When Zen Ls Not Enough

Constructivist Facilitation: When Zen ls Not Enough

by Nancy Mohr

I've learned a tremendous amount about leadership by being a member of a group. It feels very different to be in the skin of a group and experience desperately wanting to be a "good member,"—wanting the group to work, to be successful, to have fun, than it does to be a leader who moves in and out of the membrane that holds a group together. It is rather painful to be in a group when the leaders are either being dogmatic or (worse) are uncomfortable asserting themselves. I find myself thinking of excuses to leave or tuning out and working on my to-do list—behaviors all teenagers would recognize. Last summer I attended a leadership training session as a member—not my usual role. One facilitator, confusing the "wisdom of the group" with the notion that a new group could think "as one," kept calling for the group to "take ownership" over its own learning. Nothing could have made us more miserable. We surely wanted to have ownership of our own learning, but that did not mean that we could, as a group, design an intelligent learning experience for one another. We needed someone who could take input from each of us and (creatively) turn it into a design for learning which would meet our collective needs and provide elbowroom for our individual expressions. We could not do it for ourselves. And we knew that if someone made a suggestion that was half-way reasonable, we were going to go along with it because (a) we wanted to get on with the thing and (b) we didn't want to hurt that person's feelings. We were conspiring to create a pseudo democracy. The trouble is that this kind of set-up is only truly enjoyed by people determined to avoid the hard learning/work that an effective group needs to do. I find that I have become a better group member for having been a leader. I have a lot of sympathy for the leaders and understand how difficult their role is. On the other hand, I am demanding. I feel an acute need to have someone design meaningful work for me, tell me how we're going to do it, and then do it with me. I have less patience than ever with having my time wasted. Good group members value good leadership. For ten years, from 1986 to 1996, I was the principal of a small alternative school on the campus of Bronx Community College in New York City. University Heights High School has been a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools since the day it officially opened in 1988. From the first, we were committed to the notion of shared decision-making, which in those days meant being pioneers; there were few models and fewer textbooks to tell us how to do it. Leading the school required trying to look like I was in control, while not being controlling. It was a challenge!

I think I do leadership training primarily to learn more about my own leadership. I have been doing this work for the Coalition of Essential Schools (and, more recently, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform) for the past six years and I can trace the evolution of professional development in the Coalition through the training we offered to three cohorts of principals. These principals were chosen annually from exemplary Coalition schools to participate in the Thomson Fellows program. I worked with the groups in 1992, 1993, and 1994. Three years, three philosophies. Our pattern of development was not an anomaly; it was a pattern of stages, one which could also be traced by following the evolution of learning in school reform—In classrooms, in schools, in meetings, and in workshops. The first stage was the one we all knew we didn't want: top-down, teacher- knows-all, you-can't-trust-the-customer, and based on the idea that there is a body of knowledge which can be disseminated, even mandated. We'd known for quite a while that this didn't work with kids, but we were less progressive when it came to our own learning. With all good intentions, the planners of the first year of the Thomson Fellows program designed a program in which the principals arrived at Brown University for the week-long training session, dropped in (unannounced) on the classrooms of teachers working in the Brown Summer High School, sat through their classes, then offered opinions and suggestions. Needless to say, this was inherently disrespectful of teachers and caused a good bit of consternation. The next year saw the next stage—an inevitable reaction to the first one—the overly democratic stage. We didn't want to be top-down and arbitrary, so we would be egalitarian. This time, the principals were to be in the classrooms along with the teachers and take their turns teaching. Nobody was better than anybody else. Unfortunately, this approach also missed a few central ideas. The classroom had been established before the principals arrived (community had been created); the teachers had built relationships with the students, the principals had not; and the whole approach was less than respectful to either group. It said that anyone can drop in on a group and teach. It said that principals have to prove they're OK by being in the trenches. Finally, it said that what principals do is not in itself particularly valuable and what teachers do is something anyone can do (on the spur of the moment). The third year put into practice the idea of "communities of learners." It was a move toward recognizing the need for more mutuality in relationships, with respect for the importance of all roles, in order to facilitate more powerful learning. "Consultations" took on a different flavor when they included multiple perspectives. We realized that roles could be different, without necessarily being inferior or superior. We started to believe that teachers and principals could both work together and respect each other. The Thomson Fellows saw that working in groups was not just a good way to practice consulting but was a better way to learn. The teachers and principals learned together but did not deny their distinct roles. This was democracy raised to a new level. It said that while no one is better than anyone else, we are not all the same and we can't all-be all things at all times.

