Teach Middle East Podcast
Welcome to the Teach Middle East Podcast, the ultimate audio hub where educators find inspiration, share innovative ideas, and grow together! Brought to you by Moftah Publishing—the minds behind the premier Teach Middle East Magazine—this podcast is your gateway to the latest research-based practices, cutting-edge classroom strategies, and the heartwarming stories of educators from the Middle East and around the globe.
As the only podcast that interviews school leaders from across the Middle East and beyond, we offer unparalleled insights into the challenges and successes that shape educational landscapes in diverse settings. Join us as we dive deep into the fascinating world of education, where every episode promises a treasure trove of insights designed to connect, develop, and empower the brilliant minds shaping our future. Whether you’re seeking fresh perspectives, practical tips, or a dose of inspiration, the Teach Middle East Podcast is your must-listen resource. Tune in and transform the way you teach!
Teach Middle East Podcast
Building a Leadership Legacy Through Coaching With Dr Helen Wright and Zoubiya Ahmed at MESLC 2025
This episode explores the powerful relationship between coaching and leadership legacy with Dr Helen Wright and Zoubiya Ahmed at the Middle East School Leadership Conference 2025. They discuss how coaching can transform leaders while helping them create a collective legacy that impacts their communities.
• Introduction to the theme of building leadership legacy
• Role of coaching in personal and professional growth
• Understanding the concept of collective legacy
• Common barriers preventing leaders from seeking coaching
• Importance of reflection and self-belief in leadership
• Practical advice for leaders on integrating coaching into their development
If you're ready to take the next step in your leadership journey, reach out for coaching sessions and invest in your legacy. Connect with Dr Helen Wright here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drhelenwright/
Guest hosted by Zoubiya Ahmed
Connect with Zoubiya at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoubiya/
Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.
Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.
Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachmiddleeast/.
Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
Connect with Leisa Grace:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/
You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.
Speaker 2:Hello Helen. Hello, I'm so glad to be here, someone I consider a mentor, someone I consider as a professional connection, who has so much wisdom and knowledge. So thank you for being on this conversation. I'm glad to be here with you. We are at the mcgee school leadership conference and the theme today is building a leadership legacy and looking at leading forward now as coaches, and I, as I say, consider you as an esteemed colleague in the field of coaching. You've worked with a lot of leaders and sometimes, when we do this work, there are confidential things shared with us. There's a lot of sensitivity, yes, required to handle some of the issues that we're faced with when, yes, leaders, senior leaders, middle leaders, all leaders and, to be fair, any human that we work with. So, given the theme, how do you feel the role of coaching supports building a leadership legacy?
Speaker 1:That's such a good question and it's a complex question, but it's also a very super question as well, because I think that anybody who's involved in having a coach will recognize the process that you go through, which is so much more about yourself first and then recognizing the with humility, the power that you have in order to be able to take people forward or around you. So it starts with that who am I? And then what could I do and what do people around me need? And then how am I going to do it? How am I going to make that happen? And the coach is almost like a bystander in that. So the coach is there saying, okay, I'm asking those questions. You said that. Take that a bit further, shall we?
Speaker 2:Let's see what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Positive curiosity, but also care, underpinning the curiosity to enable the coachee to make a discovery and I would say, as a coach, that one of the things I feel very strong about is that if I've taken somebody on to be able to be coached, then I'm really invested in them Because there's something that drives us around the legacy. It's not my legacy, it's not their legacy, it's our collective legacy, and particularly in school leaders. If all of us are helping school leaders be in the right place at the right time, doing what's amazing to work with their colleagues, with children, everyone benefits Parents benefit- it's healthy eating.
Speaker 2:Dominoes, snowballs, all of the effects of that.
Speaker 1:Children have a whole benefit and children are the future of the world. So it's an investment in the world. That's the legacy. It's not a single legacy, it's a collective legacy.
Speaker 2:I love that term collective legacy, because oftentimes when we talk about legacy, sometimes it feels like we're talking about being old and grey and looking back on a timeline. Golden gray and looking back on a timeline, you know we're at the end. And it doesn't have to be. It can be quite dynamic and it can continue on through you, me, and then it cascades on rather than it being linear from point to point.
Speaker 1:Yes, A living legacy. Yeah, that's what we've got A living legacy, a living collective legacy. Okay, you sorted it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, living collective legacy okay, you sorted it. Yeah, and what would you say are some of the themes of challenge that stand in the way? Indeed, inhibit, form barriers to leaders.
