Introduction

The belief in the collective capacity of teachers to foster student growth and learning is vital for the health of our schools. School cultures are dynamic and complex and deserve careful attention and dedication to positive system-level interventions. Incremental change models that seek “one right program” or that privilege the textbook and force fidelity insult the intellectual capacity of the professionals. Instead of mandates, changing the way professionals converse is essential.

Teachers need to be given quality time to interact with each other about the practice of teaching and to determine how they support student learning. Furthermore, they need support in developing the skills for meaningful, professional conversations. Moving from incidental sharing to deep, meaningful conversations is critical. Indeed, collective efficacy, the single most important factor in school achievement, cannot occur without this valuable intervention—the introduction of Nine Professional Conversations to a school faculty. Each conversation in this book is designed to improve the efficacy beliefs of teachers and the faculty as a whole. These conversations are a necessary starting place. With tenacity and persistence, those that embark on this journey can bring positive change to a school system.

Nothing is more important than listening to the professionals with whom you work. However, as we listened as school administrators, we were discouraged by what we were told. Over our careers, we both heard far too many disenfranchised comments from teachers:

• ■ I tried to share things with others when I started teaching, but nobody listened, so I stopped talking in staff meetings. —Retiring teacher
• ■ This charter school is consumed by all the extracurricular activities we offer. We never have time to talk about what I love, the teaching of writing. I feel so alone. —Early-career teacher
• ■ Yes, you can share this information at a staff meeting, but do not give me credit. My colleagues will tease me mercilessly about being a “know-it-all.” —Late-career high school teacher
• ■ My district invested in training teacher leaders in a new approach to mathematics. It was so gratifying to work with others and learn from experts. But when I went back to my school, the principal always made excuses, putting discussion of this to another day. The school year ended, and it was forgotten. —Late-career elementary teacher

These comments know no boundaries. They came from all levels, preK–12. They came from schools identified as the “best in town” and schools that have struggled to raise standards despite the byproducts of poverty. They came from schools with charismatic and well-liked leaders, as well as from those with less-respected administrators. These comments demonstrate teaching can be a very isolating profession. In fact, the term, the silo effect is now commonly used to describe this isolation. The point is this: Professional conversations cannot be left to happenstance; they require careful thought about how to build communities of shared practice. This book tells “how to” break down the barriers to professional conversations.

Professional conversations cannot be left to happenstance; they require careful thought about how to build communities of shared practice. This book tells “how to” break down the barriers to professional conversations.

Just what are professional conversations? Let us begin with a counterexample from a popular charter school—a delightful elementary school, rich in extracurricular activities organized around the garden. The problem is not this enrichment; indeed, one might argue that every school should have a garden. The problem is that this one enrichment focus consumes all available conversational time. Coordination, maintenance, learning strands, and schedules consume staff meetings, grade-level meetings, and more than their fair share of professional development days. Yes, the staff does arrive at some discussions of curriculum integration, and for those with a passion for the garden, the conversations can shift to a deep professional level. The problem is that the staff vested in the garden is small in number, yet the passions of this small group dominate all professional conversations. This unilateral dominance is not healthy, nor does it promote the kind of professional conversations that we promote in this book.

Professional conversations require group commitment to work together to improve all practices, not just a narrow band of interests. Over time, these conversations need to touch on all problems of practice, from classroom management to how metacognitive conversations in mathematics or literacy can also inform other content areas. Everyone needs to be involved and to know how he or she contributes to the collective belief that “this school makes a difference for all students.”

The good news is that we do not need to break down these barriers in the traditional way through mandates or edicts. What is needed is the invitation to talk about what matters most. It turns out that a simple invitation will open most doors. From time to time throughout this book, we will invite the reader to pause and reflect. We invite you to also think about what matters most.

Reflection

A Place to Pause

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• ■ Think about your professional life. What do you reflect on daily?
• ■ What parts of your work bring you passion?
• ■ What do you puzzle about?
• ■ What do you wish for?

