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Growth Coaching International
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Coaching leaders since 2002

The best ideas fail without follow-through.

You know what good looks like. The hard part is helping people actually get there, and making it stick.

Coaching is how that happens: better conversations that turn intention into progress.

We work with schools, organisations and the leaders and teams inside them.

Find your path
20+ years
of service
100,000+
participants since 2002
EMCC Global
accredited pathway
Trusted across
schools and organisations
Our purpose
Change the conversation, and there’s every chance you’ll change everything around it. We’re passionate about enhancing the quality of conversations in schools and organisations worldwide, through coaching, courses and consultancy.

Choose your path

Where do you work?

The principles and practices are the same. The contexts and programs are not. Choose whichever fits, and we will show you context-relevant options.

For educationSchools, early learning, colleges & educatorsLift teaching, leadership and wellbeing across your school, early learning setting, or system.Instructional coachingEducational leadersWhole-schoolEnter educationFor organisations & L&DPeople, culture, learning and development teamsBuild a coaching culture that grows capability, performance and wellbeing.Team coachingPeople & cultureExecutive coachingEnter organisations

Work across both, or not sure yet? Everything below is for both.

What participants say

would recommend their GCI course

rated their course content Very Good or Excellent

See more results

Based on 4,921 GCI post-course survey records collected between 2024 and 2026.

Sound familiar?

You know the problem. The question is whether coaching helps.

The gap is rarely knowledge. It is what happens in the days after, in ordinary conversations nobody planned.

The problems people bring us

  • We ran the training. Everyone loved it. A month later, nothing had changed.
  • My team brings me problems to solve. They don’t bring me thinking.
  • There’s a conversation I’ve been putting off for six months.
  • Feedback here feels like something done to people, not something that helps them.
  • Our best people were promoted for being good at the work. Now they lead people.
  • Our leaders are stretched. There’s no space for anyone to think.

Every one of these is a conversation problem before it is anything else. And a conversation is something you can change.

The question we always start with

If coaching is the answer,
what is the question?

It is the question we have asked for over twenty years, and it still shapes every conversation we have with the people we work alongside. Coaching is a means, not an end. Before it can help, we need to know what it is being asked to do.

Sometimes the answer is a formal coaching program. More often it is a coaching approach brought to the conversations already happening around you: the feedback after an observation, the review meeting, the two minutes in a corridor.

So we start with your context and your question, not with a program.

What we do

Six ways we can help

Built on common principles and practices designed to be applied immediately in your real-world context. Everything we offer is research-informed and practitioner-focused.

From our participants

What participants appreciate about their learning

Read their stories

  • Opportunities to practise

    Hands-on activities, real examples and time to put new skills into practice.

  • Relevant course content

    Learning that participants find useful and relevant to their work.

  • Knowledgeable facilitators

    Facilitators who bring experience, clear explanations and supportive guidance.

  • Learning with others

    Opportunities to share experiences, discuss ideas and learn from colleagues.

  • Practical tools and strategies

    Frameworks, resources and approaches participants can take back to their work.

Based on 4,733 written responses to GCI post-course surveys, 2024 to 2026.

Find your fit

Our most common starting points

See all courses

What our courses build

Practical skills you can use every day

Through our courses, participants develop a range of skills that make a real difference in how they think, connect and work with others.

  • Solution focused thinking
  • Asking powerful questions
  • Self-awareness
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Ownership and motivation
  • Constructive dialogue
  • Curiosity & exploration
  • Problem solving
  • Reframing challenges
  • Approaching challenges with flexibility
  • Collaboration
  • Listening and contributing effectively
  • Valuing different perspectives
  • Sharing knowledge and expertise
  • Communication
  • Critical reflection
  • Recognising patterns and insights
  • Reflecting on individual and team practice
  • Turning experiences into learning
  • Confidence
  • Agency
  • Experimentation
  • Adaptability
  • Building stronger interpersonal connections
  • Developing empathy and perspective-taking
  • Strengthening team relationships
  • Innovative thinking
  • Developing a culture of learning

7 great reasons

Why coaching?

The way people talk with each other is at the heart of relationships and change. Open any reason to read the thinking behind it.

01Conversations move things forward

The way people talk with each other is at the heart of relationships and change

Education and learning are sustained by the quality of interactions and relationships between individuals and within groups. Coaching conversations are essentially helping conversations: conversations that help another individual think with more clarity, feel more hopeful and ultimately exert greater influence on their situation.

02Coaching conversations are respectful conversations

Coaching conversations are empowering interactions that enable agency

The coachee is in the driving seat in coaching. Their contextual experience, knowledge and identity are the starting points for change. A skilled coach builds on the resources of the coachee to raise awareness, enable insight and build resourcefulness.

03Coaching is a way of leading

A coaching-based approach to leadership is the best-fit style for 21st century organisations

Coaching leaders are excellent communicators and build trusting relationships. They acknowledge and build the strengths of their team members, offer and receive constructive feedback, and are solution focused. Motivated employees feel a sense of purpose and value in their work.

04Professional conversations between colleagues work best with a coaching approach

Adopting a coaching stance in colleague-to-colleague interactions helps build engagement, leading to action

Respectfully curious conversations between colleagues build connection and contextual empathy, as well as enhancing collaboration and collective efficacy. A coaching approach engenders a sense of responsibility and supportive accountability that compels us to action.

05Coaching builds supportive accountability

Integral to the coaching approach is a focus on next step action and follow up

Effective coaching conversations provide supportive accountability rather than top-down accountability. Supportive accountability is created when the coachee thinks through and commits to their own small step actions. Momentum emerges over a series of follow-up conversations.

06On-the-job and in-the-moment professional learning

Skilfully facilitated conversations about challenges of practice can often be transformational

Coaching conversations are a form of on-the-job professional learning. They happen as close to the action as we can get. By noticing what is working and celebrating tangible progress towards goals, motivation and hopefulness increase.

07Coaching is the missing link in embedding change

Change is hard but coaching helps transform good intentions into great results

Our practice and default settings are inextricably linked to our experiences, beliefs, values and identity. Changing them requires critical reflection and conscious effort. Coaching supports an iterative process of incremental change: habit change takes time, support, and a series of small steps.

In their words

The difference it makes

The skills tend to travel. We are told the difference shows up in staff meetings, and in conversations at home.

  • “This training has been a very valuable way of spending time to enable me to support colleagues and have a much more solution-focused team.”
    Mary ShawHead of Centre, Jimmy Dunnachie Family Learning Centre, Glasgow, UK
    “Thank-you for your knowledge, guidance and support. Your sessions were informative, engaging and incredibly helpful. You united our Senior Leadership Group and have provided us the tools to affect positive change in our community.”
    Nicole MeadeCampus Director (Davisson Street Campus), St Monica's College Epping, VIC
    “Thank you - I learned so much. This course has been life-changing in terms of my professional life. I wish I had done it years ago. It should be mandatory for all emerging leaders.”
    Lisa WilsonACT Education Directorate, ACT
  • “The collaborative approach with fellow participants and the opportunity to practice the model between sessions. Also being able to see how I can readily put this into action back at school”
    Diane WilsonPrincipal, GRC Peakhurst, NSW
    “Jan’s facilitation of this course was highly engaging, informative and made direct connections with my context. Her knowledge of the research and the content of the course was excellent!”
    Ruth SmithCalamvale Community College, QLD
    “Thank you for sharing your warmth and expertise with us. I have learnt some valuable life skills to ensure my conversations are more productive and meaningful to build the capacity of others.”
    Melissa TrolioHead of Learning Area Religious Education, Santa Maria College, WA
Impact stories

The whole catalogue

The GCI Professional Learning Guide

Every course we run, set out in one document: what each one covers, how long it takes, and who it is for. Useful whether you are choosing for yourself or building a case for a leadership team.

Browse the guide

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Ideas you can use in your next conversation, plus research and resources from the team.

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