Has a staff member ever come to you for advice or with a problem, and after you gave them a thoughtful response backed by evidence and experience, they turned around and did something completely different (or more annoyingly - nothing at all)?
Having the right answer is rarely enough to make change happen.
Having the research isn’t enough.
Having the student data isn’t enough.
Have you ever gone to your staff with all those things and they still weren’t convinced? Have you ever gone to your principal (or superintendent) with those things and he/she wasn’t convinced?
You’ve probably heard that change has little to do with logic, which is also why accountability rarely works. If none of these standard, logical, by-the-book things work, then how are instructional leaders supposed to generate change?
With emotion.
Here are some tried and true strategies to make change:
Find willing collaborators. Think about your sphere of control (classroom, school, etc.). If you’re a teacher, you might be the willing collaborator. If you’re a principal, find a teacher who’s willing to try it out. The point is to create an example of the change.
Capture results (emotions). Yes, data about the change can be important. Numbers do talk for some people. What usually talks more is hearing how the change made a difference to people. Capture students talking about how excited they are about the new work. Capture a teacher talking about the difference it made in her/his students’ learning. As we talked about in our last post on the continuous non-improvement cycle, getting new results is the key to changing previously held beliefs.
Strategically share to build momentum. It’s essential to intentionally think about when and how to share this information. Who needs to hear about the results? What structures are currently available to share those results? Share until you find someone else (or more than one) who want to try it. These are often called the “First Followers.”
Repeat steps 2 and 3 until change is complete.
Starting where you can is one of the hardest parts to this process. It can be be frustrating and overwhelming to have to invest and dig in when the conditions aren’t optimal, and this is where accountability structures can actually hurt improvement, because we already want to go fast. We want to help as many students as quickly as possible. This is the paradox.
If we focus our time and energy outside of our sphere of control, we will actually go slower… and be more frustrated.
What do you think about staying in your sphere of control?
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