The questions are endless. The key is that these conversations are public and become part the regular professional conversations within a school. When teachers have open access to each other’s thinking, they find more in common than what draws them apart. They find that colleagues they thought they did not like have amazing stories to tell, and as a whole, they gain new appreciation for the deep well of knowledge secretly held by each teacher.

As authors, when we first started having these kinds of conversations almost forty years ago, we started with simple invitations. We used program quality reviews and accreditations to frame smaller conversations that mattered about some element of curriculum, whether it was more interdepartmental integration or better grade-level congruence. The responses we got were a great antidote to the previous discouraging quotes. This book is full of scenarios that describe more of these successes. We pulled a few comments here to make a point and to invite you to hope:

• ■ That was the best staff development day we have ever had. It is the first time the entire school has ever talked about how we can work together to build a more robust curriculum. —Former principal who returned to teaching
• ■ The questions we explored as a staff have changed how I think about teaching. I ask more questions now and wait longer to develop more nuanced, reflective options. —Mid-career teacher
• ■ This coaching session was amazing. I talk about baseball in this deep way, but I have never had a conversation with my principal like this.—Mid-career teacher
• ■ I pride myself in working with difficult people, but today, something happened that I still do not understand. When those two teachers started arguing so loudly, I thought the collaboration would end. Instead, you invited the entire group to listen more deeply, captured the disagreement, and then miraculously, the two teachers in conflict looked at each other and started laughing. The day went without a hitch. —Outside consultant

While much of this book could also apply to all conversations, the focus is on professional conversations—those that happen as part of our daily work life, whether they are in one-to-one interactions or in larger groups such as meetings or workshops. We draw from our rich repertoire of experience with coaching and facilitating to describe frameworks that can be used as conversational anchor points. Time in schools is a limited resource and not to be wasted. So by making the conversational patterns explicit, as this book does, and working together to accelerate learning, educators will not only learn new ways of conversing, but how to make collaboration and professional learning more efficient, satisfying, and beneficial to student learning.

Each conversation has a specific structure that promotes effective communication on the Professional Conversation Arc—the Dashboard of Options—from least directive to most directive. The aim of these Nine Professional Conversations is to assist groups in setting conditions for creating their own best future. In the bid for improvement, however, those in power easily fall prey to directive approaches, not realizing that compliance is only surface deep. Yet the evidence is clear: When people think for themselves, they learn. The conversations outlined here provide ways to support thinking as part of the conversational processes that facilitate complex problem solving and deep learning.

The linguistics of conversation has a fractal pattern in that the message repeats, iterates outward, and returns in varying patterns. This type of pattern is self-reinforcing and creates new paths of understanding that sustain and expand interest. Likewise, professional conversations should also sustain and expand interests. The magic of a fractal is that it allows for great diversity within clear boundaries. Furthermore, the conversational patterns when repeated are adopted and applied by all members. Bill, for example, tells a story about how a university supervisor noticed that the lead teacher had better results in his work with student teachers. When the supervisor commented on this, the lead teacher told how Bill’s coaching had informed his practice as a lead teacher. He remarked, “Bill asks me questions about my plans and then reflects with me about the lesson. I started to ask my student teachers the same kinds of questions, and it has made a huge difference.” By modeling constructive, self-replicating patterns of communication, leaders or group members become role models for authentic communication and as a result become catalytic by evoking collective efficacy and promoting collaborative learning. Indeed, fractal patterns self-replicate in amazing ways.

We also hold another fundamental belief that pervades all of our work and has led to the organization for this book: When others are given space to think and act, they accomplish goals that exceed expectations and contribute to larger goals—both personal and collective. Over and over in conversation with others, we have been continuously surprised by the deep reservoirs of nuanced understanding and compassion that emerge when humans feel safe to think out loud. This found wisdom—that humans are their own best authors of both individual and collective destinies—can seem counterintuitive, and yet it is foundational to the concept of collective efficacy.

This found wisdom—that humans are their own best authors of both individual and collective destinies—can seem counterintuitive, and yet it is foundational to the concept of collective efficacy.

