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ONE

COLLABORATION

Coaches can establish a diverse, inclusive, purposeful, and collaborative community when they take the temperature of the school climate and invite people who have differing views to the table.

Dismissive responses to attempts at collaboration arise all too commonly in schools. Take, for instance, the teacher who walks into a team meeting ready to create a vision with her teammates and is met with cynical team members who say, “I don’t have time for that right now.” The teammates also give nonverbal cues that they are too busy; after all, they have papers to grade, copies to make, and preparations to complete for the next day. Consider also the instructional coach who brings her ingenious idea to the principal, who meets her with an impassive attitude because the principal feels overwhelmed with his to-do list of managerial tasks. Additionally, imagine the district leader who has experienced success in trying something new and different and shares the strategy with the district instructional team, which turns down the idea immediately, saying it is not scalable and, therefore, would not work at a systems level.

Coaches often meet heavy resistance to collaboration because their schools have had an impermeable culture of continuing with practices that “work,” without questioning their validity, even when circumstances have changed. Lack of collaboration quickly leads schools to extinguish ideas or prevent people from ever sharing their ideas in the first place. When this happens, urgency, creativity, and zeal at best occur in small pockets but will not exist at an organizational level. Collaborative malpractice transcends the school building and permeates other aspects of the organizational leadership structure.

It’s easy to shift the blame for collaborative malpractice to the school building’s culture, mandate overload, or lack of time, but a hard look in the mirror could reveal something surprising. We all contribute to a noncollaborative culture when we continue to only respond to urgent requests and react to the multitude of tasks required of us. Always prioritizing the actions that allow us to simply cross things off the required to-do list takes away more and more collaborative opportunities. Instead of having teachers spend all their energy on trying to cross more off their mandated to-do list each day, schools should empower teachers to take innovative risks and invest in creating connections and relationships.

Teachers and instructional coaches must venture into new and unexplored territories in order to create highly functioning, creative, and impactful teams. Essentially, I am asking coaches to transform collaboration in a way that breaks traditional molds by promoting diversity, embracing dissonance, and ensuring balance. Coaches who value and act on diversity and inclusion and who encourage divergent ways of thinking while nurturing trust and accountability will begin to produce the outcomes required to positively change the landscape of teaching and learning. Coaches have a unique opportunity to influence the culture and context of their school. Their inherently consultative role affords them the freedom and flexibility to approach their work differently. This chapter will explore strategies instructional coaches can use to promote diversity within collaboration, leverage dissonance to strengthen collaborative outcomes, and balance social interactions within collaboration.

Diversity

We often think of diversity as relating to demographics, but experiences based on race, gender, age, and so on may not necessarily be the only kind of diversity that is important for the coach-teacher team dynamic to learn from. Diversity also encompasses a range of educational roles, ideas, perspectives, and instructional approaches. Creating diverse environments is important not only because it helps build stronger communities and organizations but also because diversity impacts the way our brains function. A study comparing diverse groups to more homogeneous groups finds that diverse groups demonstrate higher levels of innovation, creativity, and problem solving than less diverse groups (Phillips, Mannix, Neale, & Gruenfeld, 2004). Diverse groups outperform more homogeneous groups not only because they bring an influx of new ideas but because diversity prompts team members to process information differently and to consider different ways of working (Phillips et al., 2004). According to researchers Katherine W. Phillips, Elizabeth A. Mannix, Margaret Ann Neale, and Deborah H. Gruenfeld (2004), even though people often feel more comfortable with others who are like them, like-mindedness hinders the exchange of different ideas and the intellectual processes that arise from disagreements. Generally, people prefer to spend time with other agreeable people. But this unchecked affirmation does not always produce productivity and problem solving. Facing unfamiliarity takes more cognitive processing because it demands conflict resolution and emotional-energy expenditure. Through this cognitive struggle, new ideas emerge, and people learn from one another in unexpected ways and discover new solutions.