We were constructing o new way of learning together. We were realizing that we didn't learn from others but with them. Neither top-down (I learn from you) nor laissez-faire (It's up to you, I trust you) was the answer. We needed to coach one another while asking that good coaches know more about how to coach. Good coaches need to know what kinds of interventions are needed, and how fast and hard to push in order to structure ways of making learning more likely. Good coaches do not ask, “What do you want me to do?” They know what to do because they've been paying attention to their players. Good players value good coaching. Interestingly, better players are often more open to coaching than novices. You have to know enough to know what kind of help is valuable and to appreciate that someone is doing that for you. In The Constructionist Leader, Linda Lambert and her colleagues propose a set of objectives that arise out of a theory of constructivist leadership:

Constructivist Leadership Nancy Mohr 2 Writing Within School Reform Volume 12 This theory of leadership needs to incorporate criteria that involve all adults in the learning and leading processes, create a culture in which reflective and interactive learning can take place, involve structures that allow for conversations from which meaning and knowledge can be constructed, and encourage professionals to seek collective meaning and collective purpose grounded in their practice.

They go on to define constructive leadership, rather poetically, as "the reciprocal processes that enable…participants in an educational community to construct meanings…that lead toward a common purpose of schooling." In my recent work with the Annenberg Principals Institute, as we were trying to define constructivist learning in the classroom, I realized that we had begun, ourselves, to do different kinds of facilitating, moving toward more genuinely democratic—and potentially powerful—teaching and learning. Now, much of my Iearning has come from the mistakes I've made. There's just no way to avoid seeing it when you have made a mess of a workshop filled with adults (or kids, for that matter!). So the other Annenberg facilitators and I worked hard to avoid some of our old mistakes. We made sure to listen to the group, to hear where they were and what was on their minds. We were careful not to make a rigid agenda and not to plow through it, no matter what. But we ran into some new complaints. At one of our meetings, a member said, "You claim to be 'constructivist,' and yet you tell us that time is up when we are talking in our small group and we are not yet finished." So now we were not allowed to judge when time was up if we claimed to be responsive to the group. Shifting roles can cause this kind of see-sawing for a while. “If you are listening to us, why aren't you doing everything we say?” is a difficult question to respond to. And it's easy to sound defensive. The only way to address it is up front, with ongoing conversations among participants and leaders as to what the mutual expectations are and how they will be carried out. Teachers using the Foxfire approach have their students design the curriculum; but they spend a good deal of time teaching them how to do that, and it requires a group that stays together over time. Asking workshop participants to leap to that level is no replacement for thoughtful, creative facilitation. We need more than the "Zen of Facilitation," which asks us to eschew training and instead let the group find its own way. This can work if we don't have a goal for the conversation, which, sometimes, is totally appropriate. But oftentimes we do have goals - and that's appropriate, too. We, after all, are the teachers.

