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7/21/2025 220. Processes for Group Dialogue, Discussion, and Decision-Making with Dr. Laura LiptonRead Now
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In this episode, we talk to Dr. Laura Lipton, an international consultant, author, and director of MiraVia Education. Dr. Lipton reveals transformative strategies for educational leaders aiming to foster meaningful dialogue and collaboration. She highlights the power of process agendas in cultivating relational skills and emphasizes the importance of differentiating between purpose and task in meetings.
Dr. Lipton introduces three distinct types of discourse—dialogue, discussion, and decision-making—each with unique roles and protocols that enhance group effectiveness. The Big Dream Dr. Lipton's vision is where education serves as a platform for equity, critical thinking, and self-expression. Education is about creating citizens who can think critically, and it starts by giving students a place to be confident in their own voice, so they can also listen to other people and engage meaningfully with others. In Dr. Lipton’s view, embracing the three different types of discourse—dialogue, discussion, and decision-making—is crucial. Mindset Shifts Required A key mindset shift is recognizing how important clarity of purpose is to the work. As educators operate as the leaders and designers of a group, having purpose-driven clarity is essential, as is distinguishing that purpose from the tasks you do to reach it. Action Steps Educators can embrace their role as group developers and facilitate meaningful, collaborative discourse in their classrooms with these action steps: Step 1: Clearly define the purpose of your meetings, sessions, or classes. Make sure everyone is aware and aligned with this purpose from the beginning. Step 2: Know and integrate the three types of discourse:
These sequential steps ensure that you are not jumping prematurely into decision-making and judgement before understanding where people are coming from and ensuring each person has a voice. Step 3: Design your process that fits the context. Choose the right protocols that both activate and engage the group in the process, ensuring that everyone is aligned with the purpose. One way to do this is to implement the “what, why, how” approach, clearly communicating the purpose of each activity (the "why"), what will be done (the "what"), and the process to be followed (the "how"). This approach helps participants understand the rationale behind activities, fostering buy-in and engagement. Challenges? One of the primary challenges is overcoming the ingrained habits of jumping straight into discussion or decision-making without engaging in dialogue. Many people are accustomed to a debate-oriented culture and may resist or misunderstand the value of dialogue, perceiving it as less productive. One Step to Get Started Educators can start shifting towards this way of leading by developing an attitudinal preparedness, saying, “I’m willing to be vulnerable and try something new. I’m going to experiment and be really clear about what I want to happen.” This internal mindset is key to trying a new way of engaging in meaningful discourse. Stay Connected You can find more from Dr. Lipton on her website, MiraVia, or by email. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Discussion Resource Bank with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 220 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Dr Laura Lifton. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 00:05 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Thank you. Thank you, happy to be here. 00:08 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I'm excited today because we're going to talk about a book that, honestly, I love the structure, I love the way that it is laid out. It is so practical and the intro framing is so I don't know if pithy is the word, but it's like to the point. It is exactly what you need. It is not super long and like saying things that don't need to be said. It is so great, and so I'm wondering if you want to just kind of general intro like what should people know about you, about the book Particularly? I think the way that it's structured is so unique and the topics it covers are really unique, so I don't know if you want to take us there to start. 00:45 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Sure, sure, I would love to do that and I'm rarely asked that, so that's great. What I'm very happy about is that you picked up on something that was always our intention. We there's a lot of books out there with theory and lots of theory, and so we really wanted to take that theory and put it into practice, give practitioners access to the theory in a way that they could actually apply it and that it would be simple. And you know, people who are in education are busy anyone's busy, but particularly educators, teachers, educational leaders really busy. So we wanted to create something that would not cause them to have a lot of fuss and a lot of prep, but still be able to be group developers. 01:29 One of the premises of this book is that leaders and teacher leaders, classroom leaders, building leaders they're group developers. The leader is a group developer, so that anytime you're with your group that you have in mind their continued growth, not just to complete a task in the moment, but to use the opportunity of that task to build relational skills, so that the relational skills is the kind of resource capacity to get the work done well, to get it done more efficiently and effectively and to get it done more collaboratively. So being a collaborative culture was critically important to school success. So the book is designed to help leaders design process agendas toward that end, because very often we were finding that the notion of a process agenda was a foreign thing. You know that the meeting was a pile of content, topic, topic, topic, topic without the opportunity to think about, engage with those topics and each other. You know so we call it the gum-chew ratio that if you keep shoving gum in someone's mouth and no time to chew, it's not that functional. So a lot of the strategies in this book are the chew time. 02:49 And what we also recognize