Group wise: Group work has its dangers, but facilitators have some helpful strategies

JSD, Summer 2004 (Vol. 25, No. 3)

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2004. All rights reserved.

In some schools, conversations about the No Child Left Behind Act are rife with frustration and fear. One educator asked, "How does weighing the cow all the time increase its weight?"

While we can understand and appreciate the sentiment, educators must ask constructive questions if we are to serve students well. And groups of educators, not isolated leaders, must address these queries. When leaders and staff are skilled in working collaboratively, their efforts to improve their schools are potent.

Dangers in Group Work

Schoolwide improvement requires collaborative work toward common goals. Staffs need skills, structures, and protocols to do this work. Without these, serious problems arise.

One common dilemma is that groups tend to come to agreement too quickly. Humans are uncomfortable with unresolved issues and often seek answers or solutions prematurely. Research on group decision making finds that groups will be attracted to the first viable solution that appears. Facilitators must work to keep the group open to finding the best solution. Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate in economics, coined the term "satisficient" to express groups' tendencies to settle for what is minimally satisfying and sufficient. Facilitators must work to have groups avoid solutions that are merely satisficient.

Another danger for teams is getting bogged down and becoming defensive or adversarial when members express new ideas or introduce new data. Group members tend to advocate their positions without inquiring into others' positions, and they often resist inquiries into their own orientations. Group members also may draw negative inferences about another's motivations or intentions.

Finally, a very common danger is group members' confusion about their decision-making authority. Members might not be clear whether their role is to inform, recommend, or decide. Leaders must clarify the group's role at the outset by giving members all the steps in a process the leader envisions and clarifying the group's role at each step. Without clarity, group members typically assume they have more decision-making authority than they do, so members feel theirs has been only token involvement if decisions later are made at the top. When groups are dissatisfied with the results of work to which they have contributed, they attack the process. Either way, leaders lose more than they gain.

How Facilitators Help

Anticipating issues. Facilitators aid collaborative processes by anticipating issues and preparing teams to address common obstacles to productivity. The facilitator talks to the group about processes when dangers emerge. One might say, "You know, there is a tendency for teams to settle for the first viable idea. I'm going to suggest you keep going until we have at least three more ideas on the table." The facilitator states the group's role in decision making and checks for participants' understanding before moving ahead.

Providing protocols. To avoid defensiveness or members assigning negative intentions to others, facilitators provide protocols for topics that are hard to talk about. Protocols determine the type of thinking required, place boundaries around conversations, and provide psychological safety. Brainstorming is an example of a protocol to generate ideas. Processes that use round-robin talk provide time for each person to speak. Paraphrase passport, in which each new speaker must paraphrase the preceding speaker as a "passport" before he or she can speak, is a protocol designed to assist listening (Garmston & Wellman, 1999).

Explaining processes. One of the most effective yet simple ideas I've learned in the past few years is to explain to participants why we are using a particular process. An explanation inevitably reduces the group's resistance and focuses members on what is most relevant--the content or purpose for the group's work.

Building understanding. Teams need the greatest possible collective understanding of an issue to be able to work on improving student learning. To build collective understanding, a group must be able to see relationships among systems and also to identify systems. An ever-present system is the cumulative effect of teaching. Problems at the 5th grade must be studied in relationship to what is occurring at 4th, 3rd, and 2nd grades. To understand systems relationships, the group needs the cognitive and emotional skills of inquiry, curiosity, and the discipline to ask, "What are some factors contributing to this problem?"

Following meeting standards. Teams must know how to talk together. When members know and practice five meeting standards, meetings are more efficient and effective. Leaders and members must be disciplined in maintaining these standards: one topic at a time, one process at a time, balanced participation, safe engagement in cognitive conflict, and understanding meeting roles (Garmston, 2002). Facilitators help groups remember and follow the meeting standards. Groups also must be skilled at both dialogue--talking to understand--and discussion--talking to decide. Members need skills in using fundamental communication tools, such as getting ideas heard, paraphrasing, pausing, and balancing inquiry and advocacy (Garmston & Wellman, 1998). Facilitators assist groups in learning these skills. Skilled facilitators see groups not as they are but as how they might become. They teach these skills and processes when necessary. They help the group assess its effectiveness and target future improvement.

Generate compelling conversations

Good facilitators work to help the group achieve a spirit of inquiry and conscious curiosity. Facilitators might use visual dialogue displays as one tool to help spark compelling conversations about difficult topics, even with diverse stakeholders. Seeing helps people think, especially about complex ideas. When groups are tired, the auditory system is the first to fade. A visual dialogue display is a cognitive organizer. It helps clarify the boundaries of the conversation and the selected form of thinking, and promote psychological safety so people are free to contribute (Garmston & Wellman, 1998).

Visual dialogue displays are constructed on flip charts or wall charts. They keep the focus on one topic and one process at a time. One example is a force field analysis. In one column, a group records all the forces that would help an innovation succeed. In the second column, members record the forces working against success. They study each column, select the most powerful forces in each, and discuss ways they can strengthen the forces for success while decreasing the forces against.

Suzanne Bailey introduced me to visual dialogue displays and the domain map. This map is helpful in the early stages of addressing a challenge. To use a domain map, draw a small box in the center of a flip chart page. Pose a question in the center of the box: "What are the main features and characteristics of the problem?" All potential answers are written above lines that emanate from sides of the box.

Sometimes a domain map will evolve into second- and third-order domain maps as members elaborate on one of the answers offered in the first domain map. In other words, if X were one of the answers on the first domain map, a second map would address, "What are the main features and characteristics of X?"

If no child is to be left behind, we must ask ourselves what essential conversations we must have and how we have these conversations in ways that successfully navigate differences in perspectives, beliefs, and orientations. We must create structures that are psychologically safe enough for candid and rigorous discourse about important ideas and action.

References

Garmston, R.J. (2002, Winter). The five principles of successful meetings. Journal of Staff Development, 23(1), 66-67.

Garmston, R.J. & Wellman, B. (1999). The adaptive school: A sourcebook for developing collaborative work. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.

Garmston, R.J. & Wellman, B. (1998, April). Teacher talk that makes a difference. Educational Leadership, 55(7), 30-34.

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