As we struggle along doing this work, some fundamental beliefs have Emerged—and they're often not what we used to believe!  The group brings wisdom and knowledge to the table, and building on that is our work; the more diverse the group, the more wisdom and knowledge are available.  We learn more by reflecting on our own learning than by concentrating on getting others to change.  Until we have good reason to trust and respect each other, we have to act as if we trust and respect each other.  It is not undemocratic to be directive—the group needs someone to collect its voice and also to gauge its need. The group also needs someone who holds it to the agreed-upon procedures and structures.  There is power in the long haul, in doing our own work over time, developing

Constructivist Leadership Nancy Mohr 3 Writing Within School Reform Volume 12 relationships in order to facilitate more powerful learning.  Our work is based on the needs of the group, listening hard to hear what they are, being "transparent" in sharing our motives and reasoning.  Our work must have a moral base, a set of core convictions.  As leaders we need to take better care of ourselves and each other by forming our own communities of learners within which we both support and challenge each other. We must also form communities of learners for others, knowing that they will learn best in small groups and also knowing that much of our work is developing leadership in others.

Constructivist "tools" are not activities: they are ways of learning that incorporate an educational belief system. We've all experienced the activities that are often carried out in trainings and workshops: they are fun, get us going, keep us talking—and afterward we wonder why we ever did them. Constructivist tools, on the other hand, grow out of a belief system grounded in a strong conviction about the worth and value of all participants and of their thinking. It is important to remember the set of beliefs behind these tools; otherwise, they become a mere bag of tricks, and their purpose is lost. Some tools for constructivist learning are as effective for groups of teachers and leaders as they are for groups of kids. I have learned the tools listed below from many gifted facilitators whom I have met in the course of my work. These tools implicitly respect and value the leader's role in making powerful learning happen together.

Transparent Facilitation The transparent facilitator is one who listens seriously, regularly solicits written and verbal feedback from the group, then designs the group's work based on this feedback. The good listener pays particular attention to the body language and the silences in the group. The group trusts the facilitator when it realizes that there are good reasons for decisions and that there will always be a lot of honesty and openness. The transparent facilitator is neither top-down (the omniscient leader who determines the agenda, the timing, and the outcomes) nor bottom-up (the overly democratic facilitator who says, “What do you want to do? We need consensus in order to figure out what to do next"). I learned about transparent facilitation from Gene Thompson-Grove of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, who models so well how to share the thinking that went into an agenda, the thinking that went into decisions that were made, the thinking that is going on as decisions are changed. I had an opportunity to use it on a staff development day at my school. While I was preparing an agenda for the day, I realized that I had spent a tremendous amount of time distilling all of the various things I wanted to cover in our time together and I had synthesized the agenda to a point that I thought was workable. In the past I would have just presented the agenda, somehow imagining that folks would know the hard thinking that went into it. This time, I explained to them the thinking that I went through. Not only did it give them a little metacognitive sense of how agendas are formed, but it also gave them a sense that I had given it real thought and that it was a well-formed- agenda, not just a list. The important message was: “I want you to know how and why I have come up with this agenda; we are not creating the agenda from scratch, it is too complicated and important to do that. When I share my thinking with you I am leveling the playing field.” I was amazed at how much this was appreciated and how effective it was in gaining support for what we were going to do.

Constructivist Leadership Nancy Mohr 4 Writing Within School Reform Volume 12 Ill-structured Tasks and Directions Here is one example of "ill-structured" directions that I often use. I've come to realize that not only is it easier, it is better to let large groups break themselves up into small groups instead of having facilitators do it. We can give the group the same parameters we would use–“Form yourselves into groups of five, which should be as diverse as possible and which should consist of folks you don't usually talk to"—and trust that they can do it just as well as we can and, in the process, that they will gain some insight as to the purpose of the grouping.

Text-Based Dialogue This method uses text as the basis for learning together. The facilitator works hard at keeping out of the way of the participants. The facilitator chooses the text, thinks hard about the opening question, and then strains to not look at the speakers, using a lot of body language, instead, to move the conversation back and forth across the group. This is not how every facilitator creates text-based dialogues, but I find that as soon as I impose one question too many into the process, the participants—especially if they're teenagers—Immediately catch on that I have an agenda, and their eyes glaze over. One way I think of text-based dialogue is that it's like leading an orchestra without using your hands. It is amazing how powerful body language can be. In fact, it is instructive to compare what happens when you look at a speaker and when you don't.