is that typically groups are called together to do certain kinds of things. So you asked about structure. The group is structured around six specific things that groups tend to do better than anyone can do on their own, and I can name them that they need to do assessments and goal setting. They come together to do that because it has to be a mutual commitment towards any movement forward, dialogue and discussion, which we'll foreshadow and talk about later a little bit more. 03:25 Groups are way better at generating ideas than individuals are on their own. Groups need to come together and synthesize this. Everything is so disparate and so it's not just to connect the dots but it's creating a bigger idea from those dots. So to be able to do that and hold on to that, and just groups come together to process information, you know, if meetings, if your meeting is an oral memo you know I'm just going to tell you stuff then you're really not taking advantage of the professional power that's in that room. So strategies for processing information, processing text, so that's the way the group is organized and our notion is that you think about, as a leader, what's your goal or result or outcome for this meeting and then choose strategies accordingly. 04:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you so much for that frame. I can say for myself and I'm sure a lot of people have also been in meetings that are exactly the thing you said not to do, right, where it's just I'm going to talk at you, right. I'm glad that this is not that right. It's like how to go beyond that and do actual things the group is supposed to do. I really love that frame. 04:39 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Exactly. And how do you support, how do you use process to get a group better at doing those things with each other? 04:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, absolutely, and I mean you kind of I think you kind of spoke to the next question. I had a little bit, but if you want to expand on it or say more, the idea of like the dream for either the book or education, I often ground this in Dr Bettina Love's language around freedom dreaming. So dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. You know what is kind of that dream that you hold? 05:09 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) That's a really good ask, a small and significant fact create equity, to create citizens, people who can think critically, and I'm afraid that we've lost a lot of that. I think, with a lot of these attacks on curriculum and drill and skill kinds of things, that we've lost some of that. But I think that education is about being able to think critically and to be confident in your own voice. So because if you're confident, if we can give kids access to their voice, have them recognize that that is so critically important and confident in that, then you can listen to other people, see if you're okay with yourself. That's when you can listen and that's when you don't really need to argue or fight and it expands our way of thinking. So I think those two things that we teach kids to exercise their voice and to listen to others, so that you have real discourse around important things in school and then you're ready to do that out in the, out in the world, and that you can think critically about your own ideas and assumptions and about those of others. 06:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that framing and I've never heard anyone put it in that way, particularly the second piece around, like, once you have confidence in your voice, you can listen to others. Wow, I mean, I'm thinking about staff meetings, I'm thinking about class discussions. How many students are those frequent talkers and how many students are like not giving space for others, and maybe it's just right. You need to have confidence in your voice, you have the space to be like actually heard and like valued for your idea, and then you can listen. Wow, so many people need to hear that, thank you for naming. 07:15 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) I'm glad you think so. We call those people the air hogs, by the way. You know, they just suck all the air. They just take, take it over, you know, and their persuasive skills are repetition and volume. You know, like this is how I'm going to make you agree with me. I will keep saying what I said and I'll say it louder. 07:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) There we are, you know, I love that the academic lens you bring up, just like we're going to name that thing. 07:39 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Right right. 07:41 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Repetition and volume. Oh my gosh, that's great. So I think you kind of started talking about this, this idea of dialogue and what you know. What is kind of the difference between dialogue versus discussion? I had also never heard someone kind of distinguish those things. So I would love if you can kind of give us, give us those, that difference, and then maybe how that helps leaders and facilitators kind of wrap their minds around. What are we doing here and thus, what kind of approach am I taking to this meeting? 08:11 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good question, especially that that final piece, because just to roll it back a little bit as an overview or prelude to my answering the direct question the notion that all of our work is purpose-driven and that clarity of purpose is critical. So clarity of purpose for me as the designer and leader of a group and a meeting, and clarity of purpose for those people who are in the meeting. I mean, I think we really confuse purpose with task. We're not here to let's just say, we're not here to rewrite the math curriculum. We're here to ensure there's equitable and effective approaches to math for all of our kids. That's the purpose. To do that, we're going to take a look at the curriculum. So separating task from purpose is critical and clarifying that and even starting the meeting with making sure everybody gets that is important. 