Leading School Teams: Building Trust to Promote Student Learning

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Dustin Baver. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by David Horton. Dr. David Horton is an organizational leadership expert and lifelong educator who has served as an assistant superintendent, curriculum director, and school administrator. And he currently teaches at the university level. And he's the author of the new book, Leading School Teams, Building Trust to Promote Student Learning.

[00:38] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:40] SPEAKER_01:

Dave, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thank you very much. So I know we've all got teams in our school. We've got grade-level teams or department teams or committees. We have all these different teams, and we want them to work together effectively, and we have lots of models for that. But at the heart of your book is the idea of teacher collective efficacy.

[01:00]

Could you tell us what teacher collective efficacy means? Sure. It's one of the...

[01:05] SPEAKER_02:

pieces I think is most exciting in some of the updated analysis work by John Hattie as he's looked across the meta-analysis studies to see what are the things that actually move the needle in student learning and the exciting piece that he's noticed across his study is that this notion of teacher collective efficacy or this strategy of teacher collective efficacy is actually the number one thing or strategy or behavior that moves the needle in student learning. And it moves it at such a rate that it can move the needle four years of student learning in one calendar year when it's present. And the idea then of teacher collective efficacy would be, so what does that mean?

[01:56]

What does it look like? And the exciting part of it would be, well, it's all the things that sound really good to us that work with schools and teachers and students is the thought of how teachers collaborate with each other, how teachers collectively discuss student progress, how they discuss instructional strategies or instructional decision-making, how they have shared decision-making in their school. How they take an ownership over their own destiny, if you will, in their team. So if they're focused on a grade level or a subject matter or a grade level at a high school or middle school, whatever, that they have a feeling that they are controlling everything. their destiny. They can chart their path.

[02:43]

They are solving problems. They are bringing in their administrators as supports and that they are working together to do that. So looking at that, it starts to become, I guess, a mathematical equation working backwards would be to say, well, that sounds really good. So how do you do that? Well, there are many authors out there and researchers that have looked at that idea But it kind of boils down to those same basic ideas that I just described. It would be how teachers are collaborating with one another, how they are looking at shared decision-making in their school, how they are developing their own skills with training and coaching, these kinds of things.

[03:19]

But for me, then, I look at it and say, well, the practical nature is, again, that still sounds really good, but when you bring it into a real school where schools are very often faced with meetings that are dictated by contracts that may be The principals may only get to work with a team two or three times in a month, and it may be only 60 minutes per meeting. You now have this idealistic view of teacher collective efficacy, but then you bring it into a real setting and you say, where am I going to find the time to build the team, work with the team, and get them to feel all of those positive effects of ownership, collaboration, shared decision-making. and so forth. And then the other thing I believe that vexes so many of us would be, again, that still sounds really good, but what if I get down to the nuts and bolts and I have a team that has two or three new members, I have people who haven't worked together, people who don't know each other, and now I'm asking them to perform at high levels, how is all that going to work to get to that collective efficacy?

[04:24]

So it's kind of a one-step, two-step, three-step problem, but As you look at it, the exciting goal in all of it would be teacher collective efficacy, but now it's breaking it into more practical chunks to say, How do we get there, and how do we help people achieve that on a regular basis?

[04:40] SPEAKER_01:

Right, right. Because I think we have experience with all of these different formats or team designs or structures or protocols. We have all these things that we want our teams to do, and we seem to want to rename them every couple of years. So instead of inquiry teams, we now have data teams, or they used to be grade-level teams, and now they're PLC. We're constantly renaming them. Right.

[05:01]

But you're saying in Hattie's research that he's conducted across all these meta-analysis studies, it's the sense of collective efficacy that that team has, regardless of the purpose of the team. Is that the case?

[05:12] SPEAKER_02:

That's a very good question. I think that the thing we would say is that having this collective efficacy, so if you think of how could a teacher team, so if you think of them as a group and then collectively, how do they find themselves to be efficacious at the things they do? And how would they have this sense of ownership and direction that they are hitting at all the cylinders across the work that they're performing. So whether that's instructional strategies that they're choosing and instructional decision-making with lessons that they're about to teach, if it's about questions and conversations about assessments that they may have already given that were collective among them all that they bring in and talk about how did our students perform as an entire group. It could then expand from beyond a grade level or subject matter team to a leadership team at an entire school where they're looking at how are we sharing decision making, how are we, you know, being good representatives for the entire staff and working with the teacher group, the classified group, the administrators, and we're saying this is where we think our school can go.