Speaker 1:Seeing the benefit in coaching yeah, so what's the barriers that stop people taking up coaching in the first place? Or considering there are a number actually. One of them is that that people taking up coaching in the first place, of course, or considering there are a number actually. One of them is that people think do I need coaching Because we don't know what we don't know. That's the thing it's like. If you don't know what you don't know, then why would you take it.
Speaker 2:That's why it often happens it's the Johari window right, totally, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it sometimes takes other people to go. Actually, do you know what? This would be really helpful. So I think that's one, and the other one is the kind of the difficult self-belief things Like why me, how could I, why should people invest in me? Rather than yes, and also thinking I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Another is time. People think it's going to take a lot of time. It doesn't take time.
Speaker 2:Or it's going to be like some sort of therapy, personality assassination. I'm justifying this from. The truth.
Speaker 1:It's going to be empowering. It's going to be challenging. Good coaching is challenging, but we're talking about coaching with one-on-one executive coaching, leadership coaching. You talk about an hour every month or six weeks. It's a small amount of time and in that hour there'll be something that happens that enables you to take forward something into the rest of your time.
Speaker 1:So you have to do work in between sessions, but you're not writing long essays or anything like that and I think there's also something else that people think this is expensive and it's not expensive. Coaching is not expensive. When you consider the values that you get from Cochi, consider how much people go off to residential conferences and different places, how much people spend on that, it is not expensive. And people think, oh, maybe it comes back to the self-belief, the values, or maybe I shouldn't be invested in it, Maybe we need more pencils in year three or something it's like if, as a leader, you are not being invested in first of all, how are you going to do your job?
Speaker 1:as well as you possibly could do it. And secondly, you're not being a very good role model actually, because we say to children all the time you need to invest in yourself, you need to believe. Look at all this we're giving you as children in order to grow and become, and if we, as adults, go?
Speaker 2:yeah, stagnation isn't stagnation what are we doing?
Speaker 1:lots of good role models and invest in ourselves. You know that and it and the thing is, it works have you ever and I'm saying this almost loaded question?
Speaker 2:I don't know what the answer is, but I think it's a brilliant question provocation have you ever met some leaders who consider themselves uncoachable Leaders?
Speaker 1:I mean, there are a lot of leaders, yes, that's right, you heard there are a lot of roles at Elouiseche. Haven't you met leaders who have had to put on a mask so long that they think they can't do any better and it's all going really well, and etc. Usually those leaders. There are multiple layers underneath that's a, really, they're the underdogs.
Speaker 2:Yes, they're the underdogs. Yes, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:I think there are sometimes, that there are people. I think there are other things that they need to do more than coaching. I think that most people the question that they have is is it okay for them to be coached? What is coaching? Will you tell me what to do? Actually, you've got the answer. Oh, no, I don't have the answers. Yes, you do have the answers the skill of the coach and that's why, being experienced coaches, the skill of the coach is to be able to find the right question, to draw out something and bring it out so that people see it in a way that they wouldn't otherwise see, and then they'll do something with it. So I know I'm quite challenging coach that would be a pragmatic coach as well. So I want to make sure that you have action points to take away. They're not going to be superficial. They're going to be things that make a difference, right? So sometimes you ask us is anybody ever unfit? Or they're no, but people do need to enter into it.
Speaker 2:As you were speaking, the analogy of you have a challenge or hurdle, a summit of some kind, not Everest, not the Anamerica.
Speaker 1:Anything can do.
Speaker 2:Let's say we're before Everest base camp, right?
Speaker 1:We're at the summit, a bit cold, a bit challenging. We're at the first summit. We're not quite tackling the result.
Speaker 2:We're getting to the site, we can choose. We could say, look, there is this way, yes, and there's also this way it's shorter, yeah, but it's more challenging, yes, and there's this way, which will take more time, but you'll have a scenic view, yeah. Now it's up to you, yeah, which path you choose to take. That's right and it's up to you what you want to think about. You're scaling that summit, yes, and I think that painting that senior, that that scene, yeah, and providing signposts yes, not even the map, yes, the signpost yes, is what the best coach is doing, and it be.
Speaker 1:This is a result of the work that you've done with the coach who's helped you see those that you decide. Actually, you don't want to scare Everest, you want to go for canty instead.
Speaker 2:Do that you know.
Speaker 1:So it's about opening a range of possibilities, yes, and the question is why do you want to do that?
Speaker 2:Maybe you should do that, that maybe you should do that, and it's finding what those are. I don't know what those are and in terms of the leaders you've seen in your career who've had the biggest impact, who left a legacy that is noteworthy. Yeah, have they had coaches? And if they have had coaches, how have they interacted with them?