If we recognize that diversity builds stronger collaborative thinking and innovation, why do schools have difficulty addressing diversity in working relationships? I would argue the answer to this question has to do with the fact that when emotions and dissenting opinions mix together, acting on decisions becomes more complex and time consuming. Additionally, because teachers are already strapped for time, it seems more efficient for them to sync up with the teacher friend next door who will validate their opinion or practice. Teachers find comfort in sharing with a colleague who shares their beliefs. However, when we choose to surround ourselves only with those who agree with us or who reinforce or validate our beliefs, rather than those with diverse experiences and opinions, we develop an implicit bias.

According to Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (2015):

Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases, which encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control.

Whether we like to admit it, implicit bias is pervasive and affects every person connected to a school, no matter how open-minded educators think they are, or how diverse their team has tried to become (Staats, 2016). One example of implicit bias is that people tend to believe others more if they have an accent similar to their own (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). Educators can possess implicit bias toward students who speak differently or colleagues who have a different accent. As you think about that statement, reflect on your own attitudes and actions toward people who speak with the same accent as you, and your attitudes toward people who speak with different accents. Also honestly evaluate your perceptions of anyone who might speak with a different tone, display differing personality traits, or approach conversations differently.

Implicit biases also have an enormous impact on both our own personal behavior and coach-teacher relationships. It impacts the decisions we make about student potential and student behavior correction, and our perception of colleagues’ credibility or competence. The great news is that research does conclude we can take purposeful steps to create inclusive teams. In Everyday Bias, Howard Ross (2014) provides a framework of systems and structures that illuminate bias patterns and provide remedies to address them to promote an open exchange of diverse ideas within teams.

Ross (2014) provides a strategy using the mnemonic PAUSE.

■ P: Pay attention to what’s actually happening beneath the judgments and assessments.

■ A: Acknowledge your own reactions, interpretations, and judgments.

■ U: Understand the other reactions, interpretations, and judgments that may be possible.

■ S: Search for the most constructive, empowering, or productive way to deal with the situation.

■ E: Execute your action plan.

Consider a scenario in which you have a coaching conversation with a teacher and he or she exhibits less eye contact than you prefer. Let’s pause and think through what’s really happening. (See figure 1.1.)

Figure 1.1: PAUSE sample scenario.

Using the PAUSE strategy encourages a coach to look at all the possibilities to help disarm immediate conclusions. In the eye-contact example, PAUSE can help the person re-evaluate assumptions (Should I assume the person lacks confidence because his or her eye contact doesn’t meet my personal standards?) and chosen responses (Should I get to know this person a little better before I make an assessment? How should I engage this person in the future?). By illuminating our natural inclinations when working with others and making proactive changes in our actions, we can truly build a collaborative culture where everyone wins.

Besides the PAUSE strategy, coaches have three additional actions they can take to address bias head-on and proactively engage diversity.

1. Create a list of unstructured processes, and structure them: What activities do you do that don’t align with a specific purpose or process? Consider, for example, the teachers you engage with daily. How did you make the decision to focus on those teachers? Are they your friends? Do you have pleasant and comfortable interactions with them? Do you primarily interact with the predominant ethnic group in the school? Do you tend to give more praise to certain teachers, regardless of the evidence you collect? Also consider your feedback system. Have you structured it to align with previously established goals, or have you based it on your own presuppositions about teachers?

Once you develop your list of unstructured processes, create an unbiased structure. Ensure your daily interactions include all teachers. Create feedback processes that align with co-created goals. (See chapter 5, page 49, for more about feedback.) Structure allows us to make sure that all teachers have opportunities to be nurtured, embraced, and successful and to grow.

2. Engage with teachers who are different from you: As noted earlier, diversity does not only refer to demographics. Different from you means more than just race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. It also includes thinking style and personality. Although a coach is expected to work with all teachers, undoubtedly, coaches may tend to favor having more frequent interactions with teachers who are more like them. As our schools become more diverse, so will (or should) our faculty. Personally and professionally, I have observed that the more we get to know someone, the more differences we become familiar with and even embrace subconsciously.

