Listening – Vlogٷ Sun, 07 Jan 2024 14:29:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-fav-icon-B-32x32.png Listening – Vlogٷ 32 32 Learning Coaches: An Option For Re-Imagined Learning /learning-coaches-an-option-for-re-imagined-learning/ /learning-coaches-an-option-for-re-imagined-learning/#respond Thu, 04 Jun 2020 16:53:43 +0000 /?p=7656
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A positive aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic was the opportunity to restructure the teacher-student relationship. It provided opportunities for teachers, parents, mentors and community members to re-orient themselves as Learning Coaches.

A Learning Coach is someone who sees and says things to help a student win at his or her learning. The context is a small yet fundamental shift away from teaching. Instead of content instruction, the focus is on relationship-centric practices that foster agency, growth and learning habits.

Even though we are back to in-person instruction, utilizing the perspective and approach of a Learning Coach can radically shift the relationship between Teacher and Student. To do this well, we work with Teachers to use the rich contextual orientation and three operational spheres described in this post.

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Orientation

  • Causing Best Self

Operational Spheres

  • Help Establish The Playing Field

  • Support Gaps/Creative Resourcing

  • Reach and Reciprocity

Causing Best Self

Note: The idea of Causing Best Self is a significant aspect of our Framework for Availability that we train educators, managers and facilitators in through our online course. The basic idea is below.

Beyond a vague notion of pop psychology, the context of Best Self can help ignite self-directed learning – a critical component of education that teachers rarely receive direct instruction about how to develop this vital trait. Having the teacher/coach understand and use “Causing Best Self” as a frame of reference shapes a needed foundation for any educational environment.

The idea of Causing Best Self is a solid, simple and elegant orientation that cuts through much of the barriers we often experience in communication and building relational spaces – even virtually. It creates a path of doing ‘with’ versus doing ‘to’ and produces faster activation of participation, learning, and collaboration.

In our work with groups, we created a definition of Best Self, and we find it to be well supported in research. We have seen it in action in hundreds of diverse settings. We say Best Self is an experience of, and/or an aspiration towards:

    • Self-agency

    • Being valued

    • Belonging

    • Connection

When students (and people in general) experience one or more of these, they have a sense of being their Best Self. Think about it for yourself: when you had an experience of any one of the four listed above, how did it feel to you? Were you proud of yourself, content or inspired? Were you interested in repeating whatever you did that caused that sense of Best Self? You felt this way because you experienced your ‘self’ meeting one of those basic needs.

Human beings also aspire toward these aspects. Students (and teachers, parents, etc.) desire experiences where they are autonomous, important, have a sense of being part of something and are in real relationship to others. This results in a powerful motivating force, any one of which can be used to help propel movement in the disaffected learner.

Because they are such vital aspirations and sought-after experiences, you can use these components of Best Self as a context or ethos to coach through. When coaches do this, they look for ways to give their ‘player’ an experience of self-agency, being valued, being connected and having a sense of belonging. This is a relationship-centric practice that can easily create a coach’s modus operandi. Using the lens of Best Self puts an expansive view of relationships at the forefront of the coach, and – as any great coach will tell you – paying attention to relationships significantly impacts success and human performance.

Finally, the key difference with this umbrella context is not what it is, but what it is not. It is not a drive for standards mastery, or testing improvement. It is not focusing on content achievement tracking or study habits. Those frameworks did not work well in the distance learning environment of a pandemic and they will not help a Teacher develop as a Learning Coach. What will work is relationship-based practices that put the learner at the center of their learning. This will take time to build momentum and see results, but we have a real opportunity with this context to reinvigorate a passion for learning that we all know often sees a steep decline from 4th to 9th grade. A Learning Coach who creates opportunities for students to have experiences of their Best Self while learning will find a ready and interested partner who will then be more willing to include some measure of needed competency and standards mastery. The added benefit for schools will be the parallel Social and Emotional development outcomes that will be achieved as students/coaches work concurrently on self-management, self-awareness, responsible decision-making and more.