Speaker 1:yeah. So I don't need the answer to that entirely, because you don't always know if you've had coaches or not, but I certainly know that the best leaders have got a strong sense of self and they have not done by themselves, they're absolutely haven't done it by themselves. They have had people around them who has thought about things, who have helped as they guide, they've helped them guide themselves, and they have a deep sense of humility, openness to learning, wisdom. That comes as a result of that and that doesn't happen just by people saying follow my own path and do it my own way Absolutely not. So, yes, I would say yeah, maybe slightly less conventional ways than you describe now, because now people can have access to a coach, whereas 50 years ago, 60 years ago, that wasn't an option. People had to find their own way. But isn't it marvelous that we're able to speak so much more about it now than we could before. It's great, it's useful.
Speaker 2:Another angle imposter phenomenon. I don't call it syndrome anymore, because we share a negative spin. Imposter phenomenon how does it feature on the way to creating a legacy? Yes, and what can we do when we get?
Speaker 1:so our development as individuals, from a coach see the development another leader. Development is not linear and it's not don't wake up and get up rooms for a baby. What's good to do is this you're good at that. It's shaped by all sorts of things. It's shaped by challenge. It's don't wake up and get out of the room and say we're a baby, what are we going to do? Use this, we're going to head there. It's shaped by all sorts of things. It's shaped by challenge. It's shaped by things that might appear not to go right, but actually are often the best things that could happen, and it's shaped by voices from previous generations.
Speaker 1:So the things that we were told as children and the well-meaning things that we were told, which probably aren't as helpful as they could be. So there's all of that that's going on. That often leads us to a position where we think why am I here doing this?
Speaker 1:Why am I here Now? Everything that you've done is taking you to where you are, so it's a good thing, actually, and even that questioning of who we are. So we talk about imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon, and I think there's something about riding the crest of that wave. It's like being conscious of the unknown ahead of you, so there should be a man about it. Oh my, what is it? Recognizing what's brought us to where we are and then seeing how we're going to use that, but also say thank you to all the things that have happened in the past. I love seeing people on that journey. We don't know exactly what's going to happen in the future. We do know, however, that we can shape it and we can be intentional about it, and we can draw on everything we say, all our knowledge of ourselves, about embracing of our inner imposter what do we call it?
Speaker 2:his part, you know what I'm hearing from you, and that's a lovely coaching. Yes, what I'm hearing is this concept that if we are in a plane, we're going to do a jump, we're going to parachute out of the plane. The imposter phenomenon feeling is almost the parachute. Yes, so we feel fear, we feel anxiety, but without it perhaps we wouldn't.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's a lovely image. Yes, and you've got instructors around you. Instructors around you, yes, that's exhilarating, that's right.
Speaker 2:sometimes it's daunting you might actually chicken out yes, and you can always go again yes, I think you're thinking of it more as a garment rather than as a persona. Yes is actually helpful. Yes, and I think the other digital toolbox is something that I like.
Speaker 1:that idea of the parachute oh, we'll take this a little further. It's going to be lovely for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, my brain always when I'm thinking of things, and I'm sure this part is with you too, I've spoken to manifest or to visualize a hurdle or a barrier. Earlier, when I was speaking to Priya Mitchell, we were talking about relationships being critical for us and caring cultures.
Speaker 2:And on the way as we were walking here. We were talking about relationships for leaders and legacy yes, but we were talking about the fact that when people say to me relationship, I actually imagine a ship being constructed every time. Yes, we is. So we start with a plank of wood and then, slowly but surely, we create this.
Speaker 2:It's a majestic image, so it's always there that relationship once formed is always there, yeah, and just built upon yeah yes, and the dimensions are very different ways, but that that also reads true of how we conceptualize ourselves and our leadership. So if you visualize your leadership, you visualize it as an object or a place you know, we often do activities like that what is your leadership?
Speaker 2:if you could it, if you could analyze it, how would it feel to walk through it and how is it to? If you were there, what would the sound be? What would the pictures be, and it seems quite abstract to some people, but in doing so you are exploring. You're exploring and also growing your brain. It's neuroplastic. The activity.
Speaker 2:And people say to me so why don't you do leadership? Do you just talk to people and you know it's well-meaning. It's well-meaning, but this idea that you can turn a construct, something quite abstract, something that someone can carry within them, yes, and actually move with it. Yes, in a way that helps them to feel more secure within themselves. Yes, that is the leadership of the self. So, coaching, and we talk about that, or when we are trying to create coaches- yes.
