Time for Teachership Blog

7/28/2025

221. Facilitating Contentious Conversations? Paraphrase Your Butt Off with Carolyn McKanders

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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

In this episode, we chat with Carolyn McKanders, an educator with over 28 years of experience in Detroit public schools. As the co-author of “It's Your Turn: Teachers as Facilitators,” Carolyn interviewed over 400 teachers and their supervisors in diverse schools to understand mindsets and principles that guide behavioral choices.

Carolyn shares insights from those interviews and her book to emphasize the importance of shifting from technical to adaptive mindsets, highlighting the power of positive intent, and listening to build trust and understanding. Carolyn provides practical techniques that can be contextualized for classrooms, adult meetings, student-to-student meetings, and more.

The Big Dream

Carolyn deeply believes that, given the context of our world, who we are as educators really matters. She dreams that we continue to honor the diverse ways people show up in the world, because we can’t teach without that. She envisions educators embracing each student's unique presence and to engage with them moment-to-moment, fostering environments of love and respect.

Mindset Shifts Required

To unlock educators’ role as facilitators, it’s key to shift from a technical mindset to an adaptive one. People often focus on planning a meeting and the steps to get there. Instead, meetings are really more about a complex system based on relationships, so it’s important to be adaptive to the energy and interpersonal connections present.

Another key mindset shift is to presume positive intent. Start with the idea that people’s behaviors are their best attempts to take care of themselves, not that they have it out for you.

Action Steps
To embark on your journey as an educator-facilitator, embrace these action steps:

Step 1: Embrace the mindset of presuming positive intent, understanding that behaviors are individuals' best attempts at self-care. This helps educators stay resourceful and empathetic. Educators can also begin with a growth-oriented mindset, accepting where the group is and understanding that they can grow in time.

Step 2: Create a psychologically safe environment by implementing visible working agreements and inclusion strategies that honor diverse voices and perspectives. Research backs up the fact that diverse groups make better decisions, so harness this power in your group.

Step 3: “When in doubt, paraphrase your butt off!” Carolyn encourages educators to develop the skill of effective paraphrasing, going beyond mere repetition to engage with others cognitively, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. This fosters trust and helps develop the ability to listen to understand.

Challenges?

One challenge educators may face is overcoming ingrained technical mindsets and adopting more adaptive, relationship-focused approaches. Additionally, educators may encounter resistance when implementing new strategies in environments accustomed to traditional methods.

One Step to Get Started

Carolyn has five simple steps for facilitators to start with: Greet your audience and thank people, have a clear purpose (write it out!), have an inclusion strategy that brings people together, and have a visible working agreement in place. Finally, have the presumption of positive intent and keep a light, joyful tone as you do the work.

Stay Connected

You can find more from Carolyn on their website, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can also grab a copy of her book, It's Your Turn: Teachers as Facilitators, to go further in-depth into the content we discussed together.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Staying Engaged in Difficult Conversations scripts with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 221 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:

3:31 “Teaching students is highly relational, and the quality of the relationship between the teacher and the students directly mediates learning.”
11:29 “The presumption of positive intent doesn’t mean that people are right. It means that people walk in as much light as they have in the moment, and it’s our job to bring light and not throw shade … It says that people are doing the best they can in that moment and that they have the capacity, when mediated in productive ways, to do even better.”
35:41 “Paraphrasing within the group is a foundational point for collaborative dialogue. You cannot have collaborative dialogue without the foundational skill and willingness to listen, to understand.”

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Carolyn McCanders. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast.

00:06 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm excited.

00:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Me too. I am so excited because I just read your book. It's your Turn, teachers, as Facilitators, and I absolutely loved it. And so really excited to dive in to the concepts, to just a few chapters, maybe as a deep dive and I'd love to know you know what's important for listeners to know, either about the book or you. To kind of frame the conversation today First me.

00:32 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
I'm a teacher at heart, I was born a teacher and I'll always be a teacher, and so I spent 28 years in Detroit public schools as a teacher counselor, staff development person, still teaching, and now I'm an international presenter and working with my favorite mentor, Robert Garmston. And this book came about because we listen to teachers. Teachers are put into leadership positions and often are not given what they need to interact with their peers. They do this tension. They have this dance where they have to be peers or stay connected to their peers. They do this tension. They have this dance where they have to be peers or stay connected to their peers while at the same time taking on leadership positions.

01:33
And we interviewed over 400 teacher leaders and their supervisors in diverse US schools and international schools and they told us what they needed. And so we answered that call and responded to that data by putting together the teachers as facilitators. But most books around facilitation are filled with mostly tools and strategies. Our take on this was to start with internally, with people's mindsets and principles, because principles guide behavioral Principles Guide Behavioral Choices, and so we even have quotations from teachers in the book, and what we found is that everybody needs this. We started with teachers, and yet anyone who facilitates meetings and support collaboration from diverse voices can use the book.

02:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that. I'm going to jump on top of that to add one more layer too. I was reading it too as a former teacher to be like oh, this actually could work if you're facilitating kind of a class discussion of students as well.

03:04 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Absolutely positively. In our workshop we always say listen, because the students are my heart really. That's why I'm still doing this Listen for ways to use this in your classroom with students. In fact, we actually unpack that classroom with students. In fact we actually unpack that because this book is highly relational and teaching students is highly relational and the quality of the relationship between the teacher and students directly mediates learning, and so we actually lift that too. So, yes, the book, because it's about mindsets and principles. The application of these can be contextualized for classrooms, for adult meetings, for student-to-student meetings, for it could be principal meetings too, principal staff meetings. So the work is highly adaptable.

04:17 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Amazing. I love that so much because, yeah, anyone can pick it up and use it and put it to work immediately. And so I think now like taking a little bit of a step back. One of the first things I like to ask guests is kind of in line with this idea of freedom, dreaming which Dr Bettina Love describes as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Just such great language. What is the big dream that you hold for education, either through the lens of the book or just in general?

04:46 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Boy, when you say that, it kind of grabs me and honestly I feel a little emotional about that, because I do have big dreams for education right now. Given the context of our world, context of our world, who we are as educators to these kids really really matters right now. My dream is that we continue to honor the diverse ways people show up in this world. It's because you can't teach without that. So my hope is that we actually love each other and love the students. I actually teach self-love too, teach self-love too, and I just hope that we pay attention to who each individual is and honor that moment to moment to moment in teaching and in learning and engaging with each other as educators.

06:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Thank you for that, and I think specifically the chapters that I was really interested in are specifically about kind of that. I think like being able to think about polarities and differences of opinion and right. So I'm really excited to get into all of this. I am curious. I also like to start kind of soon in the thread of conversations on the podcast with mindset, because I think sometimes there's like a mindset shift that can just unlock a lot of the practical strategy pieces, and so I'm curious are there any kind of mindset shifts that you have seen unlock kind of the way teachers facilitate or that you would coach teachers to embrace as they become facilitators that have been helpful that you would coach teachers to embrace as they become facilitators.

06:47 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
That have been helpful. A mindset shift from technical to adaptive is a huge mindset shift in terms of working with people that we've seen People focus on planning the meeting, and here are the steps that we will matriculate in this meeting. Here are the topics that we will matriculate in this meeting. When meetings are really more about the complex adaptive system that you're immersed in, that's based on quality relationships, and that's been a huge shift, mindset shift. It's like, oh, we're not telling you not to plan and not to be ready.

07:31
What we're saying is that the most important thing in the room is energy and the most important way to create that updraft of energy is through relationships, quality relationships in the meeting. So that's a huge shift that we're seeing in the work. Also, the presumption that people's behaviors are their best attempts to take care of themselves. They don't have it in or out for you, they're trying to take care of themselves. And another shift is that people can be understood somatically, that is, through their body language and reading, not just words but taking them in holistically to interact with them, and the presumption of positive intent. So those are big shifts.

08:44 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely. I remember highlighting, like multiple times in the book, this idea that behaviors are our best attempts to take care of ourselves. I love that I never heard someone put it in that language. That rings so true, and I also think I mean from a parenting and teaching lens too. Like I mean, you could see this so often in children. It's just like, oh yes, that's exactly what that behavior was.

09:07 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Yes, and understanding that uh keeps the teacher's resourcefulness, keeps the facilitator's resourcefulness and gives grace to students and it gives grace to adults also, in structuring that lesson, structuring that interaction, structuring that meeting in ways that support people in choosing productive behaviors to take care of themselves, since what we're seeing is always that dance of I need to make sure I'm safe, I need to make sure I'm connected, I need to make sure I'm loved, I need to make sure my interests are being handled well. And so how the teacher structures the interactions, how a facilitator structures the interactions, can support productive choices and taking care of oneself.

10:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That makes total sense, because I've seen people kind of reel at the idea of like a discussion norm, similar kind of to this but not quite hitting at the same thing. That is, you know, assume best intentions. I think you had you had said language similar to that earlier and and kind of with the context of you know, as a person with particular identities in a society that is very oppressive. You know it's hard to come into that space, and so what I'm hearing from you is kind of like we kind of honor that, we, we, we give people grace and we don't let like negative behaviors or harmful behaviors like fester and continue. We actually structure it in a way that is productive while giving everyone grace. Is that right?

11:04 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
absolutely, and the presumption of positive intent is one of the most misunderstood principles on earth right right now.

11:13
Um, especially if you, if your, your lived experience has been one of oppression, we come there suspicious and so, because of our lived experiences, the presumption of positive intent doesn't mean that people are right.

11:34
It means that people walk in as much light as they have in the moment, and it's our job to bring light and not throw shade. So the presumption of positive intent says that people are doing the best that they can in that moment and that they have the capacity, when mediated in productive ways, to even do better than they are now. And the presumption of positive intent is really for the person who is doing that act. It keeps you curious and not furious, is what I say. You know, and that curiosity sparks inquiry. It sparks you to say to stay away from heavy judgment and to start to say I'm wondering how that person got to that position, what took them to that particular opinion or action. And so you become more of an inquirer and, using empathic language and empathic response patterns, so it makes you more productive, grounded and able to navigate these natural tensions that are just there in human systems.

13:13 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely Okay. There's so much I'm writing down right now. This is really good. It reminds me a lot of chapters four and five of your book. So I'm just reading the chapter titles here. But diversity and riches, inclusion makes groups smarter. And then chapter five never let a conflict go to waste, liberate opportunities. I was just really excited about this and I think they kind of speak to some of the tensions you were mentioning and kind of the facilitator moves and skills and kind of mindsets that you need to have to be effective in those situations. Is there anything from those chapters specifically that you want to lift up for us?

