Unleashing the Positive Power of Differences: Polarity Thinking In Our Schools

[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 Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:16] SPEAKER_01:

I'm thrilled that my guest today is Jane Kesey, founder of Differentiated Coaching Associates and author of Unleashing the Positive Power of Differences, Polarity Thinking in Our Schools. And I'm so excited to speak with Jane today because I know how powerful polarity thinking can be. As a principal, this was a big part of the professional development and kind of the conflict resolution and solution finding process that we went through as a leadership team. So I think this is incredibly powerful information, incredibly powerful ideas, and I'm thrilled that Jane has written a book specifically for educational leaders on polarity thinking.

[00:57] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:59] SPEAKER_01:

So, Jane, thanks so much for joining us for Principal Center Radio. I'm very delighted to have you with us, and I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about who you are and what your life's work is.

[01:10] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Justin. I'm an independent consultant, and if I had to capsulize what I do, I work with leaders to help them be more effective and realize that what they're doing is situational. In other words, they've got to work with their teams to develop skills and trust for collaboration, but in every situation that's different, and the leader brings a different mix to things. I actually come from a finance background, But schools kept asking me to work with them more and more and that started me down a research path that led to a doctorate in educational leadership. And I write on a lot of topics but I've done five books for educators and this is my most recent.

[01:48] SPEAKER_01:

Terrific. And how did you get into polarity thinking? How did you come across that particular line of work?

[01:56] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I've done a lot of work with conflict resolution and school policy and change and was looking for a tool that would help people realize that many of the battles we fight over and over in education really come out of us not understanding each other's points of view. And I stumbled across Barry's work. Barry Johnson is the founder of Polarity Partnerships and created these tools initially to use with business. And we were able to meet through mutual colleagues, and he gave me the rights to use all of his tools so that these concepts could come to public schools.

[02:34] SPEAKER_01:

Well, they are powerful tools and that was a terrific step to take to bring this kind of thinking into schools. I wonder if you could walk us through the basic idea of polarity thinking because I think it's not very well known in schools and I forget that sometimes because I've had personally so much experience with it. But if you could kind of walk us through the basic framework and the basic idea, that'd be great.

[02:57] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Justin, can you think of an issue in education where we've seen pendulum swings back and forth from one policy to another?

[03:04] SPEAKER_01:

Not a single one.

[03:05] SPEAKER_02:

Nothing like the reading wars or the math wars or, you know, project-based learning is just a new iteration of what I was taught back in the 1970s when we had open schools. And, of course, we've argued since Rousseau about academics and educating the whole child and just where that balance is. But it doesn't have to be this way. Polarity thinking acknowledges that so many of these so-called problems that people are trying to solve are really interdependent pairs of values. And each side in these issues only holds part of the truth. So when one side wins, in effect, both sides lose because you only have part of the solution.

[03:44]

When we've got a polarity, and we've worked with polarities from the day we were born. I mean, just think about taking a deep breath and holding it as long as you can. Eventually all you can think about is exhaling, right? Exhaling is the solution when you're holding your breath. But, of course, if you keep exhaling and exhaling and exhaling, all you can think of is inhaling as the solution. It's an interdependent pair, both of which hold immense value if we're going to not pass out, actually.

[04:13]

Polarities work that way. And they're unsolvable. Instead, they're a system that, over time, these two sides need each other. We can't solve it, but if we listen to what the other side values and what they're afraid of, we can actually learn to leverage these polarities, manage them, so that we get the upside of each position.

[04:33] SPEAKER_01:

So it's the idea that there are two sides to every issue, but it's not that one is right and one is wrong.

[04:39] SPEAKER_02:

Right. We have to, I mean, there are problems that need to be solved. You know, definitely when we look at equity issues in this country or certain other things that go on, that's another polarity, actually, is polarities and problems. But too often we overuse either or thinking. You know, either we teach phonics or we teach whole language rather than both and. And that gives us these huge pendulum swings because we only get a partial solution.

[05:07]

We fail to listen to the wisdom of the other side.

[05:09] SPEAKER_01:

And it seems like the pendulum swings because someone wins and someone loses and then the tables are turned and then we swing back in the other direction.

[05:17] SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. So if we've been fighting the same issue for two years or 10 or 500 years, chances are we're dealing with a polarity and not a problem.

[05:26] SPEAKER_01:

What are some of the misconceptions that people have when you first introduced the idea of polarity thinking?

[05:31] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think the biggest one is that, oh, this is just going to be a time waster. We don't have time. But the process itself involves getting stakeholders together and deciding on a common purpose. For example, I do a lot of work with mathematics. And when we look at how mathematics is going to be taught, there's often, you know, the either or position of either we teach in an algorithmic way or we're going to allow for open exploration as one of the ways you could, you know, the more constructivist view. And when I talk about, well, let's look at the polarities involved, people often think that's going to take time away from changing instruction.

[06:15]

And In fact, the biggest way to increase resistance is to refuse to acknowledge that the other side has a point of view. So if you're introducing a new curriculum and don't take time to do something like this, there's a very good chance you'll increase resistance rather than decrease it. So the initial time goes to listening to each other, which we're so polarized as a nation because we don't get together and listen anymore. Then we have to plan together on how can we actually get the upside of each. They're interdependent. We need strategies that actually pull the two sides together.

[06:51]

And then we can identify early warning signs. How would we know, for example, that Students are spending too much time practicing algorithms. What's the canary in the mine that lets us know we're too far to that side? Or how would we know that we're doing too much on the constructivist side and they're not nailing some of the basic skills? What's the canary in the mine on that side? And if we do that well, if we really listen, we save time in the end and we solve the right problem.