Speaker 2:Or have a coaching spirit within our school. Yes, it starts with knowing oneself, absolutely, totally.
Speaker 1:That goes back to the very first point I made. When you had the very first question. You asked exactly that, yeah, it starts with knowing yourself, but it doesn't mean that you know yourself entirely. Yeah, in order to be able to be a great leader, a good coach, it doesn't. It does mean that you need to be on a quest towards and that I think every day we should know ourselves that little bit.
Speaker 2:We have actively reflected on that we don't have spent hours doing that the best time to reflect on yourself is because we're busy leaders, right, busy people. When, if we I know I know where we're going to go with the answer to this, but if you were, if someone was like I don't have time to reflect, what would your advice be to them on when they might start to? What's the stepping stone?
Speaker 1:so two things. That one is we always have time. We always have time. There are things that once we become a habit that we will do there. People do not forget to clean their teeth in the morning. They just do it, and yet that takes a little time, doesn't it? We don't forget to do that because you know it's important to be brought up to do it.
Speaker 2:We do it, etc. It might actually be because there's a cause and effect to that. So if I don't brush my teeth, my teeth won't look the same, and if I don't brush my teeth I might have a bad impression. I might give out, people might smell my smoothie, but so I'm going to be forced to do it.
Speaker 1:For that reason, yes, but you didn't know that until you were told that and you actually practiced it. And then you realized at some point in your life, when you didn't do that, that was the so you learned that?
Speaker 2:yeah, so you never don't have time to brush it exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:So there is always time. There is always time you, there's always time to breathe, there is always time to eat some something, there's always time to notice, and it can take a few seconds to do that. The second point I want to make, though, is that if you haven't been doing it, then you absolutely need to practice, and you need to schedule it, and you need to stack that habit onto another habit, and so there's a trigger for you to do it, because otherwise, you could say, yes, I want to do that, I'll do that at some point, because you should do it, because you haven't built it in. We're saying that maybe people could use their teeth brushing moments to be able to reflect on such because it's best to be two minutes there you go and start with two minutes there we, we go.
Speaker 1:What's the day? Well, that's four minutes Sorted.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Or the shower. A lot of people say that's what we're doing, and in coaching we often signpost when you're brushing your teeth, yes, and when you're having a shower or someone cancels a meeting, yes, and then there's a dead time between the next one.
Speaker 2:It's a gift of time. It's the opportunity to come out of the rigmarole of the next and the next and having applause, the power of applause. We used to talk about this. We used to talk about strategically composing ourselves. Not composing ourselves because there's a stressor, but actually taking the time to be intentional about it. To be intentional, yeah, and then and I always pick this up when I'm watching you does that mean I have to become a yogi? Does that mean I have to start doing all of these breathing exercises and all of that? It goes in different directions.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be so heavy?
Speaker 1:Not at all, because it's not one thing or the other. We do live in a world which tends to be quite polarised. It's either I'm not going to think about myself at all or I'm going to spend the next six years on the foot of this wall. So it's not that I mean that's right. It's those little things that are balanced with other things. You make your choice. It's not like you're having to fit absolutely everything in. It's a question, and it's not like you're having to fit absolutely everything in because it's a question. There's something that I know I would like to do, that I'm going to be able to do it. It's something that I really feel compelled to do because I can see how it's developing me. I'm absolutely going to do that. Right, you can do that. It is there. You can do that. A coach helps remind you of that and make sure that you're on track as far as that's concerned holds you to account. You will do it. You will do it because you believe that it's really important to do it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:Um, on the point of changing, just making a small shift, making a tiny shift, I've actually this week had a alarm at this is a true story 7 am, yes, and 9 pm to remind me to just breathe, and I know that's really weird, maybe it sounds um, but when it pops up it actually really surprises me. Yes, did you forgot because I've forgotten? Yes, that I can take a really deep breath and just calm myself down. So tell me what's the impact of you doing that for you.
Speaker 1:What's the experience you've had?
Speaker 2:So I've reset myself to be intentional about taking a breath, because I'm a growth person, I'm doing lots of things and sometimes I just don't think, yeah, consciously about it and by having that trigger, reminder, the nudge yes the nudge to just take a really deep breath, just two or three of them, and I think the power of just yeah, just one. Yeah, one leads to two, and then, if I'm in a calm state, my whole evening looks different.
Speaker 2:Yes, or the rest of the night looks different, and I've set it to seven because I'm normally on the way, or getting up, or on the way, yes, and my head's like I'm either frantic.