09:10 And so now to connect that to the notion of discourse, we really talk about three kinds of discourse, so dialogue, discussion and decision making, and they're all different and they all have different purposes. And they're all different and they all have different purposes and they all have different protocols, you know. And so if we mush it up, we're going to be less effective at each one of those. So, and dialogue is extremely underused, at least the way that we define it. Extremely underused People think about we're going to get together and talk and it's a discussion, we're going to discuss this, and maybe that's good and maybe there's other ways to engage around a topic and with each other. So just to give you actually have some thoughts about that, because I might as well so, and then I wrote, you know, so might as well share some things I've written. So dialogue is it's kind of like the, the non consensus model. You don't perspectives again to share their voice, to listen to others, to encourage connection making between ideas and between people. But you're not looking for agreement, you're looking for understanding so that, as a result of dialogue, whether I agree with you or disagree with you vehemently, I can represent your idea. I understand where you're coming from, so there's really no need to influence or agree. And that's a hard one, because we're so used to consensus models and coming to consensus and that was such a, I'm going to say, trendy thing Not that it's not important at some point but you need other skills as well. So that's dialogue, lots of flowing ideas, and then, once you've done that, then you become more discriminating. Then you say, okay, which of these ideas make sense in terms of where we want to go? And ideally your discussion is informed by criteria too. 11:18 But discussion breaks the ideas into components, so it's an analysis kind of a phase, and the purpose is to generate and analyze ideas, to clarify the distinctions between those ideas and then define the success criteria so that you're moving towards the potential for choosing one or some of those ideas, towards action, right? So in discussion, the group members, the intention is to critique and to advocate. But as much as you advocate, you also want to inquire. So I, in a discussion, a skilled discussion, I advocate for my idea but I also inquire into yours Because I want to, really, we really want to parse it out and make sure we understand similarities and differences in the various ideas and the various possibilities. So generating the possibilities and then organizing them, sorting them, prioritizing them, potentially. So that's skill discussion and both of those are necessary. You know we jump sometimes into discussion without having a dialogue, so I confuse your advocacy with you. I don't understand where that idea came from or how it fits for you, so I'm going to argue with it and I'm going to connect it. It becomes personal actually often. 12:34 So dialogue, discussion, and then, once you've had rich discussion, you want to make a choice. 12:42 So you've generated ideas, you've parsed them out, you understand them pros, cons, whatever. Then you want to move to choice making. So you're weighing those options against some criteria. That's agreed upon, ideally, or sometimes for some groups, the criteria is delivered here's your budget, or here's the time schedule, or here's the number of personnel, here are the resources you need to make your decision align with the resources available. And so they select the most viable outcome, the viable idea to meet the purpose, and that becomes the decision. But the decision, see, the difference is that anybody in the group understands the genesis of that decision. It's not just delivered, it's actually an outgrowth of a lot of engagement. And so then, with decision making, the team can commit to one course of action that there aren't some really skilled decision-making is a workshop and a book all on its own. You know how you can make that happen. But those are the three types of discourse that we talk about, and some of the strategies in groups at work align with those. Some are for dialogue, some are for discussion, some are for decision-making. 14:00 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) This is incredible. I've been taking furious notes no-transcript. 14:41 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) So that would not surprise me. You know, or you're in discussion and you say none of these ideas really seem that viable. Let's kind of toss it around, let's go back into more of a dialogue mode and, you know, think about generate more ideas. So brainstorming, for example, is a classic dialogue tool because it's meant to be lots of ideas with no judgment. Classic dialogue tool because it's meant to be lots of ideas with no judgment. 15:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So if you want to think about that, and in big capital letters. It's like that Amazing. This is super helpful and I can like pinpoint, you know, experiences that I've had in each one of those as you describe them, so that's really helpful. I also see so many parallels to both like adult work and also student work and ways students talk. So there's it's just so relevant for everyone that it's really exciting to me. 15:33 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Absolutely, and you know there are, especially with kids, because it's not a natural mode of discourse for most people? We don't. Because it's not a natural mode of discourse for most people, we don't. We, Western culture is a debate society. I mean you look at any of these shows where it's like you know the pro and the con and the, you know this position and then the counter position. We set that up, we are a debate society and this is anything but that. This is in fact so opposite to that. So I think that we are re-culturing people to engage them in dialogue, and so sometimes you actually need scaffolds, like I mean, you've probably been in groups where there's sort of the talking stick. You know you need something that helps someone to take a breath and listen, and ideally listen not to counter but to understand. It's a very different kind of listening. Listening is not waiting for your turn to talk right, and so dialogue is contingent on quality listening. 