Slowing down and taking time to engage in these Nine Conversations can appear cumbersome and time intensive. Resistance is a natural response to mandates given without first checking to learn what is known or in slowing down to build understanding and to answer the question “why.” Despite all the evidence to the contrary, change leaders continuously rush to solutions for efficiency’s sake. They assume compliance and do not take time to converse about the process of implementation. Indeed, when resistance is a byproduct of a change, it signals that the time has come to slow down and engage in collective reflection. The strategies in this book are best studied with the attitude of “going slow to go fast,” to paraphrase a Chinese proverb. In the beginning, the conversations will take more time, but in the end, they can save time by cutting deep into what is essential.

Instead of one enlightened leader dragging others along and treating all as if they are ignorant, this process invites group members to take control of their own learning and to reflect on just what it is they need to know. This approach teaches all learners to become catalytic and to be responsible for the future they desire. As in chemistry, a catalyst facilitates a reaction without being used up in the process. For our purposes in describing human interactions, we consider catalytic actions as renewing in that they preserve and increase energy. When groups talk about what they know and do not know, everyone learns about the capacity of the group. Those that know less learn who to go to for help; those that know the most begin to take leadership roles and foster that pride in learning from peers.

A Dashboard of Options

To facilitate this open-ended approach, the Nine Professional Conversations are organized on a Dashboard graphic—the Professional Conversation Arc—from reflective to prescriptive conversations. We often use graphics as a way to facilitate understanding of key concepts; what follows is a graphic that describes the organization of this book. On the left of the arc are least-directive conversations, which assume resourcefulness and are designed to open up thinking and develop communal reflective practice. On the right side of the arc, the conversations assume limitations, such as intractable conflict or a continuous disregard for the collective needs, and hence the conversations become increasingly more directive. As such, these Nine Professional Conversations are a leadership model that promotes open-ended reflection as a norm for making change. Our dream is that most conversations in schools would begin to move into this authentic realm of personal and group self-reflection. This, however, is not always possible, for when groups are dysfunctional, they require more-focused interventions. Furthermore, not all players belong in the game, and ultimately, an appointed leader has to make the tough decision about when to let go and move someone on.

Nine Professional Conversations to Change Our Schools

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The genius of the Nine Professional Conversations is the assumption of a growth mindset by accepting that others have rich internal resources to draw from. All of the conversations on this arc focus on increasing the capacity for reflection and the opportunity to increase their effectiveness. To begin, we take a stance that all conversations should focus on the possibilities; however, over time it may become evident that a more closed and directed conversation is essential. On the Dashboard just under the colored arc are five boxes that describe this continuum from open to closed. The first two conversations on the green arc are open-ended and promote Reflective Conversations. Moving up, the blue arc represents structures that guide reflection more specifically and hence are called Framed Reflections. At the top of the arc, Calibrating Conversations in purple transition from data represented by personal viewpoints to data coming from stakeholders. The next two conversations on the downward orange arc are Framed Directions, in that the conversations assist groups in confronting behaviors that lead to less-productive results. Next, the red arc refers to Prescriptive Conversations, which direct the conversation to specifically what is not working.

As catalytic leaders, we have found that by believing that all “can and will” change, we always begin with listening and reflecting with the group. Note that it says Can and Will on the bottom-left side of the arc. On the opposite side, it says Can’t and Won’t. As we learn more about the group and celebrate successes, we also become aware of dysfunctional responses. Over time, we begin to discover that a few “can’t or won’t” thinking required changes necessary to support the collaborative learning.

These conversations are open to all and not limited to just a few in authority; even the most directive can be used and should be used to give a congruent message about how group behaviors impact thinking. For example, one brave teacher told her colleagues, “Two-thirds of the staff showed up late today for the staff meeting. I showed up five minutes early. It makes me angry when I waste time waiting for others. I need to know that as a group we are going to figure out some norms about arriving on time. What can we do?” Notice that this teacher was not only assertive, but she turned the solution back to the group. Now here is the rub: Down the line, if one group member continues to violate an established group norm the appointed leader must step in with a directive about the expectation and what corrective action will happen without compliance. This is the true test of Bill’s “can’t or won’t” rule; when directives are clear and are not followed, something is keeping this person from reaching her or his true professional capacity. Finally, when nothing works, it is time to have a serious conversation and the development of an exit plan. And while this book is not about how to supervise an employee, we do draw from our years of supervising employees and use our stories to highlight key concepts important for supervision.