3. Encourage others with opposing viewpoints to speak out: Dissenters and devil’s advocates can often frustrate us, especially when we are pushing our own ideas or ways of working. Organizational change often gets pushed through by those teachers who speak the loudest and who talk over those with opposing viewpoints. But if coaches preach to challenge the status quo in education, they must listen to and act on well-reasoned dissonance and criticism from teachers. Which teachers disagree with you or often try to derail your efforts? Give those teachers the opportunity to reason through their thinking by having thoughtful, reflective dialogues in a safe environment. This encourages collaboration through embracing diverse ideas and freely giving trust. (For more on dissonance, see the next section beginning on this page.)

Of course, schools must also address diversity in recruiting, hiring, and onboarding practices. In his book Originals, psychologist Adam Grant (2016) advises organizational leaders seeking to build more innovative and successful organizational cultures to hire for cultural contribution rather than cultural fit by actively seeking diversity in experiences, skills, and personality traits, rather than hiring those who think in similar ways. To ensure diversity, coaches must take part in the hiring decisions made by leadership. These practices foster dissonance that can lead to collaborative strength.

Dissonance

Dissonance occurs when some elements of collaboration don’t seem to work in concert with one another. It can damage collaboration if not harnessed in the right way. In an attempt to foster collaboration, principals often ask their coaches to facilitate collaborative common planning to discuss standards, normed assessments, and instructional strategies. Oftentimes, this looks like a rushed gathering focused more on logistics than on strategies. Although it’s appropriate to ensure we stay productive, we should utilize our collaboration time in the most meaningful way. This valuable face-to-face time together provides opportunities to create goals, discuss strategy (for example, personalizing learning), and articulate progress. A culture of collaboration is only possible when all teachers feel affirmed as educators and valued as contributing members of the team. However, this does not mean that coaches should aim to eliminate all dissonance. In fact, some forms of dissonance can actually be beneficial.

When working with existing faculty, how can coaches champion dissonance when visioning, creating new ideas, and monitoring growth? Grant (2016) suggests identifying the person who commonly acts as a loyal opponent or devil’s advocate, instead of randomly assigning someone a devil’s advocate role, because the assignment becomes just that: a role one plays. If the identified person doesn’t truly have a passionate feeling for or against an idea, he or she won’t have a compelling argument, and the argument won’t truly represent an opposing viewpoint. Dissonance must be authentic so that emotion and experience translate to thoughtful communication of ideas.

A school building contains plenty of opinions to harness. We should look not to create opinion bash fests but to leverage dissonance in a way that leads to purposeful change in teaching and learning. Coaches can discover where dissonance exists in their school through the use of a survey that contains statements meant to invoke emotion or reaction. Figure 1.2 features sample responses to a list of dissonance-discovering prompts that coaches can pose to teachers and have teachers answer anonymously or in confidence.

Figure 1.2: Dissonance-discovering prompts.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.

After teachers respond to these prompts, compelling statements, outlandish ideas, and dissenting opinions can emerge. This process gives teachers an outlet to share their expertise, practices, and purposes transparently and frequently. Coaches, in a sense, take a cultural pulse and invite people who have differing views to the table. After receiving these responses, coaches are able to leverage dissonance by acting on teachers’ specific desires and wishes. We, as coaches and school leaders, oftentimes do a really great job collecting copious amounts of assessment data or listening to the latest education buzz, but we frequently struggle with using the data to change our practice. It takes courage and perseverance to act on the information we discover and allow those who hold different viewpoints to take the microphone.

Balance

While collaboration is important, having team members collaborate excessively and not allowing them time to think and work independently leads to danger. Further, collaboration may cater to certain personality types over others. For these reasons, coaches must carefully ensure balance when working with teachers in a collaborative setting. Coaches can begin to understand how to strike this balance by examining the concepts of groupthink and introversion versus extroversion, considering a variety of balancing methods they can incorporate into their practice, and following three important principles of working as a team.