[06:19]

This is how we're involving parents and students and the community and on and on. But if all of those things are happening, it really then comes back to the question of how do we know we're being effective with that? So it's not just that teams get together. It's that teams are getting together because they recognize that the all of us is smarter than the one of us. And if we can do it together, we can share that labor. We can share the brainpower together.

[06:49]

And we can look at things and say, we're going to make a difference for all the kids in our third grade team instead of just the kids in my class. And now it kind of takes the burden off of any one teacher to have to be the guru and the expert and the savior for that class. They can say, let's look across the entire grade level and make smart decisions and share that labor and our expertise across the entire team. Now people have this greater sense of, wow, we can make a difference because we can make a difference together.

[07:21] SPEAKER_01:

And there's this idea that I find very compelling that really there are no unsolved problems in education. You know, any problem that we're dealing with in our school, some other school has encountered that problem and has solved it and has solved it permanently. And we can do the same thing. But I think often we run into this experience where we feel like individually, I could tackle this, I might need some help. And yet when we tackle that same problem as a group, things just kind of fall apart and we get stuck. What are some of the dynamics that you see and address in the book as far as why, you know, sometimes we have teams that we feel like are more than the sum of their parts.

[07:57]

And other times we feel like we put people in a room and they all appear to be smart people. And yet we just get stuck immediately. What are some of the reasons that we do get stuck when we're working in teams? You really nailed it. I mean, when you think about it, it truly does come from a belief that there are no unsolved problems.

[08:12] SPEAKER_02:

your uncharted paths that are in education. We've seen this before. Someone's seen it before. Someone out there holds the key. And you're right. So then when we come in and we break it into a practical sense, we say, okay, so as a toolbox, if you are the school administrator or you're a team leader or facilitator in a school, whatever your role capacity is with that.

[08:34]

It could be a leadership team that's at the school level or a grade level leader or a department leader or whatever. You really did. You touched on the very essence of this, and that would be first and foremost is why is the team getting together in the first place? Is it just because, well, our principal told us to or that's under our contract or whatever? Well, now you obviously know you're hitting at a very low level of potential teacher collective efficacy because if people think that the only reason we get together is that we have to, you're likely not going to get a lot of results out of that. So Bringing a team together, of course, depends first in how are you going to build that team and help that team become a team.

[09:16]

So there are going to be some basic structural and foundational pieces with that as far as trust building and their understanding of things such as conflict and commitment and why we're here. Patrick Lencioni's book on five dysfunctions of team is stellar when it comes to that to think about what are the things that trip teams up, what makes us have a mess. But even before that, I would go back and say, you know, just as a team leader, what are your leadership strengths coming in? And what are your perceptions and realities around things such as ideas and problems? Because if you think of one of those very basic things that can be a trip up area for a team would be who in a team is allowed to bring a problem forward. And then if they bring a problem, who's allowed to have the ideas to solve it?

[10:07]

Because sometimes teams don't equally share a voice. Some people dominate the problem bringing. Other people dominate the idea giving. And yet not all the voices are heard. And so what does it say about a team if three or four of the members are allowed to retreat into the shadows while others are able to bring forward problem after problem after problem and others bring idea after idea after idea and none of them seem to stick. So part of the thing in the book from the very beginning is to have a self-assessment as a leader and say, what systems do I have that allow ideas to come forward?

[10:46]

What do I do to identify problems? How do others identify problems? So even before you get to places such as the process that we have for our team or the trust building that we're going to use with the team, it would be, what do I as a leader even believe about problems, ideas, and processes, and is that a stumbling block? So some of those things have to be dealt with even before you can get to foundational team building.

[11:11] SPEAKER_01:

And then thinking about specific teams that we might have in our schools, we know not all teams function the same way. Teams are composed of different types of people and we have different dynamics. What are some approaches that leaders can use to kind of assess their teams or kind of understand the different personalities of their teams and what their different needs might be. Because, you know, when we roll out a new policy or a new procedure for teamwork or a new protocol for teams to use, you know, typically that's not differentiated and we give it to everyone and some teams just kind of run with it and say, oh yeah, this fits really well with what we're doing. And other teams just kind of sit on their hands and look at it and it doesn't really go anywhere. So what are some of the kind of assessment tools that we can use as leaders to figure out what it is specifically that our teams need from us based on their individual dynamics?