Non-Text-Based Dialogue Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, talks about dialogue as the way groups learn. There are many ways in which a genuine dialogue differs from a traditional discussion: the group begins with its mind open and looks to create better solutions together; the group seeks to build the dialogue, not make individual points; and, finally, the members of the group care more about learning than making their points. “Why, then, is a facilitator necessary at all?” Senge asks. “Because the process…is unfamiliar...and because skilled facilitators know how to anticipate and help people…”

Reflection The faculty at University Heights would write reflections at the end of each staff meeting and I would read excerpts at the beginning of the next. This habit, learned from other Coalition facilitators, creates both a sense of knowing what others are thinking about our group and our meetings and a sense of openness with that information. We also learned from Joe McDonald at the Annenberg Institute and from our “critical friends” work how to use various structured feedback mechanisms to share work meaningfully, to set standards together, to build in the good habits we want to develop: listening carefully, being concise, and sharing air time. From Sharon Shaulis of Broward County, Florida, I learned another technique: how to conduct open reflections at the end of a session. Sharon asks participants to call out, while she lists, the pluses and minuses of the session. This helps the group get past anonymous writing and legitimizes verbal feedback. One reason this technique works so well for Sharon is that she uses excellent wait-time and is not a bit defensive about what she is listing.

Community Building I've learned the power of having a relationship with a group over time rather than having Constructivist Leadership Nancy Mohr 5 Writing Within School Reform Volume 12 many “one-night stands.” In fact, to take it one step further, I have learned that without a relationship, nothing will happen. That's why speeches start with jokes—the joke says, I want you to laugh with me and like me. Unfortunately, I can't tell jokes, but I do know how to listen. When starting out with a new group, I spend an extraordinary amount of time building relationships within the group and with the group. What is enough time? One answer is as long as it takes. Another is one-third of the time you spend together. And if you are together over years, you still have to tend those relationships. We used to call this team building, but it does not mean that we should separate the processes and think, “Now we're doing team building.” “Now we're doing the real work.” It does mean that the opening activities should serve the purpose of getting folks to share stories and become acquainted with each other, in order for them to have a base for working together, learning together, and being real together at the same time.

Planning Less, Designing More What's wrong with a good plan? If I’ve spent a lot of time making it and it's really good, I don't want to deviate from it—but then I own it and the participants don't. The alternative is not to have no plan (see the pattern?) but rather to think of it as a “design” that has to be extensive, that considers all of the alternatives in order to make the best use of time, and that builds in ways to get hold of what the participants want/need to learn, how they will best do that, what they bring with them (both knowledge and baggage). A plan can be merely a laundry list, while a design is a thoughtful procedure for accomplishing the greatest number of goals with the fewest number of activities. It is designed to be inclusive, yet has a built in ability to self-destruct, if necessary. The really valuable things to have, as a good designer, are a good repertoire and the ability to be responsive.

Leadership I had to learn to feel comfortable with the authority of the role of facilitator. The group wants me to say; “Now we're going to do this silly activity. Trust me; you'll like it.” If I ask them if they want to do something silly, something hard, something uncomfortable, I will generally hear, “No, thank you.” Groups want someone to be in control and, yes, sometimes make them do what they don't feel Iike doing. I was once at a meeting in Louisville, and on the agenda was something called “Metaphor Making.” Time was running out and the facilitator said to the group, “Shall we do metaphor making or just go on to the next thing?” Everyone started to say, “Go on to the next thing.” But I wanted to find out what metaphor making was, so I said to the group, “Listen, I know we don't feel like doing this right now, but you know in your hearts you'll be glad if we do, so let's see what it is.” We need to be pushed, but not shoved— this is the balancing act that all teachers know and grapple with.