Speaker 2:Yes so it's just it just re-centers. Yeah, and that just a few breaths? Yeah, because I think I read somewhere that if you calm your pulse yes, at least twice a day your general wellbeing is impacted. Yes, and it's been the ninth day of it. Yes, and I think I am a little bit more centered. Yes, and it's just like four deep breath yes.
Speaker 1:So what I'm hearing from me, what I'm guessing that you've actually given the answer there, is that you just you didn't wake up one morning, think, oh right, and just do a few deep breaths. You actually thought about, you talked about feeling centered, so a goal to feel centered. You talked about your general well-being and that would be a goal that you had for your general well-being. And you've identified, partly through your reading, partly through listening to it, you've identified that this is the way in which you're going to try and you're going to experiment. Do that, not only that, actually that strength of mine.
Speaker 2:So I play to my strength, scheduling yes and saying structure, yes. What can I do that I'm already doing really well? Yes, that enables me to do this thing, but at the same time I don't. Maybe I'm not naturally leaning to it, because I'm wanting to fill my day with as much as possible, so I use my own raps. You can really support me. So I think, if you're identifying your strengths well, you can use your strengths for for your goals and try and line them up.
Speaker 1:One self back to that and you have those goals, you've created those goals and coaching that process that you've gone through, using your own skills as a coach, with you, that's led you to go. Ah yes, I've got these goals. I'm going to do something about it and I think it's a little bit of practice what you preach as well.
Speaker 2:Because I'm always telling people time blocks your footnotes and that, and when you experience it and you tell people of your own experience, you're speaking from a source. You're giving them a case study which is live. You say I did it and this is how I felt. Why don't you try it Just a few days? And sometimes that's what makes the ball bearing you know, just take over, and I would say that when you've done it and you've convinced yourself, you're then a lot more effective as a coach with others.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think that's true. I think that's very true, and that applies not necessarily just to the breathing and well-being though that's very important for everybody but it's about people's career trajectories and when you experience things and sometimes precariously experience things for other people, you know that this is possible and even just having that confidence as a coach not to tell people what to do you know it and then you know which questions to ask in order to get people to go. Oh yeah, I think I'll do that absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I found in my uh when I coached uh heads and leaders, when you, when they start having series of coaching sessions, they start creating the fact that you're eliciting from your your. I know why you're up and I knew the question you're going to ask. But brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. So it's great because those thinking routines, yes, those, those moments of reflection, if they're pre-empting them, it's when the toothbrushing becomes automatic if they're adopting and absorbing the experience, and I think that's another reason why coaching is so critical, because yes when you've experienced it as some user coachee, when you're then the coach, you.
Speaker 2:It's a two-way synergy that comes up for me. Lastly, just lastly, what would be your key advice to someone who's just hanging on, just hanging on? They can't see their legacy right now. They can't see their work from the trees. They're just hanging on day to day, meeting to meeting, email to email, moment to moment. What would be your advice?
Speaker 1:you mean, apart from getting a coach, because the coach is this, I would say, apart from yeah, go for a walk. Yes, apart from sleep more yes, apart from that is break for a second, and it needs a lot. But break, think and ask the question, because you need to think differently. You need to be in a position where you're going to say I'm going to do this differently. So you need, therefore, to physically relocate to another place, another part of the school, another part of a park, rather than stay at home, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Change. Relocate yourself physically for a bit and ask the question I'm pausing just listen. And then internally, internally, and listen, and you won't have the answers all there, but that's where, if you start with that, it's like those few seconds of grief and it's going to be something. It will come to you who it is, who's going to help you. If this is happening, chances are there are lots of things going on. You could do what you deserve somebody to help, walk alongside you. So that means very much what you're saying physically. Put yourself somewhere mentally, put yourself somewhere emotionally and just ask the question what am I doing, where am I going, how am I going to do?
Speaker 2:and who do I trust or who, yeah, who could be, who could I lean on? Because leaders often are the ones people lean on and we need that network around those two. On that note, we always go deep and deep dive even though they've stopped them. Often they've stopped them now. We love a good deep dive into coaching and theory and practice and people, and I think genuinely we both love people and I see coaching comes from that love of humanity and that's legacy, isn't it? It has to some people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think generally, genuinely, we both love people?
Speaker 2:yes, and I think coaching comes from that yes, humanity and that's legacy.
Speaker 1:Yes, indeed, that's who we are. Yeah, thank you so much, my great pleasure.