Groupthink

Collaboration is most definitely in your repertoire of educational jargon, but groupthink probably isn’t. Groupthink refers to the conformity that results when a group of people come together. This phenomenon, for example, is present in a study by psychologists Jamil Zaki and Kevin N. Ochsner (2012), in which fMRI scanners measured brain activity and identified that if an individual views a photo of someone with a group of people, and the group expresses that it finds the person in the photo attractive, the individual will consider the person in the photo more attractive than he or she would have without that group. Zaki and Ochsner (2012) find that the reward networks of the human brain respond to the photo of the person after it has gained exposure to the positive judgments of fellow group members, which can lead to the conformity present in groupthink. Coaches, however, have an opportunity to facilitate collaboration in a way that doesn’t lead to groupthink. It’s crucial that coaches actively honor individuality within the group and create opportunities for teacher teams to work together in effective ways through collegial-focused (as opposed to groupthink) tools that I’ll continue to provide throughout this book.

Introversion Versus Extroversion

The TED Talk The Power of Introverts (Cain, 2012) and book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (Cain, 2013) have received a great deal of attention for challenging and criticizing schools and notable businesses and organizations for overvaluing extroversion and primarily creating work environments that cater to extroverts. Susan Cain (2013) examines personality types in relation to social stimulation instead of to the often-interpreted shy versus not shy comparison. According to Cain (2012), “Extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they’re in quieter, more low-key environments.”

Cain (2012) tells a story about Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple. Because of his popularity and his work with Steve Jobs, you might initially think Wozniak’s success resulted from a collaborative approach to creativity or his work in highly social workplaces. As it turns out, his success did not result from a big, open-concept space full of huddling brainstormers plotting their course on whiteboard walls. Cain (2012) describes how Wozniak always made progress by himself on his journey to build the first personal computer (PC). Wozniak made much of this progress in his cubicle at Hewlett-Packard. He’d arrive really early in the morning before any of his colleagues to read engineering magazines, pore over technical manuals, and come up with designs in his head. After work, he’d quickly have dinner at home and then drive back to the office to have a late night of work. Cain (2013) notes, “He describes this period of quiet midnights and solitary sunrises as ‘the biggest high ever’” (p. 73). The key, then, to capitalizing on our talents and skills is for us all—introverts and extroverts and those in between—“to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us” (Cain, 2012). This means allowing time for teachers to work independently as well as in collaboration.

Grant (2014) finds that “introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they’re much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas,” whereas extroverts get so enthusiastic about their team’s ideas, they unconsciously start taking credit and “putting their own stamp on things” (as cited in Cain, 2012). This extroverted leadership keeps other team members’ ideas from gaining traction or even being illuminated. Applying this conclusion to the coach-teacher relationship, coaches can leverage the team’s great ideas by facilitating collaborative work that empowers teachers to be innovative instead of imparting their knowledge onto teachers.

I’m not proposing we stop collaborating together as teams, nor would Cain (2012, 2013) suggest that. The overwhelming culture of schools and society continues to shift more and more toward teamwork and collaboration. More than ever, learning should be part of a social context, as learners collectively rely on each other’s thinking to solve complex problems.

What I am proposing is we not allow the pendulum of collaboration to swing to the far extreme of cooperative learning all the time, promoting excessive group work and overly social norms in the classroom. Like in the classroom, I also suggest a balance of healthy collaboration in teacher teams. Cain’s (2012, 2013) and Grant’s 2014 research on introversion and extroversion is compelling, and we must address how coaches can work most effectively and creatively with all personality types by creating balance.

Methods to Ensure Balance

Coaches are facilitators of collaboration and therefore can ensure a creative environment that balances social stimulation. Based on my observations and experiences, I have identified the following three key actions that will support coaches’ efforts toward balanced collaboration.

1. Create a casual, fun, and relaxed environment: With the important work required of teachers and the pressures they often face, following this principle carries more weight than ever before. Sharing ideas and discussing learning standards and instructional strategies are pertinent for this environment. But when it comes time for creation and critical thinking, don’t force everyone to execute these cognitive functions in a formal environment. This concept segues into the next key action.

