[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_00:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. William Summers and Dr. Diane Zimmerman. Dr. Summers is the author of 10 books, a former board member and president of the National Staff Development Council, now known as Learning Forward. Bill was a school and district administrator for over 35 years.
[00:30]
Diane is a writer and consultant focusing on entrepreneurial learning and schools that make a difference. A former superintendent, she has more than 36 years of experience at the K-12 and higher ed levels. And we are here today to discuss their new book, Nine Professional Conversations to Change Schools, a dashboard of options.
[00:50] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:53] SPEAKER_00:
Bill and Diane, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thank you. Nice to be here. Yes, it is. So I wonder if we could start just by framing the importance of conversation, because in an era where we do more and more over email, we do more and more in these kind of structured meetings, why is conversation such a key element of effective work together in schools?
[01:17] SPEAKER_02:
I think it's becoming even more important as we use technology for a lot of our work knowing full well that communication, nonverbal communication, has lots of meaning that we should usually pay attention to. I think another reason is that there are different conversations for different people, different small groups, large groups, and to have that repertoire, knowing that there are multiple uses, that's where we came up with the idea of a dashboard of conversations.
[01:52] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. One of the things that happens in non face-to-face conversations, since so much is happening right now with zoom and or online and zoom has got a delay factor and people don't tend to linger in the conversations as much unless they're in a chat room. And what happens is that we think we've given a whole message, but we really haven't. And when you can get into a conversation with somebody, you get more complete messages. You get more complete information about what the person is thinking. And as a coach, it gives you something to pay attention to and to ask more questions about.
[02:27]
So you delve more deeply into people's thoughts. And when you are able to do that, the person experiences listening in a way they don't experience it when it's just a surface kind of casual conversation.
[02:38] SPEAKER_00:
That's a great point. I hear questions from administrators all the time who are interested in collecting evidence or collecting data of classroom practice. And I'll hear questions like, well, what's the best way for me to collect evidence of the teacher's planning and their thinking process? And sometimes I have to say back to them, you know, that would be a really great thing to just talk with the person about. It's not any more complicated than that, that often...
[03:01]
the most direct way to figure out what we need to figure out is simply to talk as human beings. Why does that feel difficult for us to figure out sometimes as educators? If conversation is such a natural part of being human and how we communicate with everyone in our lives, why is this something that we need help with as educators?
[03:25] SPEAKER_01:
One of the things that we did with our dashboard is that we have, we call it a dashboard of options, and we've outlined nine different conversations that principals and or any kind of leader or teacher leader, for that matter, can have. And they're mostly focused on coaching opportunities. And what we discovered is too many of us carry our own agendas in our head. We think we know something that that other person doesn't know. So for example, with the planning that you were talking about, if I think I know what this teacher should be planning. I'm not that interested in listening to them because I have an idea in my head.
[03:58]
And of our nine conversations, four of them require the person to direct the thinking. In other words, the coach asks what's in your mind, but there's a frame about how to ask those questions. So it's not just open-ended anything. Goals focused, you know, just to, we give more focus to the conversation. And then as we move to the other side of the dashboard, we get into more directive things, But once you've set the framework, you have to turn it back over to the other person for them to tell you what's important to them. If you continue to think you know the answers, you're not really in a conversation.
[04:35]
And the person senses that. And at some point, they stop talking to you. They just say, OK, well, we're done with the conversation. And if you really listen to them and set parameters and then turn it back over to them, they'll tell you what they can and can't do. And if they trust you, you'll know whether you're making progress with this person or not as far as their own reflection, not as changing behavior. But we believe that if people can reflect appropriately, they make the right choices at the right time and the right moment.
[05:01] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, I think what Diane alluded to is on the left side, the first three conversations are more in the reflection mode. And we want to find out what people already know. Because if we go in assuming they don't know anything and we're going to tell them as a leader, as a principal or superintendent or whatever, it really short circuits them and makes them somewhat depressed saying, God, they don't even think I know anything. So the first three are really trying to Figure out what are the person or group conscious of? What are they doing that's working? It's not everything that's bad usually.