Three Spheres of Work

The Learning Coach operates in three intertwining spheres as a basic framework with the learner. While any number of scenarios can work, we have found that one teacher needs 30 minutes a week/student to build a regular habit. This could mean 7-10 hours/week for a teacher with 15-20 students. This is a perfect role for mentors and community members to be trained in as well, which could free up time for the teacher to focus on higher-need learners.

Help Establish the Playing Field

This will be the biggest challenge for many teachers-as-coaches, as it upends a very traditional and mythical paradigm. Rather than the teacher outlining the scope and scale of the learning, a Learning Coach gives the pilot seat to the student. Why? Because students can build a self-directed learner muscle more easily if they are pursuing learning of their own choice and motivation, rather than something mandated or forced.

Within this sphere, the coach’s role is to help the learner define the playing field. The teacher will resist the temptation to define the playing field, but rather help the student think through:

  • What do you want to learn about or work on?

  • What will the learning look like?

  • What are the boundaries of study?

  • What might a final product look like?

Once a student has experienced some habit of self-agency and connection with the coach (key Best Self components), their disposition towards learning and their coach will shift and become more available – giving Coaches the chance to broaden the ‘playing field’ with learning that may not be student-choice.

Support Gaps/Creative Resourcing

The student-player is in the process of becoming just like all students – meaning he is not there yet. Hence the coach’s role to identify any areas that need extra attention and awareness. We find that the best method is to follow three steps: 1) Jointly align on what the gap is and get permission to coach; 2) Objectify the gap and coach from there using creative resourcing, and; 3) Combine when it’s time.

1. Jointly align/permission – Have a conversation to align on what gaps are present. Asking “What do you feel are things you might need to work on to have success with your project?” gives the student a chance to be the pilot. If you have perspectives to share about gaps you notice (and you have permission) share them. Prioritize which ones need attention first. We have found that every student from 4th grade on up (often earlier as well) has this ability to name their gaps. It is particularly important to note that they also almost universally appreciate the opportunity to go to work on them.

Permission is bedrock to coaching. We do not proceed until we have permission from the player to be their coach. This is a profound act and one that shifts the “doing to” mindset for both the coach and the student. It creates a spirit of mutuality and shared-responsibility. Read more about our take on Permission.

2. Objectify gaps – Rather than make the gaps a personality flaw or labeled as something ‘wrong’, turn them into objects and coach for success. If you have both identified that “procrastination” is going to get in the way and needs to be improved, put on your creative coaching hat and send in a ‘play’ to practice that object (objectifying the gap separates it from the content and makes it easier to work with). In this way, learning coaches do not need to be content experts, they need to be creative resource experts. A good sports coach does not look at a player who needs to run faster and says “run faster”, she devises strategies and games and drills that build speed. The Learning Coach must be fantastic at piecing together an array of resources that meet the needs of the student-player. Coaching creatively takes thoughtfulness. Our experience with coaches and mentors is that they stop way too early when looking for a creative solution. Let your imagination run and you will find that the more creative the play, the more success it will bring.

3. Combine when it’s time – Great coaches will break new learning into specific tasks only in the beginning. Once there is basic familiarity, combine gap responses

A recent teen I worked with was keeping his eye on two distinct aspects of himself to work on: procrastination and communication with his family: I combined his gap practice and coached him to share out loud with a family member when he was starting his learning, what he planned to accomplish and when he anticipated finishing. We tracked this ‘practice’ each day and talked about it’s impact, and a real shift came about in both areas.

Supporting gaps could look wildly different for different learners. Some may identify encouragement, or help finding information, or specific competencies like writing or solving for ‘x’. Your role is not to ‘run’, your role is to recognize that the student cannot see themselves when they are ‘running’. Coach towards the gaps you see, starting with the ones you both can align on.

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Reach and Reciprocity

This is the serve and return methodology of early childhood educators and the heartbeat of an experiential pedagogy. The first three steps have been detailed above.

  1. Identify the gaps or the learning the student is interested in

  2. Creatively resource the gap

  3. Have the student run the play

  4. THEN: Promote dialogue on performance and effort.

      • How did that go?