[11:59] SPEAKER_02:

I think that touches on a very, very important piece for a leader in schools, whether you're the principal, an assistant principal, team leader, team facilitator, whatever your role is, if you're someone who is tasked with being the ringleader of a certain team or set of teams, you really nailed that idea of how critical it is. You have to know who is in the room, who is walking into that team, And all too often, we do not give teams an opportunity to figure out who's in the room, what strength sets do they bring, what skills and experiences do they bring, and what perceptions about schools or beliefs about schools and learning do they bring into the room. So one of the pieces that I included in the book was a very, very brief, and again, when I say brief, it's meant to be because I recognize teams may only have 60 minutes two or three times in a month.

[12:55]

to do. But it was basically a who is in the room assessment. And it's broken into four categories. And then I'll also share with you and the listeners a couple other assessments that I highly recommend to look at for team. Like you said, it's sort of a team assessment. It's who do you have?

[13:14]

What do they think? What do they believe? What are their styles? And so on. So in the book, what's contained is one that I lovingly called who is in the room. But it's broken into four categories.

[13:27]

And if you think about these two dichotomies in each of these four areas, you'll see, oh yeah, do people generally fall in one or the other? So what is the inventors and the movers? Meaning there are some people that walk in the room and they like to create things. And there are other people that like to get things done. So some like to bring the idea, but some like to get the idea accomplished. Well, it's nice to know on your team who's who.

[13:51]

Because Some people may have an expertise where ideas flow very easily. They can bring you dozens of them. But they don't necessarily like to build the building. They just like to draw the blueprint. Whereas there are other people that have a craving to take an idea and let's put this on the ground and think of all the logistics that it takes to make it work. Well, then you can see what the dynamic would bring is at some point it would be good for a team leader to say, hey, have I heard from all of my inventors?

[14:18]

Now let me have the inventors be quiet for a little bit. Let me have the movers talk. Hey, movers, what is it going to take to get this thing to happen? Okay, now the team has a good, like a tennis match. There's a volley that can go back and forth between inventors and movers so that each side gets a chance to be very excited and engaged, but they're engaged in the things that are their strength. Another side to compare for a leader would be who in the room is a tree and who is a forest.

[14:46]

Some people will love to look at the details of one individual tree, and they're good at looking at details. Some people like to see the whole forest. They see the entire big picture of everything we're doing and how all the pieces fit. Well, again, as a leader facilitator, give the trees a chance to talk. Give the forest a chance to talk because they're going to see things and help this plan come together or solve this problem in a very creative way. But they'll do it from an energized place instead of I never got to talk.

[15:16]

They got a chance and they got to really think it out.

[15:18] SPEAKER_01:

Now, when you're explaining this to a group, like, do you have teachers kind of self-identify? You know, are you more of a details person? Or do you like to see the big picture? Is that a recognition that people would make about themselves? Oh, that's a great question. So I didn't explain that.

[15:32] SPEAKER_02:

But in the book, there's a quick five question self-assessment for each of these four areas. So people can just get a quick snapshot. And again, this is not an absolute. This is just a good place to start as a conversation is to find out Hey, which side do I think I fall on? Am I a mover or am I an inventor? And again, it doesn't mean that people are stuck in that and they're always going to be that.

[15:55]

But it gives them an identity to say, oh, yeah, that's why I really like to see a project get done and be the one who drives it because I'm a mover. And other people say, I don't really get energized by doing the work. I get energized by drawing the blueprint and creating the plan. Well, perfect, whichever way. So there's a brief five-question assessment. It just feels people out to see where do they think they are and what do they think their tendencies are.

[16:21]

But really the point of it all is after it's done, it's the conversations that will ensue that matter far more than self-assessment. It's just to get people thinking and to say, oh, yeah, I'm different from Joe and I'm different from Sally, and here's why. I hope that makes sense.