[05:42]
If it is, that's a different process that we got to get into. And then in the middle three or four, we start looking at how do we collect data? Because really you want the person to answer the question, how will you know things are getting better or your communication is better or the learning is better? The assessment's better. How will you know? So that really does talk about collecting data.
[06:07]
But if you can use the least restrictive and the more interactive first, do that. And then you can always move up and be a little bit more directive.
[06:20] SPEAKER_00:
So this is a book written for educational leaders and instructional coaches and other professionals who may find themselves in a position where they need to have one of several different types of conversations. If the overall goal is to improve our schools, the day-to-day work puts us into many different types of conversations with different colleagues. What are some of the major types or categories of conversations that you outline in the book?
[06:49] SPEAKER_02:
Well, again, we first started out with more reflective conversations. How do you reflect before, during, and after an event, whether it's a presentation to the board or a lesson, et cetera? And when using Edgar Schein's work, Humble Inquiry, it's interesting. A lot of it's about organizational development work, but we're really mediating that person's own thought process. I'm always reminded of Meg Wheatley, who had a quote, well, we have the courage to reclaim the time to think. And then as we move into some others, there's a lot more data driven thinking.
[07:30]
How will you know? So you get data back as feedback loops to accelerate the person's learning as they teach, as they present, as they organize groups. And then at the end, we have a little bit more directive when it's not working.
[07:50] SPEAKER_01:
We had both been very successful in school administrators, worked our way all the way up through the process or the years. and move to higher level administrative jobs. And as we did that, we worked with all kinds of different situations. And I think the easiest way for me to explain it is I was very non-directive in my approach in working with teachers until standards came into the picture. And then all of a sudden as an administrator, I was being held accountable for making sure that my teachers were meeting standards. And at the time I was working in a district that had kind of rejected them.
[08:24]
So I had to spend a lot of time even getting them to accept the idea that standards were important. That seems laughable now, but it was a problem at the time and shows a little bit of my age. And what I discovered is the more I struggled with trying to get the teachers to do standards, the more I moved to what we call the one o'clock position on our dashboard, which is just past. If you think of it as a clock face, it's from nine to three or one o'clock. And I realized that almost all the conversations that principals try to have with teachers are often at that one o'clock position. which is I hold some knowledge in my head and then I negotiate with you around that knowledge.
[09:01]
And if you hit the button and the person was in love with standards, I had no trouble having conversations with them and we went far. But if they didn't like the conversations, then they pushed, there was resistance. And so you have to then back up and say, well, what is your belief? You know, what, how do you set your own goals? So our conversations on the left side of the dashboard focus on goals and We look at, we use a scarf model, which looks at identity. Do people like to be really certain or do they like to be more flexible?
[09:30]
We actually mentioned Edgar Schein. He actually was a consultant and also found that telling people what to do didn't work. And he started just saying to people, so what's going on here? What else have you tried? What more can we do? And he found that people had the knowledge inside of them to solve their own problems.
[09:48]
And that if he started with them, they always found solutions that worked. When he tried to impose a solution, it may or may not have worked. And it has to do with how people accept or believe what you're talking to them about. If they're on the same page as you, you don't need to worry so much. But if they're not on the same page, then you have to be sensitive to, well, what else is going on for this person? So I can't stress enough how listening to them really and helping them, as you mentioned earlier, set the agenda really helps you know whether your conversation is making a difference.
[10:23] SPEAKER_02:
And also, as you look at the center of our dashboard, it's about accelerating efficacy, collective efficacy. If we can increase the individual efficacy, and then that helps build more efficacious behavior in groups and even the larger school and district, people are more willing to be accountable and transparent about what they do. So we know Hattie's research has huge effect size on collective efficacy. It's one of Hargrave's number one out of his 10 tenants. So that's really what these conversations are about is how do we raise the level of learning and efficacy for educators who are working together a lot of times individually, but ultimately together
[11:16]
and have the results show up with students. Teachers that are learning more produce kids that learn more. So that's what we really want to do is accelerate that and extend it.
