult of the task at hand, others have dared to aim high.
All this is currently work in progress, and an experiment of mine. So far, though, I am very pleased with the results. I felt that the use of the open coaching method permitted the students to structure the semester using their own clear insights as points of departure, and aided me in moving the responsibility for their progress to the coachees themselves. Many interesting ideas, problems and solutions were raised that never would have come to the fore if the responsibility had remained solely with the coach. I was struck once again by group potential. I am looking forward to seeing where this journey will take us.
(Robert Schenck 12 Oct. 2010)
I have the following reflections on Robert’s text:
1. I find the statement that “there is a great potential and creativity in groups, and a coaching approach empowers them” very encouriging!
2. Robert describes how his selfconfidence deminished and his self-doubt was growing in a certain lesson. To write this down makes him for me a good example of somebody that dares to have a coaching approach towards himself. For me this is an example of good practice!
3. Another sentence that resonates with me is: “The agenda is the coachees. The coach is an active listeren. Silences can be importent”. Good lesson for me!
Particular things that struck me about Robert’s text after the sessions earlier in the day are:
1. I feel that the most constructive forms of communication may vary a lot between contexts - they may be questioning or directive for example, but all have some fundamental qualities underpinning them. They are open, assertive, listening, playful, clear….
2. Somehow there is a real key in the idea that role-modelling and playing together find their way into a coaching model - this changes he master “do it like this” approach but keeps closely attached to the art itself, the playing.
3. Silence can be an important part of the dialogue - I want to explore this more, I don’t really know how or when to do it!
4. Our task is to enable deep learning, to get beyond an approach of “do it like this”. A coaching approach offers a lot, and may be uncomfortable.
These ideas and questions rose into my mind after reading Robert’s text:
1)Is there a point in studying music that one shouldn’t be coached but preferably taught in a traditional manner? When would that be?
2)In going into more conversational route in teaching could there something we loose?
3) How come it always surprises us that also the other people around us have a good ideas of what they really need (referring especially to the first story with the grandchildren)?
After our shared thoughts of this paper I got following thoughts:
The importance of shutting up as a teacher really becomes more and more essential, because it is a way to empower the students.
And as we discussed about the maturity of the students and in what level they would gain the most with this method I started thinking is independence required in coaching method? Maybe it dosn’t need that so much because in a way it is just a different way of walking the same road together.
Just a reflection:
I think that presenting the Ibert analysis as a coach is still a bit similar to the parents telling the children with the bicycle problem what to do. Maybe you go further, in a similar way to the elegant solution of Robert in his article: let the analysis be made by the group and let it be a “holistic” analysis of the music, apart from identifying keys and themes and bar divisions, making an “image” of how the music evolves through the time and what each of the players’ role is in the whole. That could in turn reveal the underlying problem spots, which could then be worked out. The problem is thus -in Robert’s words- owned by the students/coachee’s.
This text is an excellent illustration of what actually practice based research is about and why it is important to do it on conservatoires. We see a person (robert) on his journey. Very personal and direct but also including theory of coaching, thorough preparation in what questions to ask than examining his experiences and describing facts and outcomes. And after that a next step: sharing it with ither practitioners ‘us in this seminar’ and bending back his findings to practice again.
In the second round of the contemplative dialogue I was struck about a comment of Maria. ‘he did not loose confidence in his role or actions when it became difficult but he approached the situation with a rather open attitude in “reshaping” and making it tailor made until it fits his purposes and the reality of students and pieces.
Some reflections on Robert’s elegantly-written and inspiring text:
1. Robert writes that the ‘coaching approach can be foreign and radical in our conservatoire environment’. Indeed: before jumping at new approaches and forms for our teaching we need to remember that the traditional master-pupil relationship is usually as ingrained in the student as it is in the teacher. So the barriers to being innovative with this dynamic are considerable from both sides, not only on the side of the teacher.
2. Robert writes that his work with undergraduates on the Nielsen Quintet ‘combined a more traditional approach with “coachable moments” that arose’. It makes sense to consider, as Robert evidently did, that with less advanced students a traditional approach is in part still necessary and valuable. After all, the coaching approach Robert describes gives a greater degree of control of the learning agenda to the students: less advanced students inevitably have less experience on which to draw, so perhaps they need more teacher guidance than a pure coaching approach can offer.
And a related but more general point from our discussions based on Robert’s text:
Several of us noted that traditional approaches to music teaching are not ALL bad. So in our teaching and in shaping any curriculum, it is important to be conservative where something works and not innovative just for the sake of it. In other words, think CONSERVATIVE INNOVATION as well as INNOVATIVE CONSERVATOIRE.
1. Despite of our love to our students, we need to maintain a discreet distance to them in the musical or pedagogical practices. This was apparent in the manner of how Robert let the two granddaughters solve their bicycling problem. The coach’s personal relationship and care to the coachees is equivalent to trust. Consequently, trust means often withdrawal and distance, which does not create an experience of rejection.
2. Robert’s notion of collaborate goal orientation is a beautifully practical description of the often so cognitional Zone of Proximal Development. It is musical (How do you sound now and then), and refers to our use of the senses (how does it feel physically and emotionally when you have arrived at your goal?) Where are you then?