      • What worked? What did not work?

      • What was the value of that for you?

      • What would you do differently in the future?

  5. Repeat as needed, adjust or move on. Develop the routine so that you both get used to the learner ‘running a play’ and then returning to talk about it.

Teachers-As-Learning-Coaches may not seem like a significant shift, but the change in dynamic needs thoughtful preparation and training, and could well be the springboard we need to support learning as a lifestyle, rather than the coercive act it often is. There is a real opportunity here to help students and teachers move their mindset about learning towards a “doing with” rather than a “done to” paradigm.

Vlogٷ has been working with mentors, teachers and coaches for 20 years to find the best ways to build relational environments that support self-agency in young people. If you are interested in more information or would like to chat about what you have read, on our calendar or take a look at our online Mind the Gap Master Class.

]]> /learning-coaches-an-option-for-re-imagined-learning/feed/ 0 Best Virtual Meeting Strategies #2 /best-virtual-meeting-strategies-2/ /best-virtual-meeting-strategies-2/#respond Fri, 17 Apr 2020 17:11:36 +0000 /?p=7555 **In this new normal of remote work, how can you help connection thrive and maintain team performance? We are sharing effective strategies to boost engagement taken from our online Minding the Gap Master Class that are just as helpful in this new virtual world, where the “Gap” can be very evident.

One of the ideas from last week – “Begin Before It Begins” – received this comment from an educator in Nebraska:

“I have been scheduling weekly Zoom calls which have been good but I have been disappointed with the low numbers of students participating. Then I realized I was only sending out one short post on the Remind App. I decided after reading the post to take more time the day before and send the link by email and text and even Snapchat through my son’s account. The result was almost every student was on the call!”

This was one of three ideas in our last post to help get yourself and others connected and perhaps more importantly orient themselves towards the work and each other.Take a read through our next idea below and see where it may fit for you!

When Standards Fall, Highlight the Non-Normal

Have you noticed a creeping mediocrity in your life or the work of your team or students? There are plenty of recommendations out there to “take it easy” on ourselves, but when it comes to work and/or learning, you are likely expected to raise the bar (or at least keep it from slipping lower!).

No worries: try these steps towards an effective practice that checks so many positive benefit boxes in order to “Highlight the Non-Normal”:

  1. Turn up/Tune in your listening. In order to highlight something you have to notice it first. Simply reading this post is already tuning your observation systems to be on the alert, now just pay attention.

  2. Notice non-normal participation where someone went farther than usual or expected: they took the extra step, stretched themselves or went above and beyond. Someone may challenge an assumption, ask a difficult question or volunteer to pursue a complex task. Maybe you hear about or notice someone not giving into complacency, or trying out something off-the-wall. Whatever raises the bar on your team’s notion of ‘engagement’ or ‘participation’, notice it.

  3. Highlight it! Shine a spotlight on it in someway: appreciate/acknowledge the person, ask what difference that made, etc. – just do anything you can to put more focus on the action.

By paying attention to whatever that person did that was exemplary, you are shining a light on the quality of participation you want. When this new kind of participation gets highlighted, there is an implicit permission for others to participate at the same level. In that moment you have interrupted the normal script and moved the relational space to a place of dissonance*.

As more and more non-normal outputs are highlighted, a new-normal is created: the team now knows that a different kind of participation is standard in this setting. They will come to expect it and it will even carry over from session to session. As new employees or students join, they will adapt to whatever the ‘normal’ is, so the more engaged the better!

As the engagement bar gets raised and normalized, you will notice that:

  • people will get more value out of participating at that level

  • people are creating and experiencing heightened relationships with each other and there will be a great sense of belonging, a key predictor of a group’s success.

A final benefit and one we will share about in our next post is this: when you highlight the non-normal, you are helping yourself and others practice being comfortable with the uncomfortable. Simply put, teams and classes that can master this profound practice see an exponential increase in performance through heightened cooperation, creativity, focus, relationships and more.

As the pandemic alters normal all around us, use this tool to create a new-normal, based on qualities and competencies you want to foster in your team or classroom.

* In our Master Class we highