COACHING

Coaching with Elk Willow Consulting is a personalized, reflective, and action-oriented process that supports leaders and teams as they navigate complexity, strengthen their professional practice, and grow into the next stage of their leadership. Coaching is one of the most personal parts of leadership development because it creates a dedicated space for reflection, honest conversation, strategic thinking, and practical growth. It helps leaders pause long enough to examine their assumptions, clarify their goals, strengthen their confidence, and consider how others experience their leadership.

Elk Willow Consulting provides coaching for educational leaders, executives, school administrators, system leaders, emerging leaders, leadership teams, and organizations seeking to build stronger leadership capacity. Coaching may focus on leadership development, instructional leadership, strategic planning, communication, decision-making, change leadership, team dynamics, role clarity, professional confidence, organizational culture, implementation, or navigating uncertain and complex situations.

Our coaching approach is relational, practical, and grounded in lived leadership experience. We do not offer one-size-fits-all advice or quick fixes. Instead, we work alongside leaders and teams to understand their context, identify priorities, surface tensions, and develop strategies that are meaningful, realistic, and aligned with their values. Coaching conversations often help leaders move from feeling overwhelmed or reactive toward greater clarity, intentionality, and confidence.

Through coaching, individuals and teams are supported in building self-awareness, sharpening their leadership voice, making sense of difficult situations, and taking purposeful action. The process can provide a confidential sounding board, a structured space for professional growth, and a supportive partnership for leaders who are carrying complex responsibilities. Coaching helps leaders focus not only on what they need to do, but also on who they are becoming as they lead.

Whether you are an executive leader seeking a reflective partner, a new or experienced school leader strengthening your practice, or a team working to improve collaboration and alignment, Elk Willow Consulting offers coaching that helps people grow their capacity to lead with wisdom, courage, and purpose.

Executive Coaching

Executive coaching with Elk Willow Consulting supports senior leaders, system leaders, executives, directors, superintendents, assistant superintendents, principals, nonprofit leaders, and high-potential professionals who are carrying significant responsibility within their organizations. Executive leadership often requires leaders to make decisions in conditions of uncertainty, communicate across multiple audiences, manage competing priorities, hold complex relationships, and remain grounded while others look to them for direction. Executive coaching provides a confidential and strategic space to think, reflect, plan, and grow.

This coaching service is designed for leaders who want to strengthen self-awareness, clarify professional goals, navigate complexity, and increase leadership effectiveness. Coaching conversations may focus on strategic leadership, organizational change, communication, governance relationships, conflict navigation, confidence, decision-making, team leadership, stakeholder engagement, public accountability, instructional leadership, or personal leadership sustainability. Each coaching relationship is customized to the leader’s context, role, goals, and current challenges.

Elk Willow Consulting brings deep experience in education, system leadership, government, consulting, professional learning, and organizational improvement. This allows executive coaching conversations to move between the big picture and the practical realities of leadership. Leaders are supported to examine the systems they work within, the patterns they notice, the pressures they manage, and the possibilities available to them. Coaching may include reflective questioning, scenario exploration, leadership tools, goal setting, feedback interpretation, strategic planning, or preparation for important conversations and decisions.

Executive coaching is especially valuable during periods of transition, growth, uncertainty, or increased responsibility. It can support leaders who are new to a role, preparing for advancement, leading a major initiative, rebuilding trust, strengthening their leadership presence, or seeking a more intentional way to lead. The coaching process helps leaders slow down, name what matters, and determine their next wise action.

Through executive coaching, leaders gain a trusted thinking partner who can support both reflection and forward movement. The goal is to help leaders lead with greater clarity, confidence, emotional intelligence, and strategic purpose while continuing to build the capacity of the people and systems they serve.

Team Coaching

Team coaching with Elk Willow Consulting helps leadership teams, school-based teams, district teams, organizational teams, and cross-functional groups strengthen their collaboration. Many teams are filled with capable people, but capability alone does not guarantee coherence, trust, shared purpose, or effective collaboration. Team coaching creates structured opportunities for teams to examine how they communicate, make decisions, solve problems, respond to conflict, use evidence, clarify roles, and advance collective priorities.

This coaching service is designed for teams that want to build organizational capacity, improve alignment, strengthen relationships, and develop shared ownership for the work ahead. Team coaching may support senior leadership teams, school administration teams, instructional leadership teams, central office teams, project teams, implementation teams, professional learning teams, or groups who have been asked to lead change across an organization. It is especially helpful when teams are navigating a new strategic direction, a leadership transition, an implementation challenge, cultural tension, or a complex improvement priority.

Elk Willow Consulting approaches team coaching as both a relational and strategic process. Strong teams need trust, but they also need structure. They need psychological safety, but they also need clarity. They need space for honest conversation, but they also need tools for decision-making and follow-through. Coaching sessions may include facilitated dialogue, reflective protocols, team assessments, role clarification, communication mapping, planning tools, problem-framing activities, scenario-based conversations, and progress-monitoring routines.

The purpose of team coaching is not simply to help a group get along. The deeper goal is to help the team become more effective in its shared work. This means helping team members understand their collective purpose, identify patterns that help or hinder progress, clarify expectations, strengthen communication, and develop practical agreements for how they will work together. Team coaching can also help groups surface assumptions, navigate disagreement, and build the confidence to have more productive conversations.

Through team coaching, organizations can build leadership capacity from within. Teams become better equipped to lead improvement, support implementation, respond to complexity, and sustain momentum over time. Elk Willow Consulting helps teams move from fragmented effort to shared direction, from parallel work to collective responsibility, and from good intentions to stronger collaborative practice.

Leadership Coaching

Leadership coaching with Elk Willow Consulting supports current and emerging leaders who want to strengthen their leadership practice, clarify their professional identity, and lead with greater intention. Leadership is not simply a position or title. It is a set of daily practices shaped by relationships, decisions, communication, values, judgment, and the ability to support others through uncertainty and change. Leadership coaching creates space for leaders to reflect on these practices and develop the confidence, clarity, and capacity needed to lead well.

This coaching service is especially relevant for principals, assistant principals, teacher leaders, instructional leaders, central office leaders, nonprofit leaders, project leads, and professionals stepping into new leadership responsibilities. Coaching may focus on leadership identity, instructional leadership, staff supervision, communication, difficult conversations, school improvement, team development, change leadership, decision-making, time management, strategic priorities, relational trust, or navigating the emotional complexity of leadership work.

Elk Willow Consulting works strategically with leaders to understand the context in which they are leading. Rather than beginning with a generic leadership model, coaching starts with the leader’s real work: the people they support, the decisions they face, the systems they navigate, and the goals they seek to advance. From there, coaching helps leaders identify what is working, what feels stuck, what needs to shift, and what next steps are most purposeful.

Leadership coaching often helps leaders build self-awareness by examining their strengths, habits, assumptions, communication patterns, and decision-making tendencies. It also helps leaders develop practical strategies for leading teams, supporting professional learning, managing conflict, strengthening organizational culture, and aligning daily actions with larger goals. Coaching can provide a confidential space to rehearse conversations, unpack challenging situations, interpret feedback, and think through the leadership moves required in complex circumstances.

The goal of leadership coaching is to help leaders grow in both confidence and competence. Leaders should leave coaching conversations with clearer language, stronger judgment, practical next steps, and a deeper sense of how they want to show up in their role. Elk Willow Consulting supports leaders to develop the reflective capacity, strategic mindset, and relational skills needed to lead learning, support people, and contribute to meaningful organizational growth.

Stories from the Field

Coaching is the most personal and transformative part of my work. It’s where big systems meet individual stories — where leadership isn’t just discussed but lived, wrestled with, and grown into. I don’t offer quick fixes; I walk beside leaders as they navigate complexity, build their voice, and expand their capacity to lead change.

These Field Notes are quiet but powerful stories of transformation — of confidence found, leadership shared, and new pathways opened.

- Stories from the Field -
Team Coaching

- Field notes -

Building Coaching Capacity Within an Organization

The Challenge

The Solution

I partnered with the group for a year-long coaching series designed to build their skills and confidence. Meeting monthly, we explored foundational coaching practices, adult learning principles, and the art of powerful questioning. Each session introduced new tools and strategies for their “coaching toolbox,” from listening techniques to feedback frameworks.

Equally important, the sessions created space for participants to share their real-world challenges, reflect on their growth, and collaboratively problem-solve. This ongoing support allowed them to immediately apply what they were learning and refine their approach over time.

The Impact

By the end of the coaching series, participants reported feeling equipped and confident in their roles. They were able to show up for colleagues in more impactful ways, facilitating professional growth and supporting meaningful change across the organization. The ripple effect was felt well beyond the coaching group, as the organization began to see improved collaboration, communication, and professional learning outcomes system-wide.

- Field Notes -

Transforming a Toxic Workplace Culture

The Challenge

A once-successful business was losing clients and couldn’t understand why. The work itself hadn’t changed, but something deeper was undermining trust and relationships. The root cause became clear through coaching: the addition of a new employee had altered the workplace culture, and negative communication patterns had emerged. Over time, toxicity spread among staff and seeped into client interactions.

The Solution

I worked with the team to surface and unpack the toxic behaviours that had become normalized. Through guided reflection, honest conversations, and facilitated dialogue, we examined how communication — both internal and external — was impacting the organization’s reputation and relationships.

We then co-created new communication norms and practices to rebuild a culture of respect and professionalism. Coaching sessions supported the team in practicing these new behaviours, holding one another accountable, and re-establishing trust as a shared value.

The Impact

The transformation was profound. As the team adjusted their communication style, relationships improved, and trust began to return. The organization stopped losing business and regained the positive reputation it had once enjoyed. This case highlighted the power of team coaching to surface hidden cultural issues and guide groups toward healthier, more productive ways of working together.

- Field Notes -

Confronting Bias and Rebuilding Client Trust

The Challenge

The Solution

I worked closely with the owner and staff to unpack bias and build awareness. Through reflective exercises and facilitated dialogue, we explored the ways bias manifests in everyday interactions and the harm it can cause. Together, we co-developed new norms and communication practices designed to ensure every client felt welcomed, respected, and valued.

Not all employees were willing or able to make the shift. Some chose to leave the organization, while others committed to learning and change. With focused coaching and ongoing support, the remaining team members worked collaboratively to embed inclusive practices into the culture of the business.

The Impact

The results were significant. The business began to rebuild trust with its clientele, and word of mouth about the improved environment brought clients back. More importantly, the workplace culture shifted from one of unexamined bias to one of intentional inclusivity.

This case illustrates how team coaching can catalyze profound cultural change — even in small organizations — and how confronting difficult truths can pave the way for stronger relationships and long-term success.

- Stories From The Field -
Leadership Coaching

- Field Notes -

Growing Into Leadership – Navigating a Major Transition

The Challenge

When a seasoned principal moved into a central office role within the same school division, they faced an unexpected challenge: not everyone believed they were the right fit for the position. Having spent most of their career inside the system, they felt both deeply connected and intensely scrutinized. Confidence wavered, and the weight of others’ perceptions threatened to overshadow their potential.

The Solution

Our coaching work began by creating space for the leader to reimagine their place in this new role. Rather than focusing on external doubt, we explored their own vision — how they wanted to lead, the value they wanted to add, and the unique perspective they brought from their years in schools. We surfaced the gifts, skills, and history they carried with them, and how those could now be leveraged to lift others up and build collective capacity for change.

The Impact

It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but with each coaching conversation, they gradually grew into the role. They learned to focus less on proving themselves and more on doing the work — building relationships, listening deeply, and staying grounded in purpose. Over time, credibility followed. Relationships were rebuilt, trust strengthened, and others began to see the leader not just as a familiar face but as a strategic partner shaping the future of the system.

This coaching journey was ultimately about identity — helping a leader step fully into who they could be, and in doing so, inviting others to see them in a new light.

- Field Notes -

From Maintaining to Leading – A Shift from Management to Leadership

The Challenge

The Solution

Through coaching, we began to shift the focus from maintenance to meaning. We paid close attention to what staff were saying — and just as importantly, what they weren’t saying. That silence spoke volumes: employees felt stifled, unable to share ideas or take risks. The leader realized that while they were keeping the wheels turning, they weren’t creating space for innovation.

We worked on building listening practices and leadership presence, helping them engage more openly with staff perspectives. Gradually, the leader shifted from simply managing processes to leading people. They began inviting authentic conversations, fostering collaboration, and encouraging experimentation.

The Impact

The result was transformative. The organization began exploring innovative ideas that had once seemed out of reach — and many of those ideas ultimately succeeded. The leader’s voice grew stronger too, grounded not just in authority but in trust and connection. This journey showed how powerful leadership becomes when it moves beyond maintaining the status quo and starts shaping what’s next.

- Field Notes -

Building Trust and Collaboration – Expanding Leadership Beyond One Voice

The Challenge

The Solution

Our coaching conversations focused on reframing leadership as a shared endeavour. We examined the leader’s strengths and explored where complementary strengths might exist in others. Bit by bit, the leader began identifying people within the organization who could be part of a broader leadership team — individuals whose perspectives, skills, and voices could enrich the decision-making process.

The Impact

As the circle widened, so did the organization’s capacity. Opportunities and possibilities surfaced that had never been considered before. Decisions improved as more information and perspectives shaped them. Most importantly, the leader no longer felt they were carrying the load alone. They discovered that leadership isn’t diminished when shared — it’s amplified.

Through this coaching work, a once-isolated leader built a collaborative leadership culture that not only strengthened the organization but also created a more profound sense of purpose and possibility for everyone involved.

- Stories From The Field -
Executive Coaching

- Field Notes -

Building Confidence and Leadership Identity in a New Role

The Challenge

Stepping into a new executive role is often both exciting and overwhelming. One client — newly appointed to a senior leadership position — was struggling with intense imposter syndrome. Despite a strong track record and deep expertise, they questioned whether they truly belonged in the role and feared being “found out” as not good enough. This lack of confidence was holding them back from leading decisively and fully stepping into their new responsibilities.

The Solution

Through coaching, we created a safe space for exploring and reframing these feelings. Together, we examined the unique skills, experiences, and perspectives the client brought to the position — qualities that were not liabilities but distinct strengths. We identified patterns of self-talk that undermined their confidence and replaced them with intentional practices that reinforced their leadership identity.

We also developed concrete strategies for showing up with confidence in key moments: preparing for board presentations, leading difficult conversations, and setting strategic direction. Gradually, the client began to see themselves as capable and credible — because they were.

The Impact

- Field Notes -

Staying Relevant Through the Power of Organizational History

The Challenge

The Solution

Our coaching work focused on reframing history as a source of innovation rather than a constraint. Together, we explored the organization’s past — its founding values, pivotal decisions, and lessons learned — and identified how that legacy could inform new strategies.

Through reflective dialogue and strategic visioning exercises, the leader began to see continuity and innovation as complementary forces, recognizing their mutual importance. We developed ways to leverage institutional memory as a springboard for new ideas, positioning the leader not as “outdated” but as uniquely equipped to guide the next chapter.

The Impact

- Field Notes -

Strengthening Workplace Relationships and Finding One’s Voice

The Challenge

The Solution

Our coaching sessions focused on building relational tools and communication strategies. We explored how to establish strong professional relationships, clarify boundaries, and foster mutual respect in shared workspaces. We practiced techniques for speaking up with confidence — even in rooms where others were more vocal — and strategies for framing our contributions so they carried influence.

Together, we developed an action plan tailored to their specific context, including strategies to initiate collaborative conversations, prepare effectively for meetings, and establish conditions that foster positive working relationships.

The Impact

The client reported a significant shift in their workplace experience. They built stronger relationships, navigated shared spaces with greater ease, and began contributing ideas more confidently in team settings. Their presence was felt — and valued — in new ways.

Through coaching, they didn’t just “cope” with a challenging environment; they reshaped how they showed up within it, becoming a more confident and effective leader.

Let’s Create Meaningful Change Together

Connect with Elk Willow Consulting to explore how we can help your organization grow, innovate, and thrive.

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Book A Consult

ABOUT COACHING

COLLABORATIONS

TESTIMONIALS

Susan Poole

Executive Director of Learning and Innovation, Calgary Academy

Adelee is a gifted educator with extraordinary talent! She is an intelligent, creative, and innovative professional whose diverse educational experience and knowledge of present trends brings a high level of expertise and credibility. Her expertise is enhanced by her collaborative, thoughtful and engaging approach, grounded by her exceptional work ethic and desire to have a positive impact on the success of others. Adelee’s passion for her work and dedication to those who serve in education makes her an excellent choice as an educational consultant.

Tannis Niziol

Professional Learning Consultant, Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium

There is no one I’d rather work with than Adelee Penner! I enjoy the privilege of collaborating with her on a variety of projects, and I am forever impressed by the depth of her expertise, her unwavering commitment to the work, and her generosity of spirit. Adelee is an agile, intuitive thought-partner in any collaborative environment, and as a coach and professional learning facilitator she possesses an uncanny ability to “read the room” and to pivot in response to the needs of those in her care.

Mark Bevan

Certified Executive Coach

One of the smartest people I have ever met! Adelee is not only a brilliant mind, she is an exceptionally caring and thoughtful team member and leader. Adelee is generous in her words and thoughts and works exceptionally hard to create remarkable outcomes. Powerful human being!

Call Us

COACHING

Executive Coaching

Team Coaching

Leadership Coaching

Stories from the Field

- Stories from the Field - Team Coaching

- Field notes -

Building Coaching Capacity Within an Organization

- Field Notes -

Transforming a Toxic Workplace Culture

- Field Notes -

Confronting Bias and Rebuilding Client Trust

- Stories From The Field - Leadership Coaching

- Field Notes -

Growing Into Leadership – Navigating a Major Transition

- Field Notes -

From Maintaining to Leading – A Shift from Management to Leadership

- Field Notes -

Building Trust and Collaboration – Expanding Leadership Beyond One Voice

- Stories From The Field - Executive Coaching

- Field Notes -

Building Confidence and Leadership Identity in a New Role

- Field Notes -

Staying Relevant Through the Power of Organizational History

- Field Notes -

Strengthening Workplace Relationships and Finding One’s Voice

Let’s Create Meaningful Change Together

ABOUT COACHING

COLLABORATIONS

TESTIMONIALS

Susan Poole

Executive Director of Learning and Innovation, Calgary Academy

Tannis Niziol

Professional Learning Consultant, Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium

Mark Bevan

Certified Executive Coach

Contact

- Stories from the Field -
Team Coaching

- Stories From The Field -
Leadership Coaching

- Stories From The Field -
Executive Coaching