[16:37] SPEAKER_01:

It does, yeah. I think that recognition or that self-awareness, I think, can be so powerful because naturally, we always feel a little bit weird about the ways that we're weird around each other in meetings. It's kind of a fundamentally unnatural setting. It's a setting that we've created where people are sitting in a little room, possibly in little tiny chairs, to make decisions about things that they do separately. And yet, we've got to create that sense of collective efficacy. And I think if we can recognize...

[17:06]

what we all bring to the table. I think that's so powerful. So Dave, I'm thinking about kind of the average school that has some teams that are great, some teams that are kind of okay. You know, we don't necessarily need to fix any huge problems or totally overhaul what we're doing. But for a team that's just kind of doing okay, and we really want to help that team go to the next level, what are some things that we can do as instructional leaders to work with those teams and help them make that leap? Yeah, that's actually, I think, a very common thing.

[17:34] SPEAKER_02:

I think many principals, if we think of just the bell curve of performance, you would expect that at any given school there might be one or so teams that are in great crisis or they're in a lot of upheaval with a lot of new members or difficult people. There's probably one or two teams that are just stellar rock stars that you never have to even consider what they're doing. They're just flying. And then there's probably a lot of teams that are in the big middle. that have varying degrees of challenge or success. I think a place that a principal or a team leader or a team facilitator could help push some of those teams that are in the middle to achieve more than they've been achieving, help them feel like they're clicking in ways that they haven't before, is there's a section in the book that I put in, it's about team dynamics, but what it's really around is from one of the writers that I love to read.

[18:25]

He talks about something called pink elephants in the room. And if you think about it, you know, the pink elephant is that big productivity sucker that draws away because of the behaviors or the habits or other things we have that's limiting our performance, but we're not speaking to it directly. We're ignoring the fact that this big pink elephant is sitting in the room. Everybody knows, but we don't want to talk about it. That's exactly it. And if you go in and do that, some of the prompted conversations that I have in there as tool sets for principals or team leaders, facilitators, ask the questions that get directly to that to say, Hey, what are the kinds of blunders we've seen in the past or traps that we've fallen into or other things where we have not been at our best as a team?

[19:11]

What were those things? And so instead of pointing the finger at a person, we point a finger at the elephant and we say, this is a behavior that if it's been allowed to exist, it's bringing us down as a team. It's not one person. It's the team. And if we talk about it as a team and say, what can we do to get beyond that or not repeat that from the past? Those can be very energizing conversations because if you roll this backwards, if there's trust and other team building foundations in the room, this allows teams to have that kind of conversation, be honest with each other, but also be honest about their future and say, hey, we can go to new heights.

[19:51]

But these are some things we're going to have to contend with. We have some behaviors and things we've been stuck in. And these are preventing us from either working with our students or making instructional choices that make a difference.

[20:02] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think that acknowledgement goes such a long way in building and establishing that trust. So the book is Leading School Teams, Building Trust to Promote Student Learning. And David, if people would like to find out more about the book, more about your work, where can they find you online? If they check me out on my website, davidhortonwriter.com.

[20:22] SPEAKER_02:

Or they can go to Corwin, the website, and find the book there and track me down through that.

[20:27] SPEAKER_01:

Well, David, thanks so much. It's been a pleasure to speak with you for Principal Center Radio.

[20:30] SPEAKER_00:

I really appreciate it. Thanks so much. And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[20:37] SPEAKER_01:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with David Horton about leading our school teams to higher degrees of effectiveness? You know, we all have teams that vary quite a bit in their performance, and we have all of these things we want our teams to do. But one of the things I wanna challenge you to do, one of the steps I wanna challenge you to take is to just pose this question to your teams. What would make your team more effectively? And what do you bring to the table? Because often people have been told that they need to meet, they've been told that they need to accomplish certain objectives during their meetings, but they've never really been asked, what they can do to make those meetings work better for them.

[21:18]

So I want to encourage you to check out the activities in David's book, Leading School Teams. Check out some of the assessment tools that he has in the book. And I also want to encourage you to check out our new course, High Performance Decision Making, which gets into the question of who makes what type of decision and what process do we go through to get input from stakeholders, to make decisions collaboratively or have the appropriate decision-making group. come to a decision. We've got tons and tons of decisions that we need to make every day in schools, and we want to make those decisions with the highest degree of buy-in, the highest degree of efficiency, and the highest degree of quality possible. So you can learn more about the high-performance decision-making course at PrincipalCenter.com.

[22:01] Announcer:

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