16:39 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. Yes, I love that so much I'm also I'm like making sense of all of this in conjunction with the work I've been trying to grapple with on seeking to understand and how that happens, and I've been trying to attach kind of values language. So we seek to understand what is the value that underlies someone's decision, someone's decision, and I imagine that being a really big part of this kind of process, from hearing the perspective in the dialogue mode of being like, okay, I can connect to that idea that you want safety for your kid in the school or you want the freedom of choice to do this thing right, that is just like value to us. 17:15 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Exactly so. We're not fighting with, we're fighting for. 17:18 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yes, oh. 17:19 I like that. Okay, I'm taking so many notes. Okay, so, as we are doing all of this work, I'm thinking about the person listening or reading the blog post version of this, even, and saying you know, I am about to facilitate this group, we have to do some of this work. I mean, I'm sure you could probably speak to your favorites. I'll say that my favorite protocols are kind of like processes you were talking about, where artifact hunts and in and out of the frame I don't know if you want to speak to one or both of those or a different one of your choice to illuminate for people what is that. 17:55 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Well, I want to say that one of the things that really is important in a process design is not just putting people cold into a room and throwing you know, picking a strategy and getting started with that. It's important to do what we call activating and engaging, meaning that you want to give group members a chance to get in the room. You know people. The first five minutes of the meeting people are still where they were. I mean, you know their butts are in the chair, but their brains are not there yet. You know, and so something. So I just want to say that you wouldn't probably not say we're going to do an artifact hunt, let's start. You would do something that would get people talking in a pair or making or jotting down some kind of a stem completion. The good thing about that is people can do that outside of the meeting and then begin with it. So, for example, let's say your meeting is going to be about well, if we talk about Artifact Hunt, artifact Hunt is about understanding an organizational culture or a group's culture very much and whether, in fact, it's value-driven to where you want it to be. So we have our spouse. Yeah, this is what we say, but this is actually what we do. Okay, so it's a way to kind of examine that, so you might let a group know we're going to talk about some of our values and how we manifest them at next meeting. And please be ready, you know, complete this stem. One value that's critically important to me is dot dot, dot. Okay, so people come in so you're not taking the beginning of the meeting time. Even people, ideally and over time groups, get used to. If you're asked to do that, you're going to start with it, you're going to need it, but it's not so oppressive that if you didn't do it you can't do it. Right, then you don't want to punish people, right? So you come in and then you say, like, meet with two other people and kind of talk about those and maybe agree on one that you prioritize them, or agree on one that you think is important, just to get the conversation going, the brains involved, the whole notion that we're going to follow directions, you know that kind of a thing. So, with that said, let's say that you want to do an artifact hunt and I happen to have it open here in the book. It's my well, my BA was in anthropology, my undergraduate work in cultural anthropology, and so I'm very you know the whole idea of anthropology, sociology, and so I'm very you know the whole idea of anthropology, sociology, group culture is near and dear to me. 20:26 I think that we look at, we measure, we assess and we reward the things we value. And so you can look at a group's reward system and their measurement, their assessment system, their hiring and recruitment processes, and it should be reflective of it, should be congruent with the things that they say that they value. You know, not just lip service. So this is like a digging down and saying okay, what you do, you're actually you bring, you ask people to bring things that they feel are representative. You know of that, so they can bring artifacts that. 21:04 Let's say that if you were coming to visit our school, these are the things we think would reflect. You know what's important to us Awards, schedules, photographs, memos, you know objects, things like that. And then in a task group they categorize those objects. So let's say that each person you have four people working and they've each brought six things. You've got a bunch of stuff you know to do, and then they take the categories and they put the categories up on the wall and then they accept they take one artifact that really exemplifies that, and then they so they've got that done and now they're turning to, and so we're about to determine a project that we're going to do. We're going to get instructional materials, we're going to do a school-wide event, you know, and invite the public to it, or whatever, and that they need to think about within. 22:02 So there's the existing culture. The core values of the existing culture are reflected. What would they do? What choices will they make for this new project that are going to reflect those core values or not? So that's kind of the idea of it. 22:15 It's about congruency and alignment with what we say is important and then what actually is happening in our school, you know. 22:24 So if we say that health and nutrition are important, and then we have, you know, a candy counter I mean, you know, although you're not going to argue with a candy counter, really you know or if we say that equity is important, and then we have I worked with a school that was putting a yearbook together, an elementary school that wanted to do a yearbook. 