The Nine Professional Conversations listed on the outside of the Professional Conversation Arc graphic promote collective efficacy in that they ask the participants to author and transform to create a best collective future. Ultimately, it is the leaders of our systems that must step up to the plate and create cultures that set the context for these conversations to succeed. Small groups can easily adopt these conversational patterns and can influence others. Excellence promotes excellence. To transform a culture, however, the leaders must be able to initiate, participate, and model the productive behaviors. In sum, they must demonstrate “can and will.”

Some will wonder why we chose these conversations and not others. With few exceptions, we have worked personally with the professionals we draw from. We worked for years with Art Costa and Bob Garmston, the founders of Cognitive Coaching. Through his work with Learning Forward, Bill also knew Ellie Drago-Severson, an expert in adult development. While looking to expand his own repertoire, Bill met Marshall Goldsmith and Frank Wagner, the developers of Stakeholder Centered Coaching.

Over ten years ago, we decided that our best learning would come from working directly with the professionals we most admired. Two of the experts we reached out to were Bob Chadwick and Edgar Schein, who are featured in this book. We invited them to work with a committed group of like-minded educators. What we have learned from almost twenty of these specialty workshops is the topic of another book. We would say, however, that there is no substitute for the gift of working directly with committed professionals who are respected as experts in the field and other learning omnivores.

These Nine Professional Conversations are not exhaustive, but they are the ones we have used most often in our work as catalytic leaders. We note that there are many other conversational patterns worthy of study. The substance of this book is focused specifically each of these Nine Professional Conversations.

Throughout this book, we use capital letters to designate the name of conversations associated to particular experts. When we refer to the skills more generally, we use lowercase letters. Likewise, for citation purposes we use full professional names, but in our writing, we refer to those experts, whom we know personally, by their first name or even their nickname. For the purposes of our work in schools, we have sometimes changed the words of the original authors. With respect, our aim is always to stay true to the intent of original authors—or to point it out to the reader if we take different stance.

In each of the next nine chapters, we offer a minimum of two learning scenarios, with the idea that stories provide important narratives that help us remember. Scenario 1 is always a story that demonstrates a dyad or small group at work; Scenario 2 will always be about how to work with a larger group. On occasion, we’ll offer an additional third scenario that describes an additional process that we have used, based on this particular conversational pattern. Additional examples are also peppered throughout the book. Each one of these stories is true to the best of our memory. With that said, we have sometimes changed details and have not used names to protect confidentiality or to make a point.

The Structure of the Book

This book is organized into five parts to aid the reader in orientation and to make it accessible as a reference for the dedicated practitioner.

Part I describes the “why” of this book and makes the assertion that conversational competence is foundational. Despite all our educators’ best intentions—not to mention time, money, and energy—our schools continue to be mired in the status quo of the past. This limits inquiry and the willingness to explore, grow, and learn. Quite simply, in these schools—because teacher talk focuses on one right answer, specific results, and individuality—conversations become limited, nonproductive, and promote teacher isolation. When teachers teach in isolation, they do not develop the professional “know-how” described here as “knowledge coherence.” By knowledge coherence, we mean the integration of complex and divergent ideas to create a coherent whole. Furthermore, these dysfunctional cultures create great stress and limit professional growth. The result is a profession without a voice.

In the center of the Dashboard graphic, the reader will see the goal of this book: Accelerating Collective Efficacy. Under this title are some smaller arcs that show that stress pulls groups away from success. We draw from the adult development literature to assert that the antidote to this is to reduce stress by creating environments that bring forth the professional voice. The purpose of these conversations is to build collective efficacy, which we believe is done when groups learn to self-author their own future and to transform their thinking in the face of discrepant information.

Part II is the centerpiece for this book. The four reflective conversations have served us well in all of our professional conversations. These two Reflective Conversations and the two Framed Reflections build knowledge coherence from the inside out and are the genesis of collective efficacy. In this spirit, we offer these conversations as a way to operationalize the growth mindset. All too often in schools, the rhetoric of “growth mindset” simply stays on the surface, with no inquiry into how to operationalize this belief.

