Schools Are Territorial Places

Most traditional schools are territorial places. Teachers take care of their own classrooms, and it’s a rarity to see them deeply collaborate when it comes to answering three questions: What do we want our kids to learn? How will we know that they learned it? And, what will we do when they don’t learn it? If there is collaboration between teachers, it usually happens between committed teams of teachers within a grade level or content area. But the bigger the school is, the less likely the chance that all teachers are deeply collaborating together to benefit their students.

Recently, I read with interest an article published by the Harvard Business Review titled “Becoming More Collaborative When Your Impulse Is to Be Territorial.” The article suggests four ways you can become more collaborative and less territorial in you work, your home, and even your learning:

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“Enhance your self-awareness – You must start by uncovering your role in [any] situation. Examine a given circumstance from all sides to uncover what you may have overlooked that’s contributing to [a] problem. This includes increasing your self-awareness. Research has shown that only 10% to 15% of people fit the criteria of being self-aware, defined as understanding yourself and your goals and valuing others’ opinions. Conflicts don’t happen in a vacuum, and it’s never too soon to hold yourself accountable for your contribution to a given situation.”

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“To increase your self-awareness, reflect on the following questions:

What narrative am I telling myself about the situation? What assumptions am I making about the circumstances and people involved?

Exploring the narratives you construct can reveal underlying biases and preconceptions that may contribute to conflict. It also helps you connect the dots between your judgments and your decisions and actions.

Create psychological space and reflect on what you may have inferred about someone else’s intentions, objectives, or anticipated response. Often it’s the stories we tell ourselves that lead us to jump to conclusions that may not be based on reality. For example, if you feel like a victim of the circumstances, then you may craft a story to support that identity.”

“What would shift if I slowed down to understand my negative feelings?

It’s natural to pay excess attention to the negatives, which are typically driven by our emotions. The next time you have a negative reaction, consider what behavior or event specifically triggered it. This will help you understand the internal or external source of what’s bothering you, which may not be directly related to the current situation, as past experiences and challenges can activate negative emotions. Most importantly, you can delay taking action so that you’re not disproportionately influenced by your feelings. As Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson shared in The One Minute Manager, ‘We are not just our behavior. We are the person managing our behavior.’”

“What feedback can I solicit to expand my range of inputs?

Ask yourself, ‘Did I genuinely value others’ opinions, or did I primarily rely on my own viewpoint? Embracing diverse perspectives fosters a more comprehensive understanding of the situation and promotes collaboration. Consider speaking with a thought partner such as…[a] trusted colleague, or friend who can help you identify misperceptions and oversights in a non-emotional way. Soliciting constructive feedback should be treated as information collection, not gossip or piling on to what you already believe to be true.”

“From win-lose to win-win – An organization is only as strong as the sum of its parts. Now that you’ve identified how you contribute to a problem, consider how to move from a “me to we” mindset. This means that while stakeholders you depend upon for your success have different or competing priorities, as members of the same organization, you all share an overarching mission.”

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“Reestablish trust – After a long period of uncertainty, like when the organization is operating in survival mode, it’s important to recognize that a low level of trust has likely developed, and it’s critical to rebuild that trust with your colleagues. You may observe symptoms such as coworkers lacking initiative or struggling to make decisions or engage in healthy debates.”

“As Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, coauthors of Move Fast and Fix Things and Unleashed propose, there are three pillars of trust. They write, ‘People tend to trust you when the believe they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they feel that you care about them (empathy). When trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these three drivers.’”

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“Create a shared commitment – You must forge a collective agreement, including the working norms and processes you and your colleagues will commit to. Creating a shared commitment will increase the probability of success, as people naturally rebel at expectations because they don’t consider the needs of the other person. This can be established with working agreements that define objectives and the commitments that must be upheld by all parties to achieve them.”

When I think of the four strategies presented in this article, enhance your self-awareness, move from win-lose to win-win, establish/reestablish trust, and create a shared commitment, I think of the personalized learning lab school we started a decade ago inside the Houston Museum District. Our two learning coaches built relationships with their learners so that collaboration (our learning) dominated over territorialism (my grades/my success).

Likewise, when I think of the four strategies presented in this article I don’t think much about traditional school space. That’s because the size, the attention, and the commitment of our current K-12 system and those who are a part of it just don’t add up to a feeling of collaboration. And the sad part of it is that it probably never will.

Til tomorrow. SVB