22:44 Yearbooks are huge in terms of culture and they were going to charge kids, and so if you couldn't afford the yearbook, you weren't going to have one, and so that sort of a behavior is so inconsistent with the school saying that equity and accessibility really mattered to them. So being able to call that out in a way that's relatively safe that's the other thing about process and this book is you want to always be mindful to disagree, have a different the whole voice piece, have a different way of thinking and have that honored and explored rather than stifled and judged, and so you know to be able to call out are we really congruent with our values? And then have a good conversation about that is really important really important. 23:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, I love that you named that in the book and just here too. I mean, I've been in strategic planning conversations or things where where people are doing a root cause analysis, for example, and they get to this point where you know they're starting to blame parents or like doing whatever Right and it's like wait, is that? Is that what we truly believe, or this feels? You know, I can sense, just as an outsider like this, there's something at odds here, but it seems like you can't sense it and it does not go well. When I named the thing versus having this like co-created activity, where we as a group are kind of pulling things in and coming to that conclusion feels so much not only more psychologically safe, but just like the awareness and the understanding is deeper too. 24:26 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Right and there's a sort of a fun quality to it. You know it's one step away, so the artifact becomes what we call a third point. So it's not your favorite thing or my favorite thing. It's like we have this bunch of stuff that we've put together and these things do they reflect what we want them to or not? You know how disparate are they, how connected are they? So you get to examine yourself. It's a self-reflection, you know, tool really, and then becomes part of a planning tool. 24:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love it, I imagine with a lot of these protocols. I mean I love it, I imagine with a lot of these protocols I mean you can choose from any topic, but I mean discourse and discussion or any of the others. But I imagine there are some challenges that you've navigated, as you've seen people kind of try to do this work and have some struggles or something that maybe you've coached someone through or witnessed yourself. What's kind of one of the bigger challenges that you can recall and how would someone navigate that if they experienced that challenge? 25:28 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) I will give you my first and foremost favorite tip here at this moment, and it's called sharing the what, why, how. So I think what gets in the way is I might say to you oh, you know, say to my group, hey, we're going to do this artifact hunt, you're going to be getting in groups of four, here's how you do it. But we've left out the why. We haven't brought the group with us, we've sort of pushed the group or pulled the group. So the what is we're going to examine the degree to which our values are aligned with the things that we're doing, our actions, really reflecting what we want, what we say that we value. So that's the what, because we're going to be planning this new project and we want to make sure that. Okay, da-da-da-da-da. So here's how it's going to go, and then I give directions for the artifact time. 26:26 In any group you've got people who are like well, I don't want to. You know I don't do fluff, you know it's games. Process equals games and sometimes it does. If you don't understand the purpose of process, you know there's no such thing as we feel, there's no such thing as an icebreaker or, you know, a warmup. The beginning of a meeting needs to be task oriented. You can get the affect that you want that a warmup would give you with something that also prepares you to do the work. So in any group you've got your high task people who are like the meeting's at 830. I'll come at 835 because maybe we'll be actually starting and doing real stuff, you know. And then you have your high relationship people who are if we don't hold hands and sing Kumbaya, the meeting is a failure. 27:12 You know so and you have those poles and everywhere in between, and so when you share your why, you're actually sharing, you're speaking to both audiences. 27:21 So you're saying, for example, we're going to be looking at our science curriculum for the next several meetings and we're going to be working in cross grade level groups of three, so that, because we need articulation, we need to understand you know what kids are doing in the grade before and the grade after, and to do that and it will make we have this much work. We have so much work and with so little time so that by getting by breaking into smaller groups, we're going to be get the work done in a time, efficient way and all the voices will be heard. Everyone will have a chance to share and speak their mind. So your relationship people are going, yay, everybody's going to have a chance to speak their mind and we're going to be in groups and your task. People are saying, okay, we're going to efficiently get the work done. 28:12 So your why is extremely pivotal and it's often left out and it really needs to be planned. One of the things about the book back to the book is there's an intention statement for every strategy and your intention statement is your why. 28:29 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So it's baked right in I love that, because then people don't have to manufacture their own. And, yeah, I love that it's there. 