[11:31] SPEAKER_01:
We also found that feedback makes a difference. The feedback is a word that's really cliche and probably overworked. And a lot of times the feedback that we work with in schools in the end doesn't end up being helpful. And what we outline in our conversations from the top, Bill had done a lot of work with Marshall Goldsmith. And Marshall Goldsmith is a bit, we should mention that our models come from both business and education. And Marshall Goldsmith's model works from the 360 degree feedback model that is widely used in business.
[12:02]
But what Marshall says is, once I've collected the data and I have input from your stakeholders about how you perform as a leader, it's up to you to decide if you're going to do anything with it. And as a matter of fact, he doesn't take any pay from clients until he sees a difference in their behavior as a result of the feedback. And what he's saying is that if people aren't willing to accept the feedback, you can't get growth or change. And once you've given the feedback, you're back to reflective conversations. You move back over to the goal setting. You move back over to what else can you do to solve a problem?
[12:36]
Like if you're told you talk too much in meetings or you don't listen, what else can you do that would help you listen better? And each one of the ones as you move around to the right has a frame that we use so that like one is about conflict. If you're in conflict and people aren't working well together, that's no longer an optional conversation. I can't just say to the person like, oh, well, Bill, just start talking and we'll solve the conflict. No, there's some frameworks you can use to help people listen to each other in conflict. So what we've done in that particular one, which is based on the work of Bob Chadwick, is we set up a frame where each side gets a chance to talk and then they have to listen to each other and paraphrase each other with the help of the facilitator.
[13:17]
But then it's up to the group to take what they've done and make it into something that works for them. But what it does is it allows the group to move together in a way where they start to talk to each other and realize they aren't as much in conflict as they thought.
[13:30] SPEAKER_02:
I don't think a lot of administrators know how to give feedback appropriately as well. So when it's nonjudgmental, and here's the data, what's given as a question and nonjudgmentally, now what are you going to do with it? Goldsmith talks about without follow-up, There's no point in doing any of this. So if the leader just sits down and gives feedback and walks away and doesn't follow up to see if there's anything that has happened as a result of that, that's one problem. Goldsmith also talks about being feed forward. What are you going to do about it if it's a problem?
[14:09]
Now, again, there's a lot of good things going on, and we need to recognize that as well. But if there's something that we're working on, we're trying to get better at, then we Feed forward. What are we going to do about it? And how will we know if that's working? And if it isn't working, let's try something else.
[14:25] SPEAKER_00:
One of the things that really strikes me about your book is that it organizes all of these different approaches to conversations. And I would say probably many of our listeners have heard of one or more of these approaches. You know, many people have heard of cognitive coaching, Art Costa's work, may have heard of various different types of dealing with conflict or having different types of reflective conversations, but you actually organize all of those. And there's a diagram on page six of the book, and that's visible in the The Amazon preview for anybody who wants to check that out. You actually organize these on a spectrum from kind of open-ended to close-ended. Why is that organization important?
[15:02]
Why do people need to understand the location of the type of conversation that they're having on that spectrum?
[15:08] SPEAKER_01:
It's organized around a key concept in social change called locus of control. And locus of control, in a quick summary, is who is in control of the conversation and And if you start on the very far left side of our dashboard, it's a reflective conversation. And all I'm there for as a coach is to be present and witness your thinking. And because I'm trained as a coach, I know how to probe a little bit and ask you to tell me more. And I'm filtering, does it make sense? But in the end, the person is totally in charge.
[15:39]
The locus of control is with the speaker and the coach is there just to help. As we move up the dashboard, the locus of control window closes a little bit. For example, in cognitive coaching, we expect you to have goals and to know how you've accomplished those goals. And then when we get to Marshall Goldsmith, the whole idea behind that is we're going to collect data from a whole bunch of stakeholders. We're going to give it back to you. But now the locus of control is no longer totally with you.
[16:06]
You can't at the end of the day say, well, I don't think it's true. If they think I'm not listening, I don't think that's true. That's a rejection of your feedback. And so the locus of control has shifted a little bit. Now it's kind of coming from an external source. And then as we move further over, the locus of control gets smaller and smaller for the person speaking and wider for the coach and or supervisor and or administrator, because we all wear these multiple hats where we're the boss one day and the coach the next day and the whatever the next day.
[16:35]
And so, so the, Each one of them, how we sequence them has to do with how much control is given over to an authority, I guess, so to speak. Because as a coach, a principal or a superintendent, I'm the authority at some point. And if the person isn't doing the job they need to do, I have to step in and do something. I can't just keep trying to facilitate when it's not happening.
[17:01] SPEAKER_02:
Before we get to that, I mean, just a positive deviance. It's a reframing. So, oh, God, this is terrible. Nobody can teach these kids. Well, really, down the hall, Martha's teaching these kids, the same kids you got. So help me understand what she's doing.
[17:18]
Is there some other things that we can try that seem to be working with these kids in this school? And you say you can't. So that's a reframe. And the conflict one is what's the worst case scenario if we can't figure this out? What's the worst possible outcome? Then you start shifting to the best possible outcome, which is your goal.
[17:43]
What are you willing to do, which is an action plan? And then what will be the evidence, which becomes your assessment plan?
[17:50] SPEAKER_01:
I've been talking to my friends, even though I'm retired, I spend a lot of time talking to my friends that are still school administrators. coaching people. And I, in Zoom right now, nobody seems to know the right way to do Zoom as we go back to school with almost the whole country online. And Positive Deviance is a perfect example of that. There are some teachers that have figured out Zoom and are doing an amazing job with it. All I have to do is talk to parents and I can find them like without any trouble at all, because the kids are happy to go on Zoom.
[18:23]
They're doing their schoolwork. The parents don't feel so stressed. And then there's other situations where it's just the opposite. Now, I'm not talking about kids that can't get on a computer. That's a whole different problem. I'm talking about teachers that don't know what they're doing.
[18:36]
Administrators could have a positive deviance conversation with groups of teachers and find out who's doing something that's working and maybe use some feedback from parents to find out a little bit more about what is or isn't working. And quick phone calls or Zoom conversations would give the principal what they need. But the positive deviance conversation would really give a nice way to say, hey, we have people here that kind of know how to make this work. Let's listen to what our colleagues are doing and learn from them. If we wait for the experts, it's going to take us too long. We need to learn as we're going, building the airplane while you're flying it.
[19:09]
The frisk model I'm going to shift is the most restrictive of the conversations. And it actually comes from my work as an associate superintendent and personnel. And it's a conversation that you have with a person who's in discipline most of the time, But I've actually ended up teaching it to people all over the place that aren't able to tell somebody what their problem is. A teacher comes to me and says, I can't work with my teammate because of blah, blah. We then design a frisk conversation, which is data and feedback to the other person about what's not working in the relationship. And so what happens is you frame the conversation around your viewpoints and what you perceive as the problem, but then you give it back to the other person and they get a chance to say that they agree or disagree with you and why.
[19:52]
And if you're the boss, you get a chance to say, well, let's see if we can tweak it, but you still have to be accountable. So it has kind of a bifurcation in it, but I can't say enough about how powerful that conversation can be. And it particularly is helpful for people that are kind of avoiding conflict, I guess. So it kind of relates to the conflict conversation that Bill was talking about, which is directly above it.
[20:16] SPEAKER_02:
And then finally with move, now it doesn't happen often, but in 40 years of being a principal, um, I've taken four teachers out before the end of the year. Doesn't happen very often, but sometimes you just got to move. It's just not working. And you have done all kinds of interventions. You've tried from the left side through the middle. You've tried ways to help, but it just isn't working.
[20:42]
And sometimes you got to figure out, so how do we move on? And, uh, you know, replace a person or whatever. Again, it just doesn't happen that often. But as a leader, sometimes you got to make the tough call and that's not easy. So we give a few strategies in there for that.
[21:01] SPEAKER_01:
The tough call sometimes also is dealing with a person that robs a group of conversation. We really go back and forth between individual coaching and group facilitation. And we were really skilled in both. And when we write this book, we give examples of both. But it's deadly if you have a person that's poisoned in a conversation and every time you try to go someplace, they poison it. And so the move is an example of if you've really tried to work with a person to help them change behavior and they're not changing their behavior, they need to be pulled out of that situation or it's deadly.