13:49 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Sure, first I want to say that the book builds to those chapters, and the first chapter or mindset is see a group as it could be and to have a growth-oriented attitude, perspective mindset for a group that means you can take them from where they are. You accept where they are, you accept where they are, knowing that through grace and through skills, mental dispositions, and they can be taught, they can learn, they can develop over time, which is needed for the last two chapters. And then groups grant consent is another mindset. Your role or position does not grant you consent to lead. You have to get that consent through credibility and relationships, and that is needed for those last two chapters. And plan don't attach is a third mindset which says you have to be ready to be flexible and use improvisation with groups. So you want to take those and then go to diversity enriches what we found over and over in the research that groups that think alike, that have homogeneous backgrounds and so on and so forth, they make very bland decisions and groups often resort to apathy in those groups because there's just too much agreement. And so what we found is that when facilitators, leaders, can harvest the diverse voices and create a psychologically safe container for those group members actually enjoy meetings better. The depth of the conversation and the meaningfulness of the conversation increases exponentially, decisions that are made are more innovative and more people actually implement those decisions.

16:38
And now the thing is, how do you harness all the power of the diverse voices within a group? One is to know that diversity is period. It just is period. It just is period. And so you're not. You're either honoring it or you're not, because it's always there. So, starting from that, like you're not doing a special favor by noticing it, it's just there. And what are you going to do with it? And so, and then all of chapters one, two, three and four are necessary for using conflict as a resource. Definitely because there are natural tensions in all social systems. Either we ignore them and be vulnerable to them, or we find ways, tools, mental dispositions, agreements, talking structures to honor them and navigate them, so that, in this case, that we're doing our best for students.

18:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Thank you so much for that overview and the reminder that right it's building. You don't just jump right to the forefront, you don't just dive into conflict. Right, you've built all of these things first. I think that was really important. Thank you for naming that, and then I really liked two particular tools that you specifically named in the book that could support these paraphrasing and polarity mapping. Do you want to talk about either one or both of those to give people a sense of you know? What does that even look like or feel like?

18:32 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
That's so funny that you pick those. People who know me would say that I would pick those. In fact, I'm known for saying, when in doubt, paraphrase your butt off. I'm known for saying that all over the world because there are polarities. And so let's take a look at why does Carolyn always saying paraphrase your butt off all the time? One it takes care.

19:03
Well, when I say paraphrasing, I don't mean paraphrasing, I mean really taking in someone holistically. See first, it's not just repeating back what somebody says, it's taking in them cognitively, socially, emotionally, spiritually. Taking in and asking yourself who is this person and what is it that they are really meaning, what are their values, what are their beliefs that they're expressing, what are their mental models, what are they bringing right now to the table? And then honoring that by seeking to understand. So it's setting aside yourself for the moment that to me, in my opinion, this is truly servant leadership is honored also by seeking to understand values, beliefs, the identity that they're bringing, their lived experiences that are poured into this one sentence that they've said to you, or that's poured into this rant that they've just done, and it actually is the number one relationship building tool, professionally and personally. When you provide.

20:45
That service reflects back to a person their emotions, if they're highly emotional, and the content around which they are emotional. It also creates clarity of communication between people. It also what I, what I just love. We call it an Aikido move. It goes with the energy instead of pushing against a force. It actually helps the brain to settle down, the personality self to settle down when it feels that it's being heard. And it's hard to push against understanding.

21:48
When people feel understood what we found, it actually changes their brain chemistry so that they the serotonin level goes up and they actually start to just relax. And it's the number one trusting behavior that you can do with another person not talking but listening. And so we found that three kinds of paraphrases are really important, especially when working with all groups. I don't even want to say diverse groups, because there's just as much diversity present if everybody looks like you or sounds like you or whatever. But the common ground paraphrase is so useful for navigating diverse perspectives when navigating conflict or tensions in groups. The common ground paraphrase listens across diverse perspectives, reaches in, grabs out a common value, a common belief, a common identity, a common goal, a common goal and offers it to the group so that they can coalesce, be coherent and move forward together.

23:40
And then there is the polarity paraphrase, which is one of my most favorite paraphrases.

23:42
It normalizes tensions that are within a group and it says you're right, and you're right too, guess what? And we need each other because polarities are two or more right answers that are interdependent, which means you can't put one down if you expect a positive outcome. So both the answers are needed for positive outcomes Now, and there are tensions between them, like paying attention to work and paying attention to home. You have to pay attention to both to have a good outcome, which is a balanced life. You can't put one down without the whole thing collapsing, and so offering groups lifting a polarity paraphrase normalizes the tensions. Also, it honors diverse voices because it says, for example, some people feel that students should be toe the line and follow all the rules, whereas some people feel that students need to be given the opportunity to make decisions and to practice choice making and to be given grace in those areas inside, and you can lift polarities and say so. There's a natural tension occurring here between having students follow guidelines while at the same time honoring their need for freedom and flexibility, and so it scoops that up and then you name a higher purpose so that our students are successful in life, so that our students are able to navigate schooling better, and so effective facilitators. Especially these days when we're highly polarized, it's a non-negotiable paraphrase to be able to listen for that and grab a couple of polarities and present them to the group.

26:30
The other paraphrase is the acknowledging paraphrase. Everybody wants to be acknowledged. They want their emotions to be acknowledged. Now here's the skill with this kind of paraphrase you must know how to paraphrase without taking people to hell. I always say you've got to be able to paraphrase emotions and content while keeping the resourcefulness of the person or the group. So your paraphrase should light a pathway when you're honoring feelings and I'll give an example I might say to a group you know it's really frustrating when the parents that we expect to come to our meetings are not there, and where that frustration comes from wanting to build a team with parents and then to get the group to say yes, because there's a pathway within that you're honoring and acknowledging and creating a pathway for positive action. Those are the best paraphrases, not just yeah, all the parents just get on our nerves because I don't know what they're doing. They're not showing up, which I call the hell paraphrase.

28:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That is so helpful. I could easily see how just that one phrase just directs to a very different conversation to be able to bring them into that lighting up pathway, as you said. Brilliant, I really appreciate just naming all of those types of polarities and I am actively thinking about how again back to the beginning, we were talking about how anyone could use this. So a teacher facilitating a group of teachers I could easily think of a bunch of examples of like teacher team meetings where these moves could be used. I'm also envisioning, in a class conversation right, if there's a student who's actually quite good at listening but is often undervalued because they're not maybe speaking a hundred times like maybe a couple other kids, to be able to jump in as a student and be like here's what I'm hearing. You know there's this tension happening that would be just like a next level move that most teachers would just like fall over with excitement about.

29:03 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
That is so, so true, to teach students that listening is often more valuable than talking. And then when you talk based on listening, the talk is going to be a higher quality talk and can be a paraphrase which liberates resourcefulness within your colleagues or your students or your friends to say you all are talking about the same thing. You're really valuing where we take our trips at the end of the school year, even though we've been all over the place. But there's this big value of the. The location seems to be the biggest value that we have, that if, when a student does that, they've liberated the whole group from just being all over the place. And so, yes, and we know places and spaces many in the country and internationally where teachers have introduced paraphrasing or listening to understand, and it's often in conflict resolution, and I invite teachers to use it more than in conflict resolution but to teach this skill as a teaching, learning skill, also for students. Boy, they can really help teach a lesson if they paraphrase the concepts and the ideas that are in that lesson and the ideas that are in that lesson, and so you can be and what you can paraphrase, you have learned it more deeply. And so we know spaces where there's lots of paraphrasing or listening to understand, going on in classrooms and also going on in adult meetings. It has to be taught, though it has to be in. Teaching involves giving foundational information and then modeling and practice. It's not only a commitment and it's a skill that needs to be taught and practiced. We know elementary school students to listen to understand.

32:13
Also another. I'm also a counselor and I teach people to paraphrase themselves Listening to yourself, to understand yourself. So to say to yourself I used to counsel in middle school, which you know is so needed because sometimes they don't know what they mean but helping them to paraphrase themselves. To say, if you were going to talk to yourself now about the most important thing for you, what would you say to yourself? You know, or you just said da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Reach down in there and pull out a goal for yourself. And really it's about teaching them to say well, I just said this and a goal for me is da-da-da-da-da-da. They just paraphrase themselves. They sought to understand which is really cool. They sought to understand which is really cool. So I want to encourage counselors, school counselors, to to bring that into their practices and never let a kid leave a counseling session without paraphrasing. You paraphrase them and have the student paraphrase themselves. What are you leaving with? Which is the organizing paraphrase that can be used?

33:35
Paraphrasing is at the top of a facilitator's toolkit, especially for chapter mindsets four and five, which is crafting a container of psychological safety so that people know that their voice is valued and there won't be any put downs, and also making seeking to understand a working agreement within a group.

34:12
And so I was in a group in Detroit where there were 12 precocious consultants and we all thought we had the right answer, and we probably did with polarities, but we didn't know better at that time.

34:27
And yet we decided that we would make listening to understand as one of our working agreements, and we used to call it malpractice to throw out an idea before seeking to understand, and so to when someone speaks, to understand them before throwing out an idea. So the paraphrase gives you permission to do three things in a meeting we teach Once the person gives you sign off, I paraphrase and say so a value that you hold is student self-management. And then you wait and the person gives you sign off, they'll go like, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. Then they might go on another run and you paraphrase that too, and then you have permission to one add your idea at that time, or pose an invitational question, one that's non-threatening but an invitational question or invite the engagement of others within the group. And so paraphrasing within the group is a foundational point for collaborative dialogue. You cannot have collaborative dialogue without the foundational skill and willingness to listen, to understand.

36:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
This is incredible. I'm looking at time and realizing we don't have much more. I'm going to move to kind of close out. I could talk to you all day about this. This is incredible. I'm looking at time and realizing we don't have much more. I'm going to move to kind of close out. I could talk to you all day about this. This is fascinating. This is kind of. The next three questions are kind of a quick lightning round, if you will. One of them is just kind of recognizing that we talked about a lot of big things like big ideas and also a lot of practical things people could do in a meeting. Lot of practical things people could do in a meeting. Right, what's one thing that people can do once they kind of end the episode to put into practice right away? That might be one of those kind of foundational pieces to work up to. You know, the fourth and fifth mindset.

36:41 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Yeah, talking to people who facilitate their peers. Here are five things you can do. I call them the elemental. Like little kids say elemental. If you want to improve your meetings, do elemental One is an audience connect to greet people and to thank people.

37:05
Two have a clear purpose and have it visual. Write it out. Adults are visual um. Three, have um a public agenda. That means an agenda that everybody can see, not just a flat agenda, but one you can point away from yourself and point to have a public agenda.