Deep reflection requires that the participants seek feedback about the efficacy of their actions.

Deep reflection requires that the participants seek feedback about the efficacy of their actions. Suffice for now to understand that once a directive has been given, humans need to process it in order to understand it and to be able to communicate intentions—I will or I won’t, or I can or I can’t.

Part III marks the transition in these conversational strategies from the “inside–out” to the “outside–in.” At this point, the conversations begin to draw from external data and feedback, bringing in outside viewpoints and knowledge. Bill, in particular, has found that Stakeholder Coaching is an invaluable process in closing the “knowing–doing–learning” gap explained in Chapter 2. What this means is that external stakeholder data sets open the conversation to growing edges, providing feedback that helps one reflect and become the catalyst of his or her own learning and transformation.

Part IV begins the move into the red zone of Framed Directives and Prescriptive Conversations that are conversations designed to build knowledge from the outside–in. These kinds of conversations challenge internal perceptions and hallucinations about what is reality. For example, in Chapter 9 we describe how positive deviance breaks down limiting beliefs about “can’t and won’t.” In Chapter 10, we tell how Chadwick broke down hallucinations that conflict is a normal state—a worst-possible outcome—and facilitated a plan for a more peaceful future—a best-possible outcome.

Prescriptive Conversations are necessary when individuals are not contributing to the greater good. It would be irresponsible for us to forgo the directive conversation entirely. An essential leadership skill is to be able to work with all and, when needed, be able to direct behaviors toward more responsible, contributory ways of working. Counterproductive behavior in any level of the organization is damaging, and failure to intervene undermines collaboration. While FRISK was created by the legal profession, it turns out the multistep process offers a template for a complete message—one that states facts, impacts, and needs. It can be used any time an open, honest statement would help set expectations for the future.

Furthermore, appointed leaders, legally, need to know when and how to create an exit strategy. And in some instances of real dysfunction, it may be the best strategy to go straight to the end of the Dashboard and engage in directive conversations around prescriptive work plans and exit strategies. These conversations are designed to set clear directions and to test Bill’s rule of “can’t and won’t.” In our experience, these conversations often get just the right attention and can change behaviors for the better. When this happens, the reflective conversations in Part II become the norm.

Part V, the conclusion, wraps up our thoughts about how to build collective efficacy and leave knowledge legacies; and we wish to leave the readers with HOPE, recommitment, and energy to make a difference.

How to Read This Book

This book need not be read from start to finish, and we suggest that the busy professional might want to choose a conversation to learn about and dive in there. Over time, we are confident that you will turn back to the book as an invaluable resource and seek out additional strategies and ways of working effectively as a catalyst—someone who adds value to the conversational processes so important in all human interactions. We offer this book as a knowledge legacy for those who have inspired us to write about real lives in schools.

Most books are read alone, and this book is likely no exception. Our hope, however, is that you will choose to read this book in collaboration with others. With that said, if you are a solo reader do not stop here, for this book is at its core a “how-to manual,” and the first step may indeed be reading and acting alone. Accordingly, an enlightened leader or participant can gain much in the practical understanding about how different forms of conversations change both personal and group dynamics. Later, we describe how enlightened group members can become the catalysts by modeling a new way of interacting.

By following through over time, others will learn from effective modeling of these strategies. Humans are neurologically wired to imprint repeated linguistic patterns. The authors, while coaching teachers, observed this firsthand when conducting pre- and postconferences. In our experience, after only two or three cycles, teachers responded to the linguistic patterns by anticipating a question before it was asked or exclaiming proudly, “I knew you were going to ask that question.” Now, years later, it is clear to us that when these linguistic patterns are made explicit, learning accelerates; hence, we recommend that the various conversations on the Dashboard are best practiced through collaborative interactions. After all, conversations are communal ventures. Even when we talk to ourselves, we are reflecting upon our relationships with the world, and reflective practitioners change the world. As Gandhi advises us, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”