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 LEADER

Networks Networks 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 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 Successful Exchanges Easing Vulnerability Setting the stage: positive conditions Successful low-risk interactions Successful high-risk interactions Respect and Personal Regard Competence and 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 Accountability Think 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

Courage Reculturing 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.

Courage Another 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