37:32
Have an inclusion strategy. We used to call those icebreakers, but if you want to make adults mad right away, tell them they're going to do an icebreaker, so just throw that out. But have an inclusion strategy of some kind that brings people's voices in the room, and it could be 60-second inclusion strategy. Name one thing you're celebrating or looking at today's purpose, what's one hope that you have, and then share that out. Having an inclusion strategy. Have visible working agreements strategy. Have visible working agreements. You know your meeting is not psychologically safe and people can't be brave without visible working agreements. So I want to throw that out as your element. Make sure you have those in place. Also, the presumption of positive intent, because it keeps you resourceful. Also, paraphrase, your butt off. Those would be the things that I would leave for a facilitator, and another one is lighten up and have fun. Lighten up, you want meetings where people are laughing and people are full of joy as they do the work. And so relationship first, rigor secondly.

39:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that. The next question is for fun. It could be work-related or it could be not work-related, but what is something you personally have been learning about lately?

39:32 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
until I'm doing a retreat on that for leaders, because you cannot lead well if you think you're broken. And so how do you know that you are whole? It doesn't mean that you don't have things to learn, and yet you come at it from a space of I'm not broken, I'm whole, and what's there not to love about me? And so, and which means that I won't get depleted because I live from the overflow I fill up with love for myself and I spill over into the world with love for myself and I spill over into the world. And so I've been learning a lot about grace, self-love and wholeness.

40:18 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Lastly, I think people are going to want to get your book, so we're going to link to that in the show notes and the blog post. Also, people are probably going to want to either follow you or connect with you, learn more about you. Where can they do that online?

40:33 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Yeah, we are on LinkedIn. Tell them just to look for teachers as facilitators at LinkedIn, and I have a very, very astute group who just keeps that going for us and look for us and follow us that way too. Also, if they read the book, to give us a book review, also on Solution Tree, and on Amazon to give us a book review. Also. Our website is teachersasfacilitatorscom it's the name of the book TeachersAsFacilitatorscom and you can follow what we're doing on there too, and there are links to our social media on our website.

41:26 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Amazing Carolyn, thank you so much for your time today.

41:30 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest)
Thank you so much. It's my pleasure and I send out lots of love to all the educators all over the world. I have a friend who says anybody who's not us too bad for them. We are the world, we really are as educators and I want to leave people with you are enough. You really are enough. Thank you, Lindsay, Thank you.

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7/21/2025

220. Processes for Group Dialogue, Discussion, and Decision-Making with Dr. Laura Lipton

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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

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:

Dialogue: This is the non-consensus model, where you want lots of ideas to flow—cultivating a spirit of inquiry by sharing your voice and perspectives. It’s not about agreeing, but understanding.
Discussion: Moving from dialogue with many ideas, a discussion becomes more discerning, breaking the ideas into smaller components. Its purpose is to generate and analyze ideas, defining the success criteria. The goal is to choose one or more ideas and move towards action.
Decision-making: After generating ideas and parsing them out, the group can move to choice-making. There may be pre-determined criteria like budget or timeline, but you may also develop that rationale. The goal here is that you agree on the most viable outcome based on that criteria and built on the previous discourse steps.

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:

1:39 “The leader is a group developer, so anytime you’re with your group, you have in mind their continued growth—not just complete a task in the moment.”
8:38 “I think we really confuse purpose with tasks. We’re not here to rewrite the math curriculum, we’re here to ensure there’s equitable and effective approaches to math for all our kids—that’s the purpose. To do that, we’re going to take a look at the curriculum.”
12:15 “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 you.”
29:40 “I think there's more of an attitudinal preparedness than anything else. It's saying, ‘As a leader, I'm willing to be vulnerable, I'm willing to try something new. 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, but, I want to take advantage of the resource of my group, and so anything that I do is going to be aimed at that.’”

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

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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7/14/2025

219. Implementation is a Process with a Moral Imperative with Jenice Pizzuto & Steven Carney

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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

In this episode, we chat with Jenice Pizzuto and Steven Carney, educators, researchers, and co-authors of Implement with IMPACT. They dive deep into the transformative power of implementation science in education, emphasizing the moral imperative to bridge the gap between knowing what works in education and doing it effectively.

Jenice and Steven recognize that while we often know what works through research and evidence, there’s not enough emphasis on how to implement best practices to bring effective, equitable, and just education. Their work addresses that gap and empowers educators to apply evidence-based education practices in their classrooms.

The Big Dream

Steven and Jenice envision a future of education where every child has access to high-quality, evidence-informed teaching, irrespective of their background. This dream involves dismantling normalized barriers such as resource gaps and opportunity divides, creating schools where students feel valued and capable.

The ultimate goal is to radically reimagine how educators support teachers and leaders in implementing evidence-based practices, ensuring that every student receives the education they deserve.

Mindset Shifts Required

Empowering educators to implement evidence-based practices in their classrooms requires a major culture and mindset shift. Jenice and Steven highlight the need to avoid shaming and blaming, but embrace learning and growth.

One big shift is for educators to embrace the idea that learning is not something done to us, but is part of who we are. So, implementation doesn’t happen by accident—it happens by design. Educators can co-create change and foster an environment where meaningful educational change is possible.

Action Steps
To begin implementing evidence-based practices in their classrooms, educators can start with these action steps:

Step 1: Build your implementation team. Research shows that implementation is much more successful with a team committed to the process. Build your team of champions for change, including diverse voices in leadership, educators, students, and other stakeholders.

Step 2: Adopt a change theory. Change is difficult for all humans, no matter what the situation is. That’s why it’s important to understand human behavior and psychology and have a framework for change that helps guide your implementation process.

Step 3: Create an implementation plan. Choose one initiative your school is currently working on and assess whether the implementation is being treated as carefully as the selection process. Invest time in building a plan, using your team and change theory to guide you.

Step 4: Understand barriers. Use qualitative data, such as surveys, observations, and learning walks, to understand barriers to change and implementation.

Step 3: Celebrate and reflect. Because change is challenging and implementation takes time, it’s easier for educators and leaders to feel frustrated, tired, or overwhelmed. Combat this by celebrating wins and reflecting throughout the entire process.

Challenges?

One significant challenge in implementing evidence-based practices is initiative fatigue, where schools are overwhelmed by the constant adoption of new programs. Sustaining momentum is also difficult, especially when results take time to manifest. To combat these, it’s important for implementation teams to focus, break down silos, recognize it takes time, and stay aligned to your mission and vision.

One Step to Get Started

Leaders can start by looking in the mirror—examine your current system and identify areas where it may not be serving your team effectively. By acknowledging these gaps, you can begin to build an implementation team and utilize the tools necessary to create a successful and sustainable change. Consider the initiatives in your school: are you treating this implementation as carefully as you chose this initiative?

Stay Connected

You can find Jenice on her website, IMPACT Lead Succeed, or on Instagram. You can connect with Steven on LinkedIn or his website, IMPACT Learn and Lead.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Implementation Planning Worksheet with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 219 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:

2:02 “This is born out of a moral imperative, so that we can help people stop the madness of “adopt and abandon.” And let's not shame and blame people, but let's help people to and through getting evidence-based practices to kids that need them… And that means we have to help adults.” (Jenice)
6:06 “I want students to walk into my classroom, where they've really seen value or are seen and valued, and they know that they're capable. I think we need to radically reimagine not just what we teach but how we support teachers and leaders to bring evidence-based practices to life.” (Steven)
15:58 “If you're going to be asking people to change, there's going to be predictable turmoil. And by adopting a change theory, you can treat them with humanity and forethought as to what's getting in the way, what are the capabilities, what are the opportunities, and what is the motivation?” (Jenice)

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Steven and Jenice, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. I'm so excited that you're both here in the same space virtually, and so we want to kind of start with you know what should listeners or readers of the transcript later know about you or keep in mind for our conversation today, just before we get into like the first big question, anything you want to share Go ahead, Jenice, I'll jump in after you.

00:31 - Steven Carney (Guest)
We always like we're like who's going first Great.

00:35 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Well, I'm Jenice Pizzuto and I think what you should know about me is I'm not done yet. I'm still learning and growing and I just can't get enough of this learning and improvement. And the more I know, the more I find out that I need to know and that I am always at the heart of a teacher. I started out in primary education and then I've been a literacy coach and academic success person, scaled MTSS across 44 schools, then went nationwide and then kind of went into this whole implementation science dive which you know I was looking back just yesterday. It started in 2012. And since then it's been quite a wild ride and I am on the board of the Global Implementation Society, so that takes me into some global world which I really love.

01:25
And then Steven and I, you know, just found out that there was something really missing in education and it was implementation science, but not just purely implementation science as it's been presented to the medical field and the health services. We needed that education flair, and so we are. Both come from learning forward background and focus on adult learning andragogy. So we didn't start out to write a book, but we saw this giant gap and said you know what we can do better, and we have to help people do better. So I think what you need to know is that this is born out of a moral imperative, so that we can help people stop the madness of adopt and abandon, and let's not, you know, shame and blame people, but let's help people to and through getting evidence-based practices to kids that need them, and that means we have to help adults.

02:21 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Yeah, and I think I think it's also really important for listeners to know that, both Jenice and I, we approach this work with a really a deep sense of humility and curiosity as well. It is an evolving field. We've both spent years working in schools and districts, and one thing that we've learned is that there is no magic bullet, no single solution that will really fix education, but we do believe wholeheartedly in the power of intentional, well-planned change, and so you know, we don't see implementation as just about introducing new ideas. It's about making sure that they take root, that they grow and that they thrive. And, as Jenice said, I think our goal is to help educators navigate that change in ways that feel doable and sustainable, and I think that was the whole point behind this is that implementation can seem really daunting, and is it doable? And then, while always keeping equity and student success at the center, while always keeping equity and student success at the center.

03:25 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's a perfect segue to the big first question that I typically ask, which is Dr Bettina Love talks about the idea of freedom, dreaming, and the specific quote that I love about that is she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so I'm curious, with that in mind you know what is that big dream that you all hold? I know you both touched on it briefly, but do you mind kind of speaking to that dream for education and how we use implementation science perhaps?

03:57 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
That is at the heart of the moral imperative information seeking around the failure that we have done institutionally to get students what we know works to them. Then you understand that our moral imperative is in that big dream of the critique of injustice is that we know what works. We have all the research. That's why we didn't need to write a book about PLCs or MTSS or PBIS or SEL, all the al. That's why we didn't need to write a book about plc's or mtss or pbis or sel, all the all the alphabets. We know what to do, but we have a huge gap between knowing and doing and we feel that was a social injustice and we wanted to make sure that we could. I love Steven said it's teachable, learnable, doable, fixing and blase we'll borrow those terms but things that are teachable, learnable and doable, so that busy administrators, busy teachers can actually get something done right and well, to get these evidence-based practices to the students that need and deserve them. We can do better.

05:04 - Steven Carney (Guest)
This is quite the quote freedom of dreaming and it really touches the other work that I do on top of this.

05:09
I currently run a school about generating upper mobility in our most marginalized communities.

05:16
I love this concept, really, of freedom dreaming.

05:19
For me, the dream is an education system where every child has access to the same level of high quality evidence, informed teaching and I think that that's why this book came about as well is really thinking about how do we implement these evidence and we know what works in education and how do we implement them right and well, and that students get that access regardless of their zip code, their family income or their background. I mean, I ultimately dream of schools where the barriers you know are normalized and things like you know resource gaps, or where the barriers we've normalized, things like resource gaps or opportunities, divides that divide us are completely dismantled, that divide us are completely dismantled. I want students to walk into my classrooms where they've really seen value or are seen and they're valued and they know that they're capable. So I think we need, you know, really to radically reimagine not just what we teach but how we support teachers and leaders to bring evidence-based practices to life. And again, that just speaks to the heart of the book which, to Jenice's point, the moral imperative there.

06:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
What a beautiful segue to this next piece. I was just thinking that I imagine there's a lot of re-imagining happening when we're needing to happen, I guess, to implement, like in the way that you all describe in the book, versus what's happening now and what leaders are doing now in terms of trying to here's this new curriculum, go do the thing right, or whatever it looks like in its current form, needs to drastically shift. So I'm curious to know are there key mindset shifts for leaders that you either touch on in the book or have just seen in practice that you're like these are the ways that we want to just be thinking differently about implementation 100%.

07:11 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
And that takes me to. We talked offline about a section of the book, pages two to five, If you want to just talk about that shift, and it's called. There's two sections and it's called Shifting the Culture and then Growing the Implementers. And we start out with that concept because we have to shift the culture and grow, improve and build their what we call KSAs knowledge, skills and attitudes. Not just knowledge and skills, but attitudes in an iterative improvement cycle format. There's no blame, it's a learning and improvement. And if you read at least those two sections, then also dive into what we call deliberately developmental implementation. You're going to see that that's that shift. That's going to it.

08:14 - Steven Carney (Guest)
It reimagines how we approach pd yeah, I'm just going to add to that by um.

08:24
I think the other big shift, and I think the first shift and Jenice and I used to be familiar with the term that when we were doing work for Learning Forward that you know, we as educators have to embrace learning as something that's not done to us, it's something that we, you know, it's part of who we are, it's our brace.

08:44
I think the same thing is with implementation is that implementation doesn't happen by accident, it happens by design, and so we have to move away from this idea that change is something done to us and start thinking of it as something that we co-create and you know, something that we co-create and you know, and that another big shift is really embracing the idea that implementation is a process and not an event, and I think we've said that multiple times throughout the book that it really is a process and too often initiatives fail because we expect results overnight, like we're in a result, we we're in that fast, we want to see results so stinking fast, and then we just we throw it out.

09:28
So, but sustainable change, we know, takes time, it takes reflection, it takes adjustment, um, and then I think lastly, I would just add that I think that it also we need to cultivate a mindset of shared leadership. It's it's the topic that we've thrown around for many years in education, but I think it's beyond just the shared role leadership. It's the belief that everyone in the school community, from students to parents to teachers, play a role in implementation and moving the system forward.

10:03 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Absolutely, and I want to add to that in that that's why we have implementation teams as the backbone of this work and when you look at our impact implementation framework, we have what we call the outer circle, which talks about human learning center design elements, and one of them is meaningful leadership structures, and that's horizontally and vertically.

10:25
So once that implementation team is formed, it's not the person with the title that makes it. It really is a dialogue and discussion and consensus format for decision making, for moving forward, to identify what are the facilitators of getting our new thing in place, what are the barriers and we need our teacher's voice on that. That's a co-creation, co-design, co-learning, because they know the barriers better than the principal, frankly, or especially the superintendent. But we also want to have that hierarchy of support, because that's what we need to do to be brave and collaborative. A lot of leaders have a hard time letting go, but we have a lot of examples of once you have, if you set your team up right, we come to these decisions collaboratively, collectively, and then you check it again in a few weeks to see if you need to make adjustments.

11:20 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Can I just throw an example on that really quick. So in the school I'm running right now, we're about to implement a new practice around cell phone use and there's a lot of incredible research around, emerging research on the negative impact of cell phone use in the classroom or in schools or what have you and how we? You know, matter of fact, there's lots of states that are looking at banning cell phone use and da da, da. So, aside from that, we're looking at redesigning and doing some practice review, but it's to implement the practices we're putting in place. It's not just enough to get good implementation by just getting our leadership involved and our teachers involved. It also involves our students.

12:12
This is a change that they're part of. It involves our parents this is a change that they're part of. And to do it right and well and to get a successful implementation, it's going to take all of those voices to inform on how's it going, what's working, what's not working, what do we need to tweak, what do we need to adjust so that we get there a lot quicker than simply just going off of the assumptions of the people who said we need to implement.

12:43 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I absolutely love that you guys name in the book and here on just now, the shared leadership part, because I think that often in education we use terms like distributive's, like that's what my research was in the context of leadership. Yeah, so it's really exciting to hear this being put together in like this leader book. It was like actually this is what leadership looks like. Let's expand the team concept. And I also think the other thing that I'm connecting with is this idea of kind of adaptive leadership and adaptive challenges versus technical challenges.

13:26
Right, I think a lot of times we just look at the technical things, like we're going to do the PD, we're going to implement the thing, and it's all kind of divorced from, you know, the hearts and souls of the people involved, and it sounds like you guys are really intentional about saying, actually those hearts and souls are really important and they're going to help us implement well, and so that's really heartening to me. I know in the book, several times you kind of I thought touched on this where we have like the implementation science formula for success for one, or even like the behavior change models that you had mentioned. So I don't know if you want to speak to any of those pieces, those formulas and things and the models that you brought in, but I just I felt like they were really responsive to what's actually necessary in schools.

14:12 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Thanks so much for asking. I want to go to the change piece. The formula for success is great and we can touch on that, but what you were hitting at is here's the thing change is personal, change is emotional and change is hard. We did some research. There's a fantastic book it's very thick called the Immunity to Change, by Keegan and Leahy. I don't know if you know it. It's very dense, but that's what our job was Like. We synthesized so much research. It's just crazy. But in that book they say only one in seven people think about this. One in seven people will change when their life depends on it, and they have the tools and the resources and the incentives.

14:56
asking educators to change their behaviors, their attitudes, their actual actions. I think about when I go golfing, you know, and I try to change my swing. It was hard and I'd always go back to the lousy swing and get in the woods even though I wanted to change. And so I think about when we're teaching and we're trying these new strategies. It's like that golf swing Even if we want to, it's really hard.

15:27
So if we don't have a change theory or change model or adopt a method of thinking of it as an iterative improvement process and involving the people that are doing the work and designing the work, we end up with adopt and abandon.

15:44
So if you look at Chapter 2, talks about change theory and adopting there's two change theories that we present to teams to choose from One's the COM-B and one's the Nostra change process. It doesn't matter which one you pick, but if you're going to be asking people to change, there's going to be predictable turmoil and by adopting a change theory, you can treat them with humanity and forethought as to what's getting in the way, what are the capabilities, what are the opportunities, what is the motivation? That's the COM, com, those. Whichever change theory you pick, there's a lot of resources and activities to help you address the reactions you're getting from staff. They're frustrated, oh they didn't get resources, or there's anxiety they didn't have a vision. That's from the Nostra change process. So we really encourage people to treat your staff as humans and help them learn and adapt to the changes that are necessary to get the new processes in place.

16:52 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, Jenice, you said that so well. I think the only thing I would add to that wonderful explanation is you know, these models also just help explain. You know why we get what we get, and so it's just helpful to be able to have a model to look at and go. Well, the reason why I'm not getting the behavior I'm wanting maybe it's dialed into motivation or capability or opportunity, right, and so it helps us go back and go. Where do we tweak and modify so that and it keeps it, it keeps the blame away from the people? And, more onto, how do we fix the implementation itself or the system itself in order to get the change that we're looking for, instead of saying, well, we trained them, we taught them and they're not doing it. Well, there's some reasons why they're not, and it's not necessarily reasons that they're choosing, it's just, it's just part of human behavior.

17:47 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Yeah, and we encourage you to use I'm working with a district right now surveys, interviews, observations, there's a section on learning walks so that we understand what the barriers are, because sometimes people want to do it, but there's a barrier in place, and so then we can dismantle those barriers so we can actually get to change behavior. It's pretty rare that people don't want to be about something that's going to help their kids.

18:10 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Right.

18:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
And I also love that expansive view of data. I don't know if you guys cited street data or not, but it makes me. When I was reading, I was thinking about street data and I'm like, right, it's all of the qualitative like just talk to people things when we often very much gravitate to numbers and like what is the quantifiable thing?

18:28 - Steven Carney (Guest)
yeah, it's one of my most marked up books in education. So good old street data good old street data.

18:35 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Yeah, it's so good. You're not going to get outcome data until we know are we doing what we said we're going to do? And so that's co-creation. So an implementation team co-creates the monitoring tools. They know it like. Here's what it's supposed to look like, here's what we're going to monitor and observe, and that implementation team is part of the observation. It's not a principal coming and evaluating you. It's like are we doing what we said we're going to do? And that means the team is a part of that work. And then they they designed the learning that needs to happen as a result of what they find.

19:03
It's not that hard, but we just don't. That's the mind shift right, so it's thinking about things differently.

19:11 - Steven Carney (Guest)
But yet it is hard because it is so intentional.

19:14 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Yeah, it doesn't needs a plan, it needs to be intentional about it. It's not random.

19:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Right.

19:20 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Or reactive.

19:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, I think that's I. You mentioned the implementation teams and I I really wanted to get at that, cause that was my one of my bigger like aha moments. I'm like, oh okay, so I, just as an instructional coach and you know a person who does like facilities learning walks sometimes I'm always in like coaching or PLC mode and implementation teams are doing something distinctly different, and so I wanted to get a better understanding for myself and for people who are listening or reading the blog post later. But I wanted to kind of ask you guys about you know the distinction and why it's really important to distinguish implementation team versus like a PLC or more of like a learning focus team. Do you want to go first, Steven? Well, I want to think about this for a second. Like a learning focus team, do?