28:37 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Yeah. The other thing, too, is you're not randomly picking a strategy because it looks like fun. You're saying, okay, what do I really want to have happen, what's my intention, what's my purpose with applying, using the strategy at this time? And it's, and so I can double check myself and say, okay, this is meant to do this, is that what I want? You know, is that what's going to be important? So, yeah, oh. 28:57 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love it and and, oh my gosh, I could talk to you about this book all day. I'm just looking at the time. So, as we kind of like move to wrap up a bit, I think I mean step one people should just get this book and it's a wonderful guide. They should use all you know, all the pieces. I'm wondering, as it's like ordered and coming to them in the 24 to 48 hours before they get it, what is like a first step? Is there something that people can do immediately after engaging with this episode that they can kind of put into practice right away? 29:29 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Ooh, that's a really good question. I think that, first of all, I think there's more of an attitudinal preparedness, maybe, than anything else. It's saying as a leader, I'm willing to be vulnerable, I'm willing to try something new, and so just getting ready to say I'm going to experiment and I want to be really clear about what I want to have happen. I see myself as not the smartest person in the room. Necessarily, I want to take advantage of the resource of my group, and so anything that I do is going to be aimed at that. 30:20 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's yeah, that makes total sense because it's a, like you said, an attitudinal perspective for designing and facilitating, I think, the meeting. 30:28 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Yeah, I think from a practical perspective they may want to think about, okay, what meetings do I have coming up and what is my purpose, and maybe even write down clarity of purpose. So say, okay, what's the purpose of this meeting, and then let me look at this book and see if I can match some specific strategies. The other thing that might be useful to point out of course this is before they have the book, but at the beginning, in the front matter, there are several examples. We call process agenda a strategy stack, and there's several examples of stacking strategies for a 45-minute meeting, a 90-minute meeting and like a two to three-hour session, I think, and you can even stretch that into two-day session if you've got a big conference. So, thinking about the strategies as sort of a stack, so you're changing it up, you're energizing, you're making sure the foundation is laid, and there's some really good examples of that. I think in're making sure the foundation is laid and there's some really good examples of that, I think, in the front of the book. 31:29 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I agree. I'm thinking, you know, if someone's getting this episode in the summer as they're preparing for the school year you know having that. I know a lot of schools like to have a template for an agenda or a meeting. Yes, use one of those for that. 31:43 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) It's very much a template. It really is, and I would say that, combined with the what, why, how, what, why, how? And when things go south, it's often because you say what was your, why Did I share a, why Did I make it clear? Or, you know, because we assume the group gets that, oh, I'm doing this for the good of the group and for the completion of the task. But that is absolutely not always true. You know, there's that authority, power and authority dynamic, you know, and you always have that person who prides himself on. I don't do something because somebody you asked me to do it. I'm actually going to not, I'm going to do the opposite, right, you know. So we want to recruit. When you share what, why, how, especially at the beginning of a meeting, we call that the frame. What you're really trying to do is just increase receptivity to working in maybe a slightly different way than has been happening before. 32:41 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that and I think a lot of leaders are going to be very appreciative of that, because I think resistance is the thing that's common. As we close, I am curious to know this is just kind of a fun question that I ask everyone what is something you've been learning about lately, and this could be professional or it could be totally unrelated to your work. 33:01 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Oh, my current thing that I'm doing. It's so funny that you asked that I'm working with a group of people on the idea of collective efficacy. So collective efficacy is essentially the group believing that pulling together that group can get anything done, and so it's different than individual self-efficacy. It really is about the power in the group, and so we've created I'm just experimenting, I'm getting I'm actually working after this on my presentation to a group in June, trying out a new assessment tool for the group to self-assess individuals, to self-assess what they do in terms of four variables related to efficacy, and then thinking about where they're high, where they're low and then helping to launch, kind of some professional growth based on that. So yeah, that's my. So efficacy I think it's. We toss that word around, but I don't think it's really looked at seriously as a critical component to success for education. 34:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So yeah, thanks for asking. Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm sure people are going to want to follow up. I'm going to want to follow up and like see how that's going. So how can like people learn more about you or just connect with you and continue to follow your work? 34:17 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) They are welcome to my. We have a website, wwwmiravillaeducation, written fully out and there's lots of information about the kinds of things that we do. There's contact information for me. I'm happy to talk with people, you know. I love to know where the work's going, who, what, what things really stand out. I even said to you at the beginning you know earlier, before we started, what you chose and what was a highlight for you is very informative to me. So always good, I'm here. 34:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's incredible and we'll link to your website in the show notes in the blog post that people create. Okay, thank you, dr Lipton, so much I've loved this conversation. 34:58 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Thank you, lindsay, it's been my pleasure.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
March 2026
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