Know Better, Do Better: Minding the Gap is Where It’s At
10 MIN READAuthor: Steven Dahl, M.Ed.
Director of Professional Learning & Content Development
The Center for Educational Effectiveness
Author: Erich Bolz
V.P., Research & District Engagement
The Center for Educational Effectiveness
You may recall in the first blog in our 4-part series, The Tired School Improvement Initiatives Won’t Transform your School, But This Will, we discussed how a policy-driven overreliance on student achievement data and structural implementation (think MTSS, PBIS, and any other flavor-of-the-month alphabet soup initiatives) has not led to national student achievement results we had hoped for. Schools and districts are assumed to be ‘doing the best that they can’ in the absence of what is really needed.
We didn’t recommend complete avoidance of implementation of any systemic approach more commonly known by its acronym (e.g., MTSS, PBIS, RTI) but simply that doing so with disregard for one’s organizational culture is misguided. Systems that ‘know better’ prioritize their demographic, contextual and perceptual data in order to support highly effective learning conditions that improve student achievement outcomes. We summarized this as a type of leadership ‘order of operations’.
In this second article, we will unpack best practices for leaders of organizations that are starting down the path of learning just what ‘doing better’ actually involves.
Where Should Leaders Start Doing Better?
School principals, and to a lesser extent school system leaders, are woefully unprepared to do what may be the most critical work on behalf of their school or system. Chances are, your job description does not mention this task that is not only critical to your longevity as a leader, but it may also be the most important contribution to your school or system you can make in your leadership tenure. What is this crucial aspect of your work?
In the business world, leader training in organizational development is a cornerstone of executive leadership development. Organizational Development (OD) is a field of study and practice that focuses on improving the effectiveness, performance, and overall health of organizations. It involves planned and systematic efforts to bring about positive changes in various aspects of an organization, including its structure, culture, processes, and people.
Does this sound like anything you learned in principal prep? Probably not. Add this lack of preparation in administrative preparation programs to education’s fixation with implementing structures with alphabet soup acronyms and you have a recipe for a lot of effort that is unlikely to move the improvement dial.
We are largely victims of bad public policy that has us chasing the next structural implementation. Implementation frameworks from leading research organizations abound. Yet in each of these frameworks (MTSS, PBIS, etc.) the following question is literally never asked: “Is your school community ready to commit to transformation and how do you know?” In short, does your school or district have a metric for ‘readiness to benefit’?
Despite the structures put in place to foster success, schools who have it all (ample resources, accomplished leaders, skilled teachers and support from families and the community) can still fail as a system. The reason is this; when a strong culture is not in place, and you lack the tools to make ‘readiness to benefit’ decisions, even the well-resourced fail.
Don’t take our word for it. For those of you who are fans of sports, examples of teams with great players and top-flight training amenities don’t necessarily win. Teams where players and coaches demonstrate unconditional positive regard for one-another, a cohesive bond, and a common vision of success often carry the day, and sometimes they do it with fewer material resources. Have a losing ‘season’? Try harder. Have another losing season. Fire the ‘coach’. Have another losing season? Get a ‘star player’ to fix things. Ultimately, any team that overcomes this pattern rebuilds its culture at some point to start playing like a team and not a group of talented soloists. And teams that don’t rebuild their culture develop a reputation that adversely impacts their ability to transform.
Measuring Intent and Impact
So how does one measure culture? Contrary to the prevailing beliefs of some, culture can be quantified. The Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE) implements staff culture surveys and measures what we refer to as the “I vs. They” gap. This gap represents the difference in what a person believes about themselves (positive for most individual teachers) and what they perceive about their colleagues’ behavior (less positive). We judge ourselves by our intent and others by our perceptions of their behavior.
Read that again:
We judge ourselves by our intent.
We judge others by our perceptions of their behavior.
Left undetected, this gap between personal intentions and perceived actions by others creates an undercurrent that leaders may struggle to discern. You might wonder:
Is it staff resistance?
Is it a poorly designed strategic plan?
Is it a failing strategy?
Perhaps, it is none of these things and more likely is the result of an unexamined culture. Leaders simply don’t know their staff’s ‘readiness to benefit’ as they have no metric for it.
The greater the “I vs. They Gap” the greater probability that a lack of relational trust exists. And, if a lack of relational trust exists, good luck getting a quality implementation of your favorite acronym-driven reform. Conversely, and this is what we see in our work with schools and districts, the smaller the “I vs. They Gap” the higher the probability of a quality implementation of just about any structure or strategy. You see, it’s not that schools don’t need all those structures or specific tactics, it’s just that you can’t bypass the impacts of your culture.
Find the Gap to Mind the Gap
You cannot address something you are not willing to acknowledge exists. The “I vs. They Gap” is a prime example. First, you need data prior to digging into what that data could possibly mean. At CEE, that’s why our tagline starts with ‘Better Data’.
To address this gap, two key questions emerge. First, “What are the plausible reasons this gap exists?” Could it be an internal staff dynamic, or a staff-administrator dynamic? Is the root cause a lack of implementation quality that leaves staff tasked to own lackluster results due to lackluster supports? Is it characterized by things we simply, as a staff, cannot discuss, which leads to it going unaddressed over long periods of time? In essence, we want to discern what factors prevent a staff from engaging in meaningful dialogue around their ‘I vs. They’ gap and deciding to do something about that.