20:07 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
you want to go first, Steven? Well, I want to think about this for a second, Well, and I'm trying to think, find the page where the we have a really great.

20:16 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Oh, here it's page 85.

20:17 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Yeah, page 85 gives you a great description of the difference between a PLC and an implementation team, and before we get into that, I just want to say that there is solid research that was done by Fixin, blase, noom one other person or two, I'm forgetting around with an implementation team and without an implementation team. And with an implementation team, you can get to 80% implementation in three years. Now that may sound daunting. People don't want to take three years, we want the shiny object, but if we actually want to get the thing in place, we need that's what it takes. Otherwise it takes up to 14 year 14 years to get some, uh, 14% implementation in the years, and that is not acceptable, right? So you've spent and I actually we did an audit of a school district and they'd been doing PLC for 10 years and they were right at 13% implementation. So they'd wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, I mean over time and on the initial training, on some of the follow-up trains, but they never actually got it in place. They were right where the data says so without an implementation team. That specifically the difference is.

21:29
This team is specifically charged with championing the new thing the PLC, sor, mtss, to and through to sustainability and it's not their job to be the PLC lead. It's not coaching, because the team decides together what the learning is. It's not a coach. But within that, using an implementation planning template, you are going to say we need coaching. You'll identify what are the strategies to get to that and coaching and how we use staff and what kind of learning is going to happen to that. And coaching and how we use staff and what kind of learning is going to happen, what observations, monitoring tools are all a part of that and that's a team decision. That's related specifically to scaling the evidence-based practice.

22:18 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Yeah, lindsay, I would break it down into probably like four or five key areas. One is purpose and focus, the other one would be like scope of work. Well, let's start with purpose and focus. So, like a PLC is primarily focuses on improving structural practices and student learning and they engage in, like these cycles of reflection, analysis and collaboration where an implementation on the other really, on the other hand, is guiding and managing the adoption and scaling of those evidence-based initiatives. So the implementation team looks at the big picture, ensuring that the system, the processes, the supports are all in place to drive a sustainable change. So then you kind of then bring that down to to like what's the scope of work? Like the PLC, scope of work is really within the classroom level they're analyzing the data, they're sharing instructional strategies, they're adjusting teaching to meet, you know, the student needs. Where the implementation team really looks at the operation at the system level, they're coordinating across departments, identifying barriers, they're ensuring the infrastructure and the initiatives like professional development and leadership and resources are all robust and aligned.

23:39
I think PLCs another way to look at this is think about time. Plcs often focus kind of like on the short-term, immediate instructional cycles, where an implementation team really looks at the long-term phased approach. If you think about, like in the book, the framework we have to side, plan, implement, so on and so forth, like those are the phased approaches. So the implementation is thinking through those phased approaches, which is over a longer period of time than those short term cycles. And then PLCs if you think about stakeholders, decision making, accountability. Plcs are typically teacher driven, where an implementation team is made up of a diverse mix of stakeholders and they're accountable for managing the overall success of the initiative itself. And let me think, if there's anything else, the only other thing I would say is that monitoring and adjusting. So PLCs monitor, you know, student outcomes and they make those frequent adjustments. We're implementation teams monitoring the fidelity of the progress of the initiative itself.

24:57 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That makes total sense. Thank you both for breaking that down, because I think I have a much better understanding now than I did at first standing now than I did at first. I appreciate it and I think what I love about it too is that the PLC elements, or like the professional learning elements, are still very much present, like that's still very much part right and it's not like these are exclusive.

25:16 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Yeah, go ahead. Well, there is an overlap like collaboration. Reflection is an overlap where there's collaborative work and ongoing reflection. Data-driven is an overlap where the data guides the decisions. Student-centered is the overlap where you know both. The goal is to improve student outcomes. So there is definitely an overlap and I think that they work really well together.

25:38 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, for sure, and I think one of the things that I had written down as one of my huge takeaways from the book is just the collective teacher efficacy impact on implementation was like very high, like that was a key piece of doing all this well. So you definitely need all of the pieces, so that makes sense. I'm curious to know if there's like a major challenge that you have identified. I'm sure there's so many challenges that people go through when they're trying to implement something, but I am curious to know what's like a big one that you have either like experienced yourself, coached others through, seen in the research, and how would you coach someone kind of through that or talk them through that particular challenge?

26:19 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
That's a great question. It's staying focused.

26:23 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Honestly it's?

26:24 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
for me it's pretty simple. It's being willing to break down silos, to fund the, an implementation team, to stay aligned, align your work to your mission vision. So that's why, horizontally and vertically, it needs to be school board, any of the stakeholders that are part of that, because otherwise people are going to go aside, they're going to go to a different shiny object. But when you have this systemic look and generally really it's hard to do this at a school level, to be honest, because you're going to do what the superintendent and your boss wants and if we're not all focused on scaling and that's why scaling a framework like MTSS or PLC works really well because the school district is going to do it but and that is why we built the tool actually to the coaching piece this is why we came to having all these tools, because it was like, oh, why don't we stay focused? Well, you don't have an implementation plan, so we have an implementation planning template, there's a communication map, there's learning walks, so there's all these tools to help you stay focused and to build and develop your team, so that we see that there's interconnectedness and alignment throughout the district and you can report that to the school boards and to the superintendent.

27:43
I have a school district that I work with.

27:44
Once a month, different schools report their progress on their implementation plan to the school board because they're all involved, it's all synced up and it's all tied with their PLC, their SOR and MTSS.

27:57
They've tied it all together in their implementation plan because it fits. This is the work they're doing. But because they knew that as their vision and vision, they're able to maintain focus, and because they meet monthly as a team, and because the district level team meets in trimesters, they maintain the focus and they're always looking at their SMART goal and they're looking at what progress they've made and coming back to it. So it's tied to their school improvement plan, it's tied to the district improvement plan, it's tied to the district improvement plan, it's tied to their funding and grants. It all comes together. So those things help you stay focused. If you don't have a plan and a framework and tools to guide you and the learning opportunities for the staff, that's when we shift and we just say, oh, we did it and we check the box and 10 years later we're at 14% implementation and we spent, you know, three, four, $500,000, or a million even.

28:59 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Yes to everything you said and I think as I think about this question honestly, and I think as I think about this question honestly, I think one of the biggest challenges is initiative fatigue. You know, schools are asked to adopt new programs and it can feel really overwhelming and the danger that you know, as Jenice was alluding to, that nothing sticks because there's not enough time to see things through, and I think that's a big piece. Another challenge is really sustaining that momentum as well. So, like that you get it. You know people get excited at the launch of something and but how do you keep that energy alive, especially when results are taking time, because we want to see those immediate results and they're taking time.

29:48
I think that's that's hard. And then but I mean, I have found and Jenice will say the same thing is that celebrating those small wins and creating the structures for reflection can help with that. But it's an ongoing process and I anticipate it will continue to be a challenge as long as schools are stretched really thin. So I think that if we can narrow down the focuses what is their book called focus, you know if we can narrow down the focus and not have smokers oh, that's right. Wait, that was a long time ago too, that came out, but, um, we're aging ourselves a little bit there, uh, so, yeah, so, initiative fatigue and then sustaining the momentum, um, you know, and so it's often that we may go into a system and help with their implementation, and that is the barriers that they have.

30:45
So many other things going on as well, and like where, how do they pull the resources, the right level of resources? Um, we have a good friend of ours that has done some good research around professional development, implementation and, um, she had mentioned that for every, every dollar you spend a new innovation, you should be spending four times the amount on the implementation itself. And so you know, like that's impressive. And you know, really, focusing on the support structures that support the implementation efforts, all the professional development, the coaching, the constant, you know, opportunities to celebrate in the structures for reflection and so forth.

31:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That certainly speaks to my soul as like a PD provider and coach, because I often get requests to do like one-off workshops and I'm like I don't even like this, Like there's no, what are we doing?

31:43 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
No, because it's actually harmful. Yeah, because it erodes trust and it erodes the cognitive ability and we know that it's not going to stick. There's, there's oodles of research. Linda Darling Hammond has new research, joyce and showers has previous research. It takes up to 50 hours, or up to 20 times, to be, to be, to get initial mastery, to build the, to build mastery on a new strategy 20 times. So that's why the learning walks and the team helps to build those opportunities together, and coaches are such an important part of that. And how, how, then the team decides how we're going to use coaches, what are they going to do and what are the strategies. It's, it's just so important.

32:25 - Steven Carney (Guest)
I just have to say it takes me a lot longer I've been trying to get.

32:28 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
I know, and that's for your most smart like I've been, I've been trying to get this golf stroke down for 30 years and I'm still not there.

32:35 - Steven Carney (Guest)
So, uh, for some of us we're a lot slower than the 20 times, but I guess there's something to walk away with.

32:45 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Walk away with that and then be kind to people about having helped them through to and through change. Build deliberately developmental implementation, develop people, shift the culture. You know growth mindset you can have a growth mindset, but we need learning and improvement to shore up and build our skills so we can skill up to scale up. And our staff deserve those opportunities.

33:16 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Jenice. I'll just follow up on that because I think that speaks to kind of our call to action. So we're going to do kind of a lightning round and the last few questions here. But I love to invite people to share just kind of one thing. If someone's listening to this episode on the drive to work, for example, and they're like, okay, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna like do my day, what can I do today? I'm ordering the book, I'm going to get all of the tools and I'll put those in action, you know, this year.

33:41 - Steven Carney (Guest)
However, in this moment today, what's one thing that I might do to start the momentum? I would choose one initiative your school is working on and ask are we?

33:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
treating this implementation as carefully as we chose this initiative?

34:00 - Steven Carney (Guest)
And if the answer is no, take a step back and invest time in building the implementation plan. Think about the peoples, the behaviors and the systems that we need to be put in place to make it really successful. So implementation isn't glamorous work whatsoever. It's detailed, it's deliberate and often behind the scenes, but if you do it right, the impact lasts beyond the initial rollout. So choose one initiative.

34:27 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
And I'm going to say get a mirror. And what I mean by that is if you're implementation, if something's failing in your school, we need to look at the system, because teachers come, show up each and every day to do the very best. We may not have provided them with the resources. We may have provided opportunities to build the capacity to build their knowledge, skills and attitudes. They might not have the appropriate time. And so the other piece is if you see in that mirror that it's not working, don't fret. You can build an implementation team and start to use the tools to plan. It's never too late, even if you're like here. We started with somebody who's already 10 years into PLCs. Now they're up to you know 80% of people use it. It doesn't. So don't, don't. Don't be shy and you can come in and re. You can reshape something. But look in a mirror to see is your system serving your staff?

35:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's so good. It makes me think of like kind of the um doing root cause analysis. I'm always like look for the gut punch, like you'll know when you get to the root. When you're like, ooh, that hurts me, to like face that hard reality about myself and my beliefs, like Hmm, that's like something that resonates. I know you are both working on your golf swings and so you could use golf as the answer to the next question, but I'm always curious what guests are learning about lately, and this could be related to your work, but it also could be totally different.

35:48 - Steven Carney (Guest)
So what do?

35:49 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
you think I am hooked on Adam Grant who, if you don't know Adam Grant, look him up. He is a social psychologist. He has two books. One called Think Again was my first dive into Adam Grant. I went to Little Dents and then Hidden Potential. I've got so many notes in that and he's about the hidden potential of teams and hidden potential in ourselves. And I am all about Adam Grant now and he has a podcast. So some of my learning is trying to infuse more Adam Grant-esque things into my life and work more Adam Grant-esque things into my life and work.

36:31 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Gosh, you know I wish I would read things that are more like fun and not related to like my life, work and kids and what have you. But I'm currently in the process of reading the Anxious Generation, which I'll butcher his name Jonathan Hatt, or H-A-I-D-T. How do you pronounce that last name? Anyway, wow, really, if you want to understand why our kids are really struggling right now with so much anxiety and and, uh, mental health and what have you, uh, he, he makes this distinction between what we used to have, um, uh, basically, when we grew up, uh, that we had, uh, you know, lives where we played versus, you know, right now, their, their lives were consumed by cell phones and they could start scrolling when they're three. But tons of research that's in this book, so it's not just an opinion piece Really good. So it marks the case for some changes that we need to make in society to kind of help our kids with their, to address the level of anxiousness that they have.

37:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I just requested that from the library this week, so I'm very excited. Thank you for previewing that for me, and then the final question I have for both of you, and we'll link to all this stuff too in the blog post for the episode. But where can listeners learn more about you, connect with you? We'll link to the book and the free resources in the book. So thank you for providing those, but what's the best place to get in touch with each of you?

38:01 - Steven Carney (Guest)
Go ahead, Jenice, you got yours, I got mine.

38:04 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Hey, great, I am available at Impact Lead Succeed, which, if you just Google that impactleadsucceedcom and Jenice at impactleadsucceedcom by email and I'm on Instagram with Impact Lead Succeed. But just email me if you want to get together, if you want to just talk about learning and improvement. I love to geek out with other people who are learning and if you want some support, then we can also help you there.

38:37 - Steven Carney (Guest)
And don't get confused by this, but we have very similar names. But it's impactlearnandleadcom and it's Stevencarneyatlearningandleadcom and it's Steven Carney at learning leadcom.

38:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Amazing. Denise and Steven, thank you so, so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

38:52 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest)
Lindsay, it's a pleasure.

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7/7/2025

218. Leadership Simulations as PD with Dr. Richard Bernato

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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

In the podcast episode, our guest, Dr. Richard Bernato, delves into the transformative potential of simulations in education. Drawing from his extensive experience as an educator and leader, he discusses how simulations—role-play scenarios in a game-like environment—can empower educators to foster experiential learning that supports student learning through doing.

Highlighting insights from his book Co-Creating the Future, Dr. Bernato illustrates how the collaborative nature of simulations enhances decision-making skills and prepares for potential future scenarios.

The Big Dream

Dr. Bernato envisions a future where educational leaders and educators are empowered to catalyze each other through professional development and experiential approaches. In doing so, educators can recognize what their mission and purpose should be and apply them in the classroom.

He dreams of a landscape where simulations are widely adopted in educational settings, allowing for innovative and transformative learning experiences. This vision extends to fostering international collaboration, enabling a global audience to engage in collective learning about reform and personal growth, ultimately leading to a future rich with innovation and empowerment.

Mindset Shifts Required

A key mindset shift highlighted by Dr. Bernato is the need for educators to move from reactive to proactive approaches in education. He emphasizes the importance of engaging in "futuring" and simulations to build capacity for dealing with probable futures, rather than merely addressing immediate challenges.

Action Steps
Educators who want to embrace “futuring” to build capacity for dealing with future issues and situations can start by implementing simulations as a tool for experiential learning. Here are some steps to follow, which are elaborated on in Dr. Bernato’s book, Co-Creating the Future:

Step 1: Embrace the concept of simulations as a tool for experiential learning. Dr. Bernato explains that a simulation is a set of role plays within a gaming situation.

Step 2: Create the scenario and context for your simulation. Consider any game or video game—there’s always a scenario that needs to be thoroughly understood so players can move through the game. Your scenario will have economic, demographic, or commercial premises, and value systems will be involved.
Step 3: Give the players a role. Within the context of your scenario, the players need a role such as president, community leader, politician, business leader, etc. How do these players interact together? How do they understand the scenario?

Step 4: Let the players find their purpose. Why are they there? Players gather together to discuss what their goals are and what the purpose of this simulation is.

Step 5: Introduce futures options. What’s probably, possible, and preferable? For example, demographic changes are probable—what’s the impact of that? Then, of what’s probable, what is the most preferable? The facilitator can add new dimensions for players to consider.

Step 6: Act out scenarios. Create a website, newscast, obituary, etc., that explains the particular scenario of what could happen. What does the world look like in this simulation under these conditions?

Step 7: Debrief. Discuss the experiences all the players had to understand whether adaptation or transformation is necessary.

Challenges?

One challenge is the tendency for educational groups to opt for adaptation over transformation. Overcoming this requires a commitment to embracing new methods and a willingness to question the status quo.

Additionally, implementing simulations in time-constrained environments like K-12 education can be challenging. Creative strategies like hosting it on Zoom or doing it once a month can help make simulations more accessible for educators struggling to find time.

One Step to Get Started

One small step for educators is to start by looking internally. Get honest and ask: Are you really satisfied with what you’re doing? If so, carry on. If not, it might be time to consider integrating new ideas like simulations and experiential learning in your educational practice.

Stay Connected

You can find this week’s guest on email, SolutionTree, and LinkedIn.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is offering a 20-minute conversation about how futuring meets your school district needs with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 218 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:

11:48 “Many educators, whether they’re teachers or have stripes on their shoulders, are extremely passive … They feel victimized by whoever the decision-makers are and are perfectly willing to sit back and accept whatever they think the probable future is that they have to deal with.”
6:48 “If you look at think tanks or corporate think tanks or governmental think tanks, they’re futuring all day long. That’s what they do … They think about, ‘Is this a potential scenario, a potential future, a probable future? Is the probable future our preferable future? And if it isn’t, what’s the gap?’”
16:49 “...That one with Chevy Chase where he’s exploring the Hoover Dam. He puts gum on one hole, and the next thing, he’s got 10 holes in the dike. That’s how we operate—that’s reactive, not proactive.”

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Dr Bernato, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast.

00:06 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to meet you and talk to you and have this conversation.

00:13 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm so excited and to talk about your book specifically, it is so cool. It is very different from any book I've ever read, very like video game-esque and like the inner gamer in me was very excited about the kind of simulation piece here. So we're going to unpack all of those pieces today. But kind of at the top I just want to know you know what is important for listeners as they're engaging with this podcast episode to know either about you or just to kind of keep in mind about the things we'll talk about today. Anything upfront you want to share.

00:50 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
You only have a half hour. I have a chance to talk about myself. I could just go on and on and on. Well, obviously, just by looking at me you can tell I've been around the block a few times. I have been in education, k through doctoral for longer than you were alive, for sure, and, you know, traveled my way around. I was very fortunate early on when I came out of undergraduate school again before you were born, to be provoked by my first principal.

01:21
I guess I was a seventh grade social studies teacher at the time when he hated my first observation and I was just thrown for a loop because I thought I was John Dewey incarnate and here he was criticizing all these things that I had not done. And he said something to me I took to heart and that was Richie kids, this age learn best by doing. That had never occurred to me. I have age learn best by doing. That had never occurred to me, I have to confess, at the time, and I took it to heart on a number of different levels and I really devoted my professional life to several things. But the first thing, I guess because of his provocation, was to find anything that was creative, to get students engaged, actively participating, to use an old-fashioned word and to learn and discern things that aren't easily taught or have much more motivational value than not. And so I went along developing simulations and role plays and experiential approaches almost from the get-go and accidentally discovered the provocative, catalytic nature of how it gets students of any age to truly decide things, evaluate and transform.

02:50
I don't like the word transform because it's so overused, but it's a hard word to define, so what I try to do is to change it to a little bit of a phrase I call new ways to realize that's what transformation really is about. It's an alchemy, as we joked about before. We got online where you turn light into gold and it's kind of marvelous to see it happen, certainly in the K-12 world, and to have fellow instructors. Which is what I wound up becoming was a coach, instructional coach, and then ultimately, I thought that it was probably best that I use an old-fashioned model to become a principal and instructional coach in any number of administrative roles where I finished up as an assistant superintendent for instruction, which was like the ideal job for a guy like me, and I was also lucky enough to be teaching methods courses in any number of local colleges and that got me into getting leadership positions, as I said before, and it's been fun.

03:58
It's been really a wonderful ride, and this particular book, co-creating the Future, has been a warning for some time, in different aspects of it. Anyway, and I went up sitting down I said I'm going to make a simulation about leadership and about weaving skill sets that most leaders may have, naturally, because of whom, whoever they may be, on their own experiences or may not be aware of, in terms of the ability to enable fellow administrators, fellow leaders, what? And? Or teachers, instruct the stakeholders to um I use my favorite word here, and I use my favorite word here to catalyze each other, to empower each other, to take charge of what. I'm trying to remember who the author is Sharma calls the emerging future, and you know.

04:56
I was just talking to my class last week one of my classes and I said and we were talking about decision making and about futureing I have to come back to that word if you don't mind. And I said to them it was, I think it was the day before election day and I said you voted or you're going to vote tomorrow, and what you're going to do is pick a candidate who is going to, you think, meet your preferable future. You're going to try to figure out what he or she stands for and you're going to go from there. The choices they evidenced shows a preferable future. That doesn't necessarily jive with where I come from, but at least I helped them understand what it was they were trying to do and it was something I said that I wanted to come back to. Oh yeah, and the word futuring weaves back in with simulation, which is where I didn't define simulation. I apologize.

