Alpine – Advanced Leadership Programs in Education

Guest Blogspot by Carolyn Stuart, Principal Tawa Intermediate, Wellington

My mother used to threaten my sister and me with having our mouths washed out with soap and water if we used inappropriate language. My mum’s one of those great mothers who never made an idle threat. There came a day when my older sister used inappropriate language and Mum set about applying soap to the offending mouth. I watched the action from the safety of the bathroom door. Unfortunately for Mum my sister did not take the punishment passively, instead she bit down resulting in her ingesting far more soap than my mother intended and then retching to the point of giving my mother a huge guilt attack. The threat of soap and water was taken off the table.

Managing and controlling the language of others is a perennial problem for leaders particularly for those committed to building and working within collaborative cultures. My first act as principal of my current school was to introduce Joan Dalton and David Anderson’s Dialogue Covenant – an agreed way to talk and listen to each other. Initially we adopted the covenant found on Plot PD and then adapted it into our own school’s version a couple of years later. Aspects of the covenant include listening to understand, listening without interrupting, and allowing time to think.

I believe all organisations benefit greatly from co-constructing agreed ways of working together. In lots of ways that is the easy part. Living it everyday, in every conversation is the challenge! To achieve this takes commitment from every community member to not only try their hardest to stick to the covenant individually, but to speak up when others forget and to insist on it being upheld in every situation every day.

We took a hard look at our meetings through the lens of our dialogue covenant. I’m sure they were no different to those being held in organisations throughout the world – dominated by those that over contribute, loathed by those who need time to think before contributing and populated by participants wanting their say with limited attention being given to the thoughts and ideas of others.

We transformed our meetings by:

Rotating the position of chair

Each group member takes a turn at chairing meetings. I have found it really liberating not to be in the chair all the time and I love the freedom of being able to focus on the purpose of the meeting rather than focussing on running the meeting. In fact I now find it quite frustrating when it is my turn to be the chair!

Using an observer

One person is rostered into the role of observer at each meeting. The first agenda item is to reflect on our previous meeting, consider the dialogue covenant and then identify the next area of focus for the group. We started off with simple things such as the number of times people built on the ideas of others and moved onto more challenging observations such as counting the number of contributions each person made or how often we interrupted when someone else was speaking. The data was always fed back to the group at the end of the meeting in a non-judgmental way. We have found the use of an observer powerful to extinguish unhelpful behaviour and brilliant to foster the types of input that improved our collaboration.

Differentiating between dialogue and discussion

Professor Robert Gamston differentiates between dialogue which is used to build understanding and discussion which is used to decide. We are committed to labelling anything brought up at a meeting as being either dialogue or discussion. We promise staff that we will not make any decisions without signalling a move from dialogue to discussion. An amazing thing has happened. Once people realised that we were having a dialogue about something and that a decision was not about to happen they stopped focussing on getting their own opinion heard (before the axe of decision fell) and started to listen to the thoughts and ideas of others. We now take longer to make a decision but we benefit from greater ownership and understanding of decisions made.

Creating descriptive agendas

We use our shared school calendar to create our agendas. Anyone is able to contribute and the agenda closes 24 hours before a meeting. The agenda item is recorded, stating whether it is a dialogue or a discussion and writing a description about what or why they want it brought up at the meeting. They also record their name beside the item which means others can seek clarification prior the meeting. We do not allow agenda items to be sprung on a meeting. The staff members who need time to think are very grateful for this process and are now able to fully contribute in a timely manner to all meetings.

It has been a couple of years since we transformed our meetings. We no longer make regular use of an observer but will nominate one if our adherences to the covenant slips. We have fewer meetings because the changes outlined above seem to have increased our efficiency and we now only meet if there is a requirement.

The book of James in the Bible likens the tongue to the rudder on a ship. Whilst it is physically small its effects are wide ranging. As leaders we need to ensure that all conversations steer the organisation’s rudder to a place that enables forward momentum.

About Carolyn

Carolyn Stuart is the principal of Tawa Intermediate in Wellington. She is passionate about making a difference to the lives of children and educators.

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