Roland Barth’s insights are helpful here:
“To change the culture requires that the instructional leader become aware of the culture, the way things are here. What do you see, hear, and experience in the school? What don’t you see and hear?”
Easier said than done to learn ‘the way things are here’ but it is entirely doable with the right data tools. In fact, while leaders know a PDSA cycle is what is needed they often lack ‘the way things are here’ data to conduct a thorough root cause analysis. Because of that, they lack the necessary information to make quality, informed decisions. That is why CEE’s second emphasis is ‘Better Decisions’ based on ‘Better Data’.
This is far more than semantics involved here as every single district we support has data and is making decisions. The real issue is how effective the decisions are given the ‘how things are here’ data available to make actionable is often murky.
Making Perceptual Data Actionable
Assuming your organization does have sufficient data to determine how wide its “I vs. They Gap” is, the appropriate question becomes, “What would you need to see, hear, or experience to know the culture is improving?” This turns out to be the watershed question when determining how to make perceptual data actionable. Further, with perceptual data from staff, students and families available, it becomes possible to visualize multiple perceptual gaps including staff-families, students-staff, students-students, and staff-staff.
And it takes on different dimensions depending on the stakeholder:
1) What do you, as a Family, need to see, hear or experience?
2) What do you, as a Student, need to see, hear or experience?
3) What do you, as a Staff, need to see, hear or experience?
Brainstorming a list of potential actions translates the raw ‘how things are around here’ data into a plan for ‘how we want things to be around here’ in the future. If asking these questions are not your school or district’s norm, you are not alone. But, if you bypass this level of reflection on improving your organizational culture you may be forfeiting a key implementation driver of any initiative you plan to implement.
The Role of Leadership Coaches and Mentors
Changing the culture means changing mindsets – of the leaders. We often assume that school leaders have the skills and mindsets themselves to make this shift simply based on past experience or training. However, while school leaders have been expert teachers and even great instructional leaders, this rarely equates to skill and experience in leading systemic changes in the culture. In many cases, they would benefit from a leadership coach or a mentor.
For some it may be good to gain a better understanding of the power of having a coach or mentor, and the salient differences. Leadership coaches and mentors both can help school leaders focus on new or latent skills that are already there but may need maturing. Often, coaches provide a rare space for the school leader to develop new mindsets that focus on growing the school culture. Mentors, who are often seasoned administrators in the same role or organization, provide insights based on first-hand knowledge in the same context.
How school leaders interact and react affects the culture of the school. Self-reflection on their own leadership abilities and a conscious shift from ‘I’ (the leader) to ‘They’ (the school) are the first steps in leading change. One specific step you can take as a leader is to invite perceptual feedback from those who know you best. CEE’s Leadership 360 (L360) is a tool that is aligned to standards so that leaders not only gather input, but take action in ways that align to educational leadership standards. Leaders looking to implement a PDSA cycle specifically for their leadership actions should consider the L360. For those inclined to take a go-it-alone path or who have superhero leadership tendencies, it will be important to consider some research findings that speak directly to the need for ‘messy leadership.’
Messy Leadership and Multipliers
A 2020 research study undertaken by BTS Spark during the first year of the Covid pandemic, and amid school closures and reopening’s, found that leaders who could shed the superhero syndrome, admit vulnerability, and express humility, were better able to make decisions, engage others and bring the school community together. Read today, Educational Leadership for a New Era: The Uncommon Sense of Messy Leadership, provides insights into what so many leaders experienced during such a tumultuous time. It was counterintuitive that those who could admit uncertainty could also grow the strength and agency of their teams to better solve problems.
This was a distinct “I vs. They Gap” scenario centered on the approach taken by leaders. By showing their human side, these leaders could better engage and empower their school teams, allowing others the necessary space to make suggestions, provide insight, and solve issues collaboratively. In particular, these leaders were able to engage in quality design thinking. We have written elsewhere on the power of designing from a stance of empathy that includes the use of empathy interviews. If you are looking to build your culture and determine collective priorities, consider how empathy interviews could accelerate and multiply your team’s efficacy.
It is well within reach of any leader to shift the culture of an entire school or district – but not by themselves. Increasing collective capacity for quality implementation of anything of substance that will increase student achievement outcomes needs to be done through high levels of relational trust. Creating high levels of relational trust is done most effectively by first establishing your staff readiness to benefit (aka, “I vs. They Gap” levels) and collaboratively prioritizing actions that will change what is seen, heard, or experienced. By now, you are probably seeing how this comes full circle! That is why attempting to implement any acronym-driven change is dependent on the health of the organizational culture.
The actions and reactions of school and district leaders lay the groundwork for shifting a school and district’s culture. For many, a nagging sense of urgency still leads them to say, “But I don’t have that kind of time! We have to move NOW!” To learn how best to harness that sense of urgency and accelerate your efforts to ‘know better and do better’ – be sure to check out our next article where we will provide specific examples and tactics for taking your cultural measures and translate them into practical daily, weekly and monthly disciplines leading to culture transformation.
To learn more about how The Center for Educational Effectiveness can assist you in measuring culture, and more importantly become your guide on the side in making cultural changes, please visit: https://www.effectiveness.org/products-services.
If this article has challenged your thinking and you would like to discuss further, please connect with us. Click here to schedule a conversation.
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