05:56
A simulation is a role play within a gaming world. You know, we simulate all the time. In a sense, this podcast is a simulation. Certainly every video game anyone's ever played. I'm a terrible video gamer, by the way, but I love to play them. You go into the cave to kill the dragon and the dragon kills you, you go back and you do it again because you're not really hurt, and that's the beauty of a simulation. So when I give students a chance, gave students a chance to decide whether they wanted to fight world war one or not, back in the day I had one class say to me when, when he says they were stupid to go to war, we're not going to war, so so the world would have been different. And and that's what simulation and gaming can do, if you shape it correctly and the word futuring begins to insert itself into. In fact, if you look at think tanks or read about corporate think tanks or governmental think tanks, they're futuring all day long. That's what they do. And business corporate, as I said already, they do it all day long. They think about this is a potential scenario, a potential future, a probable future. Is the probable future our preferable future? And if it isn't, what's the gap? And what do we do to either adopt the probable, because it's unavoidable, or to change what we do to enable the preferable future and future?

07:30
Ring is really a word I made up. I think I made it up and that would be it's a noun, it's a verb, it's a gerund, whatever that is, and essentially it's about careful forecasting. And so I was just reading a paper a student sent me grading it and it was a graduate class and she says something about the fact that her school is going from a 789 to a 678. And clearly she saw all kinds of issues associated with it they hadn't planned for, they hadn't forecast for. And I said to her in a video last week I said whoa, you're going to have a lot of cultural issues there because they're not looking at all of the potential impacts. An impact is something that you have to recognize. That someone's like a card game. If I have a pair of threes and I don't know what you have it's likely you have better than my pair of threes. I'm talking too much.

08:37 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
No, this is great. Oh, I love all of the definitions too, because all of these kinds of things are probably very different from the traditional way of not just teaching but, you know, pd for leaders, right, and thinking about how we do kind of training exercises or anything with leaders. So I just really appreciate that grounding and all of the definitions that people may not be familiar with. And actually this idea of futuring connects perfectly to the question I was going to ask you next.

09:04
So I usually ask about freedom, dreaming and Dr Bettina Love talks about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice and so I also love the kind of pairing with this idea of a preferable future, right, and so what is kind of either your freedom dream or your preferable future, or some amalgamation of both, for kind of leadership, education or supporting leaders to kind of do really um, you know, trans transformative team to not have a better word work here well.

09:35 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
To come back, I need the name of that author you mentioned. I'm not familiar. I'd love to take a look at that myself. Um, my vision is to empower, is to use professional development and experiential approaches to enable would-be leaders, teacher leaders, stakeholder leaders and leader leaders to catalyze each other and leader leaders to catalyze each other to recognize what their actual mission should be and their actual purposes should be, because too often we go off half-cocked, shooting our gun at the first solution we think is there and then only to find out that we just twisted ourselves into another mess is there, and then only to find out that we just twisted ourselves into another mess. And so the more nearly we can engage more people to empower each other, to listen to each other, dialogue with each other to use a Senge word, peter Senge the more likely we'll be able to recognize what the icebergs are out there and recognize that what lies beneath the sea is what takes down the ship. And so we need to work to do that.

10:50
I just read today. It's a little off the topic, but it kind of twists back to what you're talking about. I was reading a quick article this morning. I might have been out of fast company. I'm not sure it said that DEI is dead company. I'm not sure it said that DEI is dead. It said that it's old hat and corporations shouldn't even get involved with it anymore. And my soul twisted inside and out. I said well, what does that mean? I don't know what it means. I think I can project that, though, because it suggests a rock and a ripple and the pond whose ripple effects are preferable futures. It's scary.

11:33
What I have found in all the different kinds of instructional experiential things I developed for students, you know, younger kids and for graduate classes in different ways, doctoral classes especially is that many educators, whether they're teachers or leaders or have stripes on their shoulder, are extremely passive. I don't have any research to show that, but I would say that they have a. They just kind of feel victimized by whoever the decision makers are and are perfectly willing to sit back and accept whatever they think. The probable future is that they have to deal with, whether they particularly care for it or not, and it's kind of disheartening. I had a principal call me up last year. I had her in a class. She was in a Brooklyn charter school I think it was a charter school and she said that her superintendent somebody had called her it was a Monday had called her Sunday night and said you're going to have 17 new students in your building tomorrow. These were all students who had migrated from Latin America and had various stages of preparation and so forth. And she said what do I do? So my first question to her is, she says have you built the capacity into your staff to future for these kinds of events? Because everyone knows these are the kinds of things that educators all around the country have grappled with? And she said no. So I wanted to say that you didn't equip and create the capacity for your colleagues to prepare for that.

13:23
Now you get to these social justice premises. They're hard to deal with even within the simulation, but they will occur in this simulation, because what will happen is when I get two groups together. Because what will happen is when I get two groups together, they will often recognize demographic shifts as an issue. And what I try to do in the first state, the seven phases in the simulation, is teach them how to truly information gather, not just assume that they know everything there is to be known, when in fact they haven't spoken to people. All they've read is achievement data. They haven't considered the environmental factors out there. By environment I mean the political and economic factors that are shaping so much of what we're grappling with now, and they don't do that, and that's one thing that the simulation will teach them.

14:25
And then there's I think I said earlier, there's sets of skills that aren't customarily taught in graduate classes, preparation or leadership classes of any, I don't think of any kind. One of them is creativity, creative problem solving, which is the only place you can really deal with the social justice and DEI needs. Because that, because you're forced to grapple with these issues and look at them through a different lens, and they don't know, they only know one lens. So until you teach them how to use new lenses to see new futures, an array of new futures, it's very difficult for them to meet Einstein's definition of insanity, something like I think he said it.

15:10
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and it continues to fail is a definition of insanity. And we have this leadership insanity because we just continue to use the same worn out, inadequate solution approaches, often unilateral, and understandably unilateral in one sense, because some of these things come down and hit people between the eyes, like this poor principal with no time to reflect or to engage her colleagues to work with or stakeholders to help us solve these things. But it's doable if they learn. And that's just one set of skills. I don't want to bore you with all of them straight away, but they're all in the book, actually in various forms, and a couple of other books I've written as well, and I'm talking too much again.

16:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
No, this is great. So a couple of things I want to flag. One I love I usually ask a question about mindset shifts and it sounds to me like there's kind of two mindset shifts necessary or kind of coming through your book. One is kind of I'm thinking about that principle example that there is so much benefit in futuring or engaging in the simulation, building capacity for these kinds of, you know, probable futures, versus I'm just putting out the fires today, I'm just going to deal with what's urgent or in front of me now, and if we don't do the other things, then we're just going to keep having all the fires to put out.

16:39 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
Right, if we don't well, like peter sinker, talks about the thumb and the dike. You know and I was there, chris what is the uh las vegas vacation? Uh, one with chevy chase, where he's he's exploring the hoover dam, I think and he puts gum on one hole and next thing he's got 10 holes in the dike. That's how we operate. That's reactive rather than proactive. And you know what? In the business world there are futures forecasting skills. So what I've done is I've only isolated about four because it can be kind of overwhelming, but there's so many out there I'm going to recommend everybody check out a woman named a professor, named Amy Weber. Amy Weber, she's out of NYU who teaches future in courses, and I would love to work for her, but she's written all sorts of books that not only go through technological changes, which is clearly obvious enough, but she also offers I don't know how many different kinds of futures forecasting skills.

17:45
I only show three or four and I classify them as basically two-dimensional and three-dimensional. But the minute I begin to immerse folks in that, I just wish people could see what happens, even when I do something as simple as the ripple effect, you know, throw a rock in the middle of the pond an analogy I used before, or a metaphor, I guess it is lights start to go on. They start to realize well, if we didn't throw the rock in the pond then that wouldn't happen. Or if we tried another pond, maybe we'd get a different result. Because it's not the natural way we do that, except we naturally future I mean squirrels plant acorns. They're futuring Farmers turn their fields over for the next growing season.

18:41
You decided to put your hair up today because you thought it would. Whatever it is the reason, you thought that, and it's fine, I can't put my hair up. And we try to decide whether our shoes match our clothes. That's all about future. And we decide whether our shoes match our clothes. That's all about future. And we decide whether you know we're going to go left or go right to it. It's a natural part of what we're doing and we don't pay attention to how we can sharpen those futures forecasting skills within our own personal practices, let alone our own decision-making leadership practices.

19:21 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely. I am realizing too we should probably. I would love to have you walk through kind of what the simulation is so we could define that for our listeners who haven't picked up the book yet. Can you talk us through like so? What do people do once they get into the simulation, like what are kind of those phases that you list out? Do you mind Thank you?

19:40 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
Sure, no, I'm glad you asked. Thank you for asking. I actually wrote that down beforehand because I sometimes forget them myself. First of all, I always make the point again, a simulation is a role play, sets of role plays within a gaming situation. And again, if you think about Candyland or if you think about the latest video game, they all really assume the same premise. There's always a scenario, and the more detailed the scenario is, the more information you have or you can discover along the way, as you would with a video game. That's why it's so bad Adam. So I never know what the dragon is.

20:26
The scenario has to be thoroughly understood within the simulation. I even leave room for people to use their own district or building scenario If they wanted to do that, that's. But I kind of always recommend that that gets saved for after you finish the simulation so you can take the skills from the simulation and then weave them back into your own problem solving approaches. But to begin with the scenario, it's going to have economic issues. It's going to have demographic issues, commercial premises, value systems that have to be included. I provide a scenario in the book that's quite detailed, thanks to my editor. She was terrific about that. There's a little map and we have names of different places and what's the rich part of town, what's the poor part of town, whether the change is going on within the community. Because that suggests too that when you try to change anything within school systems, I think that school systems sometimes don't pay attention to what I call the world out there. And so what I did was I created two teams. I created a world out there team and an educational leadership team, and they're not competing with each other. They could be at odds with each other, but they're not trying to defeat each other. That's a different kind of simulation, and this simulation is really about how well they can collaborate, which requires a different skill set than trying to attack the Germans across the ditch, so to speak. And so what happens is each there's two teams and they all, they know their overall role, r-o-l-e, and then within each team forgive me, this gets a little didactic the education leadership team has at least five roles. It's always a superintendent, it's always a assistant superintendent, a pupil personnel director, a principal and a teacher, who might often be the union leader, depending on how we shake that out. You can make more roles than that, but that's as simple as I can make it. And then the educational leadership team I'm sorry, the community world out there team. There's always a board president, there's always a community leader, an economist, slash demographer, a politician, and I'm leaving one person I can't remember. Now I'm getting to leave them a little more complicated.

