Trust, Accountability and Courage: Key Social and Individual Resources for Collaboration

Educational Policy Fellowship Program

October 19, 2009

Susan Printy

Bureaucracies Roles Structures Specialization Chain of command

An institutionalized myth that slows innovations?

Networks Networks are defined as loosely grouped

entities that are dependent on one another for resources and information to create a final product.

Networks

When we encourage the development of learning communities, we are moving toward a network form of organization.

Team Leader

Team Leader

Team Leader

Team Leader

LEADER

NetworksNetworks operate under a set of norms or standards for behavior that support working toward mutual goals and forsaking individual goals that might come in conflict with the mutual goal.

Relationships A network organization highlights the

importance of relationships.

Team Leader

Team Leader

Team Leader

Team Leader

LEADER

Relationships

Networks create dependencies across role relationships (schools as example). Teachers are dependent on each other. Teachers are dependent on principals to create

school conditions that help them do their work. Principals are dependent on teachers to do what

they are commit to doing.

Information Networks require a sharing of information.

Principals share policies and establish expectations

Teachers share curricula, approaches to teaching, planning documents and materials.

Parents share information about children Teachers share information about students with

parents.

Social resources enable networks Trust Accountability Courage

1. Trust Trust is a lubricant and a glue Trust related to valued outcomes:

Instructional reform Openness to innovation Strong commitment of teachers Collective responsibility Improved educational outcomes for students

Trust Repeated social interactions support the

growth of trust – better than: Social similarity Contracts Trust by proxy (e.g. based on credentials)

PROCESS MODEL OF TRUST BUILDING Kochanek, (2005), based on Bryk & Schneider (2002)

Increasing SuccessfulExchanges

Easing Vulnerability

Setting the stage: positive conditions

Successfullow-risk

interactions

Successfulhigh-risk

interactions

Respect and

Personal Regard

Competenceand

Integrity

Trust - Stand and Stretch!!! Talk with another person - how to go about:

Setting the stage with positive conditions

Put others at ease Avoid divisiveness

Trust You will also need to think about how you:

Foster low-risk exchanges Create opportunities for high-risk

interactions

2. Accountability People in organizations deal with many forms of

External Accountability: Political accountability Bureaucratic accountability Professional accountability Market accountability Moral accountability

Which is most salient to you? Pair/share

Accountability“The challenge for improving public schooling is less about strengthening any one of the many external accountabilities that educators face, and more about building an internal consensus at each school over a common direction and the obligations that principals, parents, teachers, and students have to one another.”

Shipps, D. & Firestone, W. A. Juggling accountability: The leaders’ turn. Education Week, June 18, 2003.

Internal Accountability

Shared Norms

Values

Expectations

Structures

Processes

INDIVIDUAL ACTION

COHERENCE

MUTUAL OBLIGATION

COLLECTIVE RESULTS

Internal AccountabilityThink about how you can move your workgroup away from individual action toward: Coherence Mutual obligation Collective action

Activities The activities that follow will push you

further, to discuss with other Fellows and begin to think about planning (in a general way) to enhance trust and internal accountability within the Fellowship.

Activities Take a break and then convene in 10 minutes Two exercises – one on trust, one on

accountability – each group will complete one only

Debrief

3. Courage “To lead is to live dangerously because when

leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear -- their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of thinking -- with no more to offer perhaps than a possibility….

Courage, cont. …People push back when you disturb the

personal and institutional equilibrium they know. And people resist in all kinds of creative and unexpected ways that can get you taken out of the game: pushed aside, undermined, or eliminated."

Linsky & Heifetz, Leadership on the Line (2002).

Courage

You are an advocate for your clients.

Courage (a school example) Reshaping the faculty:

Reassigning Professional development for teachers Relying on personal relationships to

motivate Counseling out – “Free up your future!” Move to dismissal

CourageReculturing how we work: Modeling effective group practices and

provide learning resources Confronting inadequacy with a plan of

improvement Setting non-negotiables - “You are not self-

employed.” “Where does it say planning is a solo event?”

Staying the course through dismissal

Courage Working up the system

Don’t let any one person keep you from attaining something

Be an agent in your organization; create alliances

Practice creative “adherence”

Courage As a leader, decide what you are going to be

“tight” about and what you are going to be “loose” about.

Be tight about collaboration Be tight about data use Be tight about focusing your work on

teaching and learning

Activity Fellows will work in groups of three.

A volunteer in each group, the “teller”, will briefly describe a situation involving a “problematic” colleague. This co-worker “gets in the way” of collaborative work.

CourageAnother group member asks the “teller” to

consider a way to address the problem: Reassignment Professional development or training Relying on personal relationships to

motivate Counseling out – “Free up your future!” Move to dismissal

Activity

So, can this person get some training to help?

The “teller” promptly falls back on an excuse, a

“yeah, … but…”

Yeah, but training just doesn’t “take” with him.

Activity The third team member tries to help the “teller”

think about a support, a resource, a person who can help overcome that “yeah,…but.”

Activity

Continue until everyone has had the chance to be the “teller” of a story and to be coached in approaching a solution with courage.

Courage

Continually send a message that together, we can accomplish this work.

Certainty