Membership As leaders, we are not only the designers but also members of the group. We are full participants who do all of the activities and learn along with the group. Isn't this confusing, you may ask, being both leader and member? Yes, indeed! Things were clearer when leadership was clearly hierarchical. But ambiguity is what we have come to appreciate as part of complex understanding, and the ambiguity of role is part of that. We also must Purposefully teach good membership: when we empower a leader (for example, by coming to the leader's workshop), we agree to speak up, but not to use the meeting as a forum or give the leader a hard rime or waste each other's time or just sit back and say, “Show me.” Constructivist Leadership Nancy Mohr 6 Writing Within School Reform Volume 12 This points to the need for conversations about leadership and membership. I found it uncomfortable, at first, to do this with groups. It felt very self-centered, wanting to talk about me and who I was and what our relationship was. I eventually realized, though, that what often felt egotistical to me felt empowering to the group. Being able to talk about our relationship was important to them. And being able to talk about our relationship was the only possible way to sort it out.

Stories Using stories, as the basis for teasing out issues, for making meaning, and for connecting with each other's thinking is basic to learning. The stories come from all of the members of the group. “Context” is just a fancy name for story. Out of our stories come our issues. And Grace McEntee of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform reminds me that writing our stories is the most powerful way of getting at them. Lennie Hay, a principal in Louisville, makes great use of stories as a way of building community. It is sometimes as simple as her asking the group to share stories. She establishes a connection among people this way, which has deeper roots than most, in a short time. Our stories reach each other on levels, which can be quite deep. And we can all play— we all have stories to tell.

Right-Brain Activities Right-brain activities are the ones that make many facilitators uncomfortable—as well as many participants. But only for a while. Right-brain activities access the child in us all. Generally, the more dignified the participant, the greater the response to metaphor. When my husband, Alan Dichter, and I do workshops together, he always insists that we use art and construct things, and he is never wrong about that. You should see a group of superintendents get into it! It always gets them thinking and frequently has a profound impact on the quality of the workshop. You can construct villages with odds and ends of craft supplies; you can draw pictures on newsprint (your metaphorical picture of yourself as a teacher); or you can make costumes and act something out. It does take nerve, though!

Ground Rules I learned about using ground rules from Fran Vandiver, a principal in Broward County, Florida. At first, I thought it was silly and unnecessary. Now I think it is essential. At the beginning stages of a group/community, the facilitator elicits from the group what its ground rules will be. They are listed and agreed to. The reason this is an important activity is simple: if the rules come from the group, they are not the leader's rules. And the rules are more than restrictions—they become, inevitably, permission to speak up and feel safe. At a recent workshop in Florida, we spent only about ten minutes on ground rules. Nonetheless, at the end of two days together, many participants referred to the ground rules as having set the tone and provided the feeling of safety that made the experience work. This is another case of the leader having to be assertive. If you ask the group, “Do we need ground rules?” you will get one answer. If you say, “We're going to start with ground rules,” you will have a better session.

Why are these tools called “constructivist”? They are constructivist because they facilitate reciprocal learning, because they design ways of getting at the knowledge already embedded in the group, and because they

Constructivist Leadership Nancy Mohr 7 Writing Within School Reform Volume 12 build on that knowledge to create new thinking and ideas. Yet, an odd thing emerges. By being more directive, we are actually being more democratic. We are designating leaders, insisting upon structures, and instilling habits. It takes strong, directive facilitation to really engage people in learning. Passive facilitation allows group members to disengage. When facilitators value the knowledge of the group, they are also valuing their own knowledge about how the members of the group will do their best work. Facilitators are the experts at design; members are the experts at what they know and need to know. Facilitators are process; members are content. Facilitators are the teachers—but all are the students.

Works Cited

Fullan, Michael. Change Forces. Bristol, PA: Falmer Press, 1993.

Killion, Joellen P., and Lynn A. Simmons, "The Zen of Facilitation" in The Journal of Staff Development 13:3 (1992).

Lambert, Linda, et al. The Constructivist Leader. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.

Senge, Peter, et al. The Fiftb DisciPtine Fieldboo&. New York: Doubleday, 1994.

Sparks, Dennis. “Paradigm Shift in Staff Development” in The Journal of Staff Development. 15:4 (1994).

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