[21:32]
And as an HR person, I discovered that sometimes just moving them to a new school made a difference. People with toxic personalities start to get blackballed by their peers and they're not listened to and then they get worse. So sometimes giving a fresh start can be good. Sometimes it's not. But if you've moved them and they're still not improving, then you know you've got a bigger problem. But ultimately, the person who's facilitating the meeting is responsible for making sure that it's not being hijacked by a couple of people that don't know quite how to manage or are distracting other people from getting the work done.
[22:07]
And so some of these strategies help the administrator do that, help them diagnose it and make differences in the way the conversation is held.
[22:15] SPEAKER_02:
Diane made a perfect case for collective efficacy with positive deviance. Once we find out what's working in similar situations and can spread that so that it adds to our repertoire to be better for kids, that is the collective efficacy that we want.
[22:35] SPEAKER_01:
There's another point I want to make also, because one of the things that we've bumped into is some people think that our model, because we're using tried and true methods that some of the people we're using are old. Like one of the people made a comment about, oh, I did cognitive coaching years ago. And we just want to stress, we don't think these are the answers. People may have their own ways of having these conversations and they'll be pleasantly surprised to find out, oh, I have called it this, or I called it a different name. What's important is that we found the way we framed it as a way of helping a principal better understand this locus control issue. so that they can begin to play with that, just like you play a music instrument.
[23:15]
You take control, you give it away, you give it back. And in really good relationships, whether it's a coaching relationship and or a management position, there's a give and take in locus and control that is not often well understood. And so even if somebody thinks, oh, I already know some of these models, don't just... put it aside and think, well, I don't need to read about that one.
[23:38]
Look at it as a whole model about how we enter conversations, how we hold people accountable, how we give feedback. We have lots of pragmatic examples in here. So it's not hard to just, if you are familiar, just read the stories and you'll get a sense of how we've applied it to bring about the changes that we wanted to bring about in a culture. We weren't talking about changing people as much as changing cultures so that teachers could get the work done without having to have us facilitate all the time.
[24:04] SPEAKER_02:
I think what Diane's also saying is, you know, we've had many years of experience in this, but what's the number one barrier that most people come up with? And that's time. So what we try to do is put this in a very concise place where I literally coached a principal where they blew up this graphic on the back wall and And so as they're talking to teachers going, hmm, I think I'll use this one. I'll use this one. That seems to be working. So, again, it just gives you repertoire so that you can try to do best fit if one of the conversations fails.
[24:40]
strategy doesn't work, try another one.
[24:43] SPEAKER_00:
Well, as I look at these nine different conversations that we can have, one of the things that occurs to me is that a particular educator, say an administrator or a coach or an HR supervisor, may run up against kind of the boundaries of their role. For example, if I'm an HR director and teachers have been sent to me as a result of a conflict and there are some behaviors that need to be addressed, there may be limits on which roles I can play. And at the same time, if I am If I'm an instructional coach that people are working with voluntarily, I may not be able to move all the way into the directive and prescriptive end of the spectrum. So what are some thoughts that you have for educators who may need to partner with other educators, you know, say a coach and a principal may in some cases need to work together or a principal may need to work with an HR professional to have kind of the complete spectrum of conversations that need to occur to solve a particular problem.
[25:39]
How do you see some of those relationships and boundaries playing out as people use this model?
[25:44] SPEAKER_02:
I look at HR directors, et cetera, central office and superintendents have the full range. Coaches, instructional coaches, coaches in your school really are limited, I think, almost to conflict the consensus about where they have to stop because they do not have supervisory responsibility. They're not a position authority. So to put them on a frisk contract. or considering moves, that's just not a teacher's role. So I think you have to be very careful if they get too far into that.