[07:19] SPEAKER_01:

And I have found that that comes along with a huge increase in how much respect people have for each other's opinions as well.

[07:26] SPEAKER_02:

Oh, very much so. I was working with one school. It was a primary school, and the reading specialist and the principal were sure that resistance to doing more student choice in reading was because the teachers were lazy. They just wanted to use the curriculum because that was the easy way out. And so we used this process. I actually had them physically walk what we call mapping.

[07:53]

So every teacher in groups spent time mapping the upside of using the curriculum and the downside. And then the upside of student choice in reading, very much of what... Donalyn Miller and the book whisperer talks about and then the downside of that and the principal and the reading specialist also watched what was was going on and listened and what really came out is that the teachers didn't have a huge personal library personal experience with primary reading materials and so they didn't know how to recommend a good reading to the children. They were, you know, they just weren't, they read adult books more than children's books.

[08:35]

This was just one of the funky things about this particular school. And so the teachers were afraid they wouldn't know how to advise the children. Now think of how different that problem is than thinking that they're lazy and only want to rely on the curriculum. So you go fast, you go slow to go fast. You know, once you've got the right problems then you can work together to figure out what's really necessary.

[08:59] SPEAKER_01:

So Jane, when you're doing that mapping process with schools, what does that look like visually? And if you could give us a couple examples of what appears on that visual diagram when you're doing a polarity map.

[09:10] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I'd actually describe it as an infinity loop. You know, we do need some sort of standardized curriculum so that teachers understand what's happening year to year so that they have some of the good assessments, hopefully, that were included in that curriculum. And yet we know that you create a love of reading by having students choose and have control over what they read. So it's an infinity loop amongst the two sides. And what you want is that infinity loop grasping a whole lot of the upside of So if you think of it as a butterfly, the wings on top are bigger. And if we aren't carefully planning, you'll get the downside of both.

[09:47]

You know, you have over-focus on the curriculum where students are bored or rotely clicking on computerized assessments if you aren't properly planning implementing a student choice reading program, you know, the teachers were very afraid that the students would read nothing but Garfield or that they'd, you know, waste their time or that they wouldn't know how to assess what was happening with the student choice reading time. And so, you know, those are very valid fears. And if we don't figure out how to address those fears and keep things on the upside, it's very easy to get the downside of both.

[10:26] SPEAKER_01:

So Jane, if someone is listening to this and they're starting to get excited about polarity mapping and applying polarity thinking to some of the leadership issues in their school, what's one thing that they can do to get started?

[10:38] SPEAKER_02:

Well, you know, the book is designed with little activities you can do right away to see whether this works for you. You can go out to my website, actually, and sign up for what we call a mini pact. A pact is a polarity assessment for continuity and transformation. And you can have your stakeholders actually take this little 12-question survey and see whether you're getting the upside or of a polarity and learn from that data. You could also do a simple activity mapping a polarity for yourself and try and work with alone or with someone you know thinks differently to just see the power of trying to understand to step into the shoes of the other side and see the wisdom in their point of view. So, that's one huge thing.

[11:24]

And then the other sort of flip side to that is to really start looking for the wisdom and resistance. When I do instructional coaching training, I tell the coaches that I don't think there are any resistant teachers, that there really are just teachers whose needs haven't been met. And if we start looking for the wisdom and resistance and instead ask, well, what need isn't being met or what message have I missed? then often we can come up with a far better plan rather than thinking, how am I going to get these teachers on board, you know, these resistant, recalcitrant teachers.

[11:56] SPEAKER_01:

That is fantastic. Well, Jane, thank you so much for giving us an overview of polarity thinking. And thanks for sharing your book, Unleashing the Power of Positive Differences, Polarity Thinking in Our Schools, which we will link to on our website as a terrific resource for school leaders. Jane, if people want to connect with you, where can they find you online?

[12:16] SPEAKER_02:

www.janekise.com. That's the website for Differentiated Coaching Associates.

[12:23] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Jane, thank you so much for joining us for Principal Center Radio, and have a great day. Thank you.

[12:30] SPEAKER_00:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[12:34] SPEAKER_01:

so high performance instructional leaders how can we capitalize on the power of polarity thinking in our work as school administrators first i think we need to understand just how powerful polarity thinking is and in our interview we really just scratched the surface on this way of looking at conflicts and looking at tensions among our staff and disagreements that we might face in our school community, the more we can see those as productive tensions and the more we can familiarize ourselves with effective ways to map those polarities and process those tensions and use them to get the best of both worlds whenever we have a true polarity. Boy, this is a really powerful tool, and I would encourage you to check out Jane's book, Unleashing the Positive Power of Differences. Now, when you get good at polarity mapping and you use this as a leadership tool, whenever you have people butting heads over some sort of disagreement between two different camps, a funny thing happens.

[13:34]

If you have one of those staff members who is always raising objections to anything that's new just because it's new, They stop doing that when you take both sides seriously, when you recognize that there are legitimate arguments to be made for each side in a disagreement. People don't resist just for the sake of resistance because it's more work. So if they do have a legitimate case to make, they'll engage with that and they'll go through the process just like everyone else. But if it was their goal simply to throw a wrench in the works because they don't like change, they're going to realize that that's too much work. So polarity management is a powerful tool in your leadership repertoire. And I would highly encourage you to check out Jane Kesey's book, Unleashing the Positive Power of Differences.

[14:20] Announcer:

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