2. Provide structured quiet time: Remember nap time for students? Well, we’re not quite going there, but we must utilize quiet time in an intentional way. Quiet time is best for reflection, contemplation, and creation. Quiet time can also mean alone time, depending on what your team members need. If you carve out an hour of time with your team, and your objectives for that meeting require complex thinking or creation, set aside at least thirty minutes for quiet time. A possible breakdown of this hour could look like the following.

▸ Establish objectives for collaboration. (Five minutes)

▸ Set the stage for problem solving, ask clarifying questions, share thoughts, and so on. (Ten minutes)

▸ Have quiet time for reflection, productive work, and creation. (Thirty minutes)

▸ Debrief quiet time, and share work with teammates. (Ten minutes)

▸ Conduct a closing circle to discuss next steps, actions to take, and responsibilities. (Five minutes)

3. Identify and share personality types: Coaches can find many assessments online, such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (www.mbtionline.com), CliftonStrengths (www.gallupstrengthscenter.com), and so on, that can help them decide on the best way to assess and illuminate personality types and strengths. Not only is this beneficial for advocating balanced collaborative processes, but it will also be pivotal in working one-on-one alongside teachers. Once teachers share their personality profiles in a trusting environment, you’ll begin to sense mutual understanding and respect among team members. We will fully utilize quiet time when we make connections between how we work best and how that intersects with our interactions with others.

In addition to the practical methods coaches can use to strike the right balance in their collaborative practices, coaches should also consider principles that will help keep their collaborative work on track.

Principles of Working as a Team

Obstacles like groupthink, one-size-fits-all collaboration, extroverted learning environments, and unconscious bias can quickly derail educators’ important work if they don’t have a set of guiding principles they can frequently turn to. When working with collaborative teams, I’m often reminded of a sport that only enters the limelight during the Olympic Winter Games: curling. Curling is a sport that, at first glance, makes you say to yourself, “They are sliding a stone across ice. How is that an Olympic sport? And what’s up with all of the screaming and the crazy-looking sweeper mops?” But after you watch a match, you learn to appreciate the value of this unique game. To succeed at curling, curlers must have three principles in place.

1. Focus: The gentlest touch of a stone can have a huge effect on the stone’s trajectory. It takes extreme focus and concentration for curlers to ensure they place a stone on a path to eventually land on its target.

2. Teamwork: All of the screaming that occurs is how players communicate with each other. A high level of strategy and teamwork goes into choosing the ideal trajectory and placement of a stone. Everyone has an important role in the game and must do his or her part in order for the team to successfully execute the play.

3. Peripheral vision: With the teammates’ laser focus on the stone, it’s amazing that nobody kicks a stone while sweeping. Curlers not only have a laser focus on the path of the stone but also possess excellent peripheral vision to make sure they avoid any obstacle (a player or a broom) that could alter the path of the stone.

Instructional coaches apply these principles to how they plan, collaborate, and execute their “plays.” Even while coaches remain extremely focused on the eventual goal and outcome, they must simultaneously stay on the lookout for potential obstacles in their periphery. Our actions must be truly focused and aligned with our vision.

Conclusion

Truly collaborative coaches are shining examples of how to champion diversity in our learning spaces, making teachers feel accepted, inspired, and supported. Additionally, many teachers and administrators tap successful coaches for knowledge and lean on them heavily as instructional experts, but in school cultures that continue to react to the urgent instead of prioritizing the important, their expertise often goes untapped.

Effective collaborative coaches don’t shy away from dissonance but take advantage of it as a natural process of promoting positive change. Good collaborative coaches don’t push their own opinions as the best advice but simply and humbly seek better ways of teaching and learning. Accordingly, they surround themselves with a diverse group of people with different experiences and thoughts in hopes of gaining new perspectives and new knowledge. Lifelong learning is more than just a catchy phrase to them; they live it out with purpose.

It takes a team of people with diverse talents and skills, and opportunities to dissent, for positive growth and development to occur and for the team’s plan to remain on the ideal trajectory.