[26:18]
Matter of fact, I think it will destroy trust and probably destroy a lot of the coaching and learning that goes on. So number one, if you're a principal, you've still got to build trust. That does not mean as a principal, I moved all the way over but it was because I had tried other things first that I had the ability and the trust from the union to make that move. It wasn't like I was just being arbitrary and saying, I don't like what you're doing. You're out of here. You know, if, if you've already tried, tried to help the person, you have a lot more leeway, but coaches really don't have, I don't think can move into frisk and move, but, Now, Diane, as an HR director and a superintendent, you tell me from your standpoint, because I've never been a superintendent.
[27:14] SPEAKER_01:
I actually agree with you on everything except for the Frist piece. And I don't disagree with you. As Frist was modeled, it was actually developed by a law firm to help administrators collect better data so that if they needed to terminate somebody, they didn't end up in lawsuits. So...
[27:31]
crazy way to be doing a conversation, but let me give you a conversation that I could use Frisk with as a coach. I've been working together for three months now. You and I've looked at these pieces of data about students not responding. Here's one, here's another, here's another. That's the first message in Frisk is what's happening. What's the data?
[27:51]
The second one is I'm starting to notice that you're not following through. You made a commitment to do X and you didn't do it. You told me you were too busy. I'm thinking that maybe you are not motivated by this job or whatever you're thinking are. We need to know that what we're doing together is going to make a difference as we go forward. And I need to hear from you what you can do to make sure you follow through on our conversations.
[28:13]
Now that's really a quick way to do it, but it's a three-part message where you give facts with no emotion, feelings and data about why it's not working and what needs to happen. And then you throw it back to that teacher. And I've seen some teachers that just shine you on and won't do anything. It's very rare because most people don't do that. But every so often you run into somebody that has kind of what I call quasi mental health issues where they're not able to look at their own behavior. And when you throw it back at them, they can't do it.
[28:43]
And it gives you data that it's like, oh, I need to turn this over to an administrator. This is not working. But sometimes I see people step up to the plate. They just didn't get it the first time. And I've seen people make huge changes because they were given open, honest feedback about what the problem was. And Frisk really is also modeled after something called giving a complete message, which is used in psychology.
[29:10]
So I use the Frisk model for this, but there's also something called complete messages that I've written about in my other books that is the same as Frisk. It's just got different terms. That's what I mean by when a person reads this book, they may be pleasantly surprised to find that they know some of these models, but by another name. I actually required all of my administrators to use Frisk for every kind of command that they ever did. So it's absolutely essential for somebody that's in a supervisory role rule, but, but people think then it's like what Bill mentioned. Well, it's really kind of, cause it's way over on the other side of the conversation.
[29:44]
They don't think of it as something you'd go to very often, but I actually find that if you've got conflict, which is what that side of the conversation diagram is about, It really can help you find a meeting ground between two people, a supervisor and a person, a coach and a teacher that's just not making the progress they need to be making because they're not using the conversation medium effectively is essentially what's going on.
[30:10] SPEAKER_00:
This is important work, isn't it? It's challenging, important work for resolving the, as you said, conflicts, certainly between educators, but also for finding and discovering and digging into the opportunities that we have for improvement. And I think one of the big contributions that your book makes is really laying all of those options out and organizing them in such a way that educators can look at that dashboard and say, okay, here's where I am with this situation. Here is the approach that I need to take. Depending on how this next conversation goes, I may need to shift to the left or to the right. I may need to use a different strategy next time.
[30:47]
I may need to hand things off to a coach who's going to use a more reflective approach. I may need to partner with human resources if we need to take a more directive approach and maybe even look at moving somebody into a different role or dismissing them. These are difficult processes to go through. These are difficult conversations to have. And I think you've given the profession a huge gift in creating that dashboard for people as they work together to improve our schools. So thank you for this.
[31:14] SPEAKER_02:
I think it's even more important as we have a lot more administrators retiring with COVID, et cetera. And so the younger ones are less experienced. They probably use this as a guide to have better conversations. But both Diane and I think the instructional conversations are so important that we really do have to identify those and use them as a priority.
[31:40] SPEAKER_00:
So the book is Nine Professional Conversations to Change Schools, a Dashboard of Options. Diane Zimmerman and Bill Summers, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's a pleasure.
[31:51] SPEAKER_02:
Thank you, Justin. Yeah.
[31:54] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
