How do we get people to change?
It's the beginning of the school year. Many educational leaders have the same thing on their minds: how will we get people to change? Certainly not to change for sake of change. We are talking about professional growth, developing oneself toward a goal for improvement.
Much easier said than done. We can encourage change, model it, write the planned change down, and show how our efforts will potentially impact student learning. But nothing will happen without purposeful action. And purposeful action is ineffective without strategies.
Our words of encouragement and leading by example should be paired with real tools for supporting growth. Trish Hall, former editor of The New York Times Op-Ed page and author of Writing to Persuade: How to Bring People Over to Your Side, offers many ideas for our work in addition to her recommendations for writing. Next, I share three suggestions I found helpful from Hall's book.
Combine facts with feelings. Principals and other school leaders are prone to present research data in support of effective teaching practice, and then expect teachers to immediately jump on board. But facts alone don't persuade others to change, Hall notes.
Feelings do far more than help us engage with articles, speeches, and books. They drive our rational conclusions, in a sense that the conclusions are just the excuse to justify our feelings. (p. 86-87).
So when preparing your slide deck with the effect size of specific reading practices, remember to pair this information with an emotional "why" for this change.
Leverage the power of the group. It's safer to make a change when we know others are trying the very same thing. To go it alone risks ridicule and failure without support. One way a leader can create the conditions for schoolwide growth is by assessing staff perceptions about needed change and then communicating the results during a faculty meeting.
People want to be like other people and conform to social standards. If you show there is a consensus around a certain idea, and you avoid being confrontational, your audience is more likely to come around to accepting that consensus. (pg. 194).
For examples of how to facilitate change through social pressure, check out previous posts on collective commitments and examining literacy beliefs.
Understand other people's perspective. I can hear a few readers already: But I do that! Maybe, but at what depth? It will be my thirteenth year as a principal, which means thirteen years out of the classroom. It's easy to forget the challenges of teaching. Therefore we need to invest in active listening and a genuine desire to understand where others are coming from.
If you don't understand the moral framework of your audience, you can't be convincing. You can't expect someone to change their basic values, so you have to make your argument in a way that fits with their values. (pg. 183-184)
Teachers and the act of teaching become intertwined, more and more over time. Their identities are interwoven with their work. So to expect a teacher to alter an instructional approach they have been using for years without considering the personal aspect of this change is misguided. If we can understand why they thought one approach was appropriate at a certain time in their profession, we now have a key to unlocking future growth.
As a literacy leader, what have you found effective in respectfully guiding others to change? Please share in the comments.