22:59
Each role player has another role, so they play two roles. One is, for example, the superintendent, plays the superintendent, but she also plays the culture specialist. The culture specialist on the other side would be the PTA president. I think that's how I set it up. So, in other words, they have counterparts on each team so that those skill sets, and then I provide material within the book to enable them to be very familiar with what their roles, what their skill sets should be and how they have to play those roles. It's really, it's a charge to see how they start to really play their roles. They really take the roles. I'm smiling because it's it's just fun to see how they start to really play their roles. They really take the roles. I'm smiling because it's just fun to see how it works out.

23:51
So once they've gotten their roles down and they've reviewed this scenario, you move to the second phase, which is to. Each group will then take response and they put them in separate parts of a different classroom or two different rooms that don't even hear each other. So each group identifies how they're going to gather information in order to really drill down, distill what their purpose is. That's hard. Obviously, they can't do a survey, so I usually give them a survey result or something along those lines. But basically what I want them to do is use what they think the scenario information is to drill to a purpose. Now you might be the world out there group and I might be the, you know, the education and leadership team and we might have. You might generate, with your group, a purpose and I might generate one, and it's probably not, you know, at odds with each other all that much, but there's usually fine issues among them.

24:54
We do is go back into another room and we and we exchange the points of the purposes and they talk about it. Then I send them back into their old rooms and then they and I say to them let's figure out a way to amend what we need to do. If you think so, that takes a few minutes and then I give influence cards to each group per role. The culture specialist always has more cards than everyone else, because culture is the underlying answer to everything. Then I give them a break answer to everything. Then I give them a break and we go to a coffee machine or whatever we've set up for them and they go there and they begin to negotiate with each other for the influence cards, the trade votes, trade premises. Then we go back and they vote and then the vote will then dictate what the purpose is.

25:43
And once the purpose is in the ground, then we move to the next phase, which is where we introduce futures wheels and that's a ripple effect chart, where they begin to identify what I call the three Ps what's possible, what's probable and what's preferable. You know, most anything is possible. But if we say, well, the demographics are going to change, all right, that's a possible, and it's also a probable, all right. And then what's the ripple effect of the of the demographics changing, and what's the ripple of that? And then we go out a little bit, so they begin this project, out future impacts, and then I say to them okay, now figure out of the probables which one you think is most preferable. So they kind of get to drill for that. They do the same process I explained before about voting on the purposes. And then we can move to another skill set, another two-dimensional skill set called cross-impact matrix, which is a fancy word for a chart. And we say, well, impact matrix, which is a fancy word for a chart. And we say, well, okay.

26:53
So Lindsay's group said that the demographics are changing and it's going to challenge us economically. Okay, who are the people, places and things or ideas that will be affected by that? That's a probable future. And so they begin to project what they think the impacts will be on these other groups. And now they start to get deeper on these futures premises I've been talking about. They do the same thing they exchange them to see which three of the ideas seem to be dominating the conversations, and they go to the next phase, which is the one I like the most and it's hard to explain in a short time, but essentially what I do is I have them, write scenarios and then enact them.

27:45
So, for example, the book shows this better than I can do with my hands. I'm, for example, I wish I the book shows this better than I can do with my hands. I'm Italian, so I can do with my hands. There's an axis that shows. The up and down axis may say a high will to do things versus a low will. This axis, the horizontal axis, will show that they have the capabilities the capacity, to use your word from before, and this group slides down the other way. So if you think about it now, you have four quadrants high-low, high-high, low-low, low-high. And then I put them in four groups and I say okay, now create a website, create a newscast, create an obituary, an autopsy report which you're going to present about that particular scenario.

28:41
One where there's no resources and there's no will to change, is an example. What does that look like? Tell us a story about that. Typically, that's the most interesting one, because what happens is people say, oh, this is really dismal and the world is over. And then they begin. But 10 years later, people begin to move in with the money to buy up these old dilapidated areas and so on and rebuild the school, and the next thing you know that's the place everybody wants to move to because that's how they see the future outcomes evolving.

29:10
So what happens is they present in a in a and again they negotiate all these things and then we vote on which we think is the most probable future, not necessarily the most preferable, the, the most probable, and what happens then is one of those four will win. And here's what happens to it Inevitably, the probable future will not be the one they want. This happens organically, which is great. I've never been experienced where they say, okay, we're good with this scenario. So what happens is then we say, okay, well, what do we do? And that's where you just take the cork out of the bottle and they recreate a future with all the action, design, strategic planning approaches that everyone will have learned about from the planning person, and there's the new plan that they've made.

30:13
Then what I do is in a simulation. I know I'm talking too long, but in a simulation it's absolutely imperative that you have a debrief. It's sort of like taking people on a field trip and then coming back and never talking about it, because all these experiences I can't even count the number of experiences and interactions that are going on. Now you have to debrief it so they can decide whether they want to adapt or transform. Unfortunately, I have to tell you, most of the groups I work with choose to adapt, don't choose to any drastic transformation, which bothers me.

30:51
I don't know why that. I think it's just because they're built in, it's built into them. And then, but then I have a plan. Now I turn around and say to them now let's go back to your, your district, so tell me about your district and tell me how you would take these, this plan, and apply these processes to the, to the uh uh, your or your school district or your church. I just use school as the backdrop, but it could be most any organization. I know I'm talking too much, I apologize.

31:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
No, that's fantastic. I mean you have to, because there's so much detail in the simulation. It's fantastic. I love that. This is just out there in the simulation. It's fantastic. I love that this is just out there in the world, and I think we talked about early on, you know, your dream for maybe having a bunch of people doing this on Zoom from across the country. Do you want to kind of speak a little to that at this moment?

31:41 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
Yeah, my wife calls me a Disney idiot savant, and I know where every bathroom is in disney world.

31:49
Let me tell you all that because disney is the is the ultimate simulation, if you think about disney world.

31:54
But at any rate, uh, if I had some pixie dust, I would sprinkle it all around all the uh, all the people who will have read the book.

32:01
And if I could get 10 people to volunteer, I would love and and this is going to be a little crude because I haven't tried this yet, but I would love to see how this would work out I would love to have you know Lindsay say, okay, I'd like to be part of this, and Joe Smith and Mary Jones and so forth.

32:24
And what we would do is I would set the simulation up cross-country and then we would interact exactly along the way of what we just talked about, how I described it, and see how a national or even an international group could walk through this simulation and see what I can't even I can project, I can future forecast and say I think we would have some really marvelous ideas and certainly what an understanding we could do, what a tipping point a critical mass of people could do to promulgate. That's a word I never use out loud Promulgate this whole idea of simulations with futuring, with change, reform and having new ways to realize what they can do for the future of how we school kids in a 21st century accumulating set of challenges.

33:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I bet that will be the group that finally chooses to transform and not just adapt to the past.

33:29 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
I would give my house for that. I would just love to see that happen.

33:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that. I think oh, I wanted to name too one of the appendices that you have is really helpful, I think, for people who might be listening and thinking I don't know if I have the time to do this with my staff, right, and so there's so much in there. People just need to get the book and read it. But there's so much in there about you could do this monthly. You could like kind of set it up that way. You could do it online. I love that you just paid attention and gave so much real estate in the book to that reality.

33:59 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
It absolutely deserves that, because a yes but to simulation, as in teaching instructional technique, is that it takes time, and that's probably, I think, why a lot of K-12 teachers, if they're aware of what a simulation is, most are not. But what I found is that if a person I use social studies as my example all the time people make a typical eighth grade social studies teacher teaching the American Revolution isn't spending three weeks on the American Revolution. I did because I just liked it, but they may spend three, four days, and so if you want to get into something where the Tories and the Patriots and the British try to negotiate a treaty, that takes time and unfortunately the time is the coin of all teaching, someone once told me and so they move off of it and the same with PD for our teachers and administrators, and one way to handle it would be to do it in the way I described it in the appendix. I thought that was a helpful support for enabling people to use this book.

35:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely Well said, yes, okay, I have three more questions for you. There'll be like a lightning round, all right. So this simulation is a big thing, right, people will need to get the book and kind of go through all of this. I'm wondering about one small next step that people could take after they listen today that could kind of launch them into either this way of thinking or practicing, or thinking about PD. What's one thing people can do when they stop the episode.

35:37 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
Wow, that's a great question. One small thing would be, again, other than reading the book, would be to watch this podcast. That would be one thing that comes to mind. I guess maybe this is an unfair question that I might ask of other folks, and that would be are you really satisfied with what you're doing?

36:01
Because if you are, then we're going to go along to get along, but if you're not, this is a good set of answers for it plural we're going to go along to get along, and, but if you're not, you know this isn't, this isn't a good set of answers for plural, for what you want to have happen.

36:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that. Just ask yourself that question. That's beautiful, all right. One thing I ask for fun is something you've been learning about lately. This can totally relate to what we talk about in education, or it could be. I learned how to cook this dish, or something. It could be anything, or it could be I learned how to cook this dish or something.

36:28 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
It could be anything. I've discovered mysteries the past six months. I never read mysteries well, marcia because I can never figure out who did. I still can't. But all of a sudden I'm reading Agatha Christie, I'm reading Connolly, I'm reading all these people and I'm having a blast. I'm also always trying to lose weight and and play golf, but really the new, the newest thing is uh, besides hanging out with the, with uh, my grandsons, when they're willing to be hung out with uh is uh, it's a mysteries that's phenomenal.

37:01 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm a huge mystery fan, so that's awesome. That resonates. And finally, where can learn listeners learn more about you or connect with you online? Obviously, we'll link to the book in the show notes, but where else can they find you?

37:13 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
My email is rbernado B, as in boy E-R-N, as in Nancy A-T, as in Thomas O, at gmailcom. I'd be happy, I'd be thrilled to answer anything. You can find me. I don't have a website anymore. I did, but not anymore. I guess you could catch me through Solution Tree Pretty sure you can. Who's the publisher of this particular book and who has been really terrific and supportive of everything I've tried to do? And I'm all of a. If you Google me, I have like 10 different. There's all different things about me, different places, awesome.

37:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Thank you.

38:01 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
I'm very appreciative of the chance for you to smile at me and to be interested in what I'm saying.

38:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Oh my gosh, it's a fascinating concept. I'm really, really excited.

38:09 - Dr. Richard Bernato (Guest)
I can't wait till we get that critical mass of people internationally playing this movie fantastic yeah, volunteer, that's great let us know I think I have two people now want to do it and I just uh, I don't promise anybody that it will be a smooth sale, uh, but I think that we could have a. We could learn a lot from me about each other and about ourselves, as well as what the whole idea of reform actually really means absolutely, dr brown.

38:36 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Thank you so so much for your time.

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