Schools hoping to make successful change speak openly about anticipated problems, taking on the all-important work of ‘crucial conversations’. When new ideas and directions are introduced, successful schools effectively talk about concerns and stumbling blocks, thereby creating the social support within the school required for success. The ability to hold a crucial conversation is a key to successful implementation of new ideas and directions. As new ideas and systems are introduced, people have to be able to honestly and openly raise issues and concerns. Their ideas have to be vetted so that the initiative can be adjusted and tailored to specific cultural contexts and unique needs. And everybody—no matter their background, education, or expertise—needs to be able to speak and be heard. When all the ideas from the group are surfaced, the group experiences synergy, as people build off each other’s input—surfacing the best ideas, making the best decisions. Group members can then own and act on those decisions with unity and commitment because they’ve been involved from the beginning. In short, when stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run deep, change efforts work best when people know how to engage with one another and have ‘crucial conversations’.
Once the members of the school community have discussed concerns and established plans, they are able to move ahead to implementation. This invites the consideration of how to respond if members of the group don’t follow new processes or if they violate new protocols, if they are resistant to the new direction or behave in ways that are incongruent with the philosophy behind a change effort and forward momentum. This is where schools operate more like families and less like businesses. In business, people more commonly know how to discuss ruptured agreements, dishonored expectations, or just plain bad behavior. That is, people are skilled enough to speak in the moment and face-to-face about problems. These are crucial confrontations and are vital to successful implementation of new directions and initiatives. To be clear in a crucial conversation people work through their differences of opinion. It’s about disagreeing with each other openly. In a crucial confrontation, members of the group face broken promises -it’s about working through disappointment. New initiatives will have poor traction if employees are allowed to ignore, resist or violate them without consequences. Therefore, in order for change and forward momentum to succeed, members of the group must know how to confront one another in an effective, direct, and healthy way. In short, along with engaging in crucial conversations, members of the school community must know how to engage proactively and positively in crucial confrontations.
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source:
Beyond the Fads: How Leaders Drive Change with Results, Ronald N. Ashkenas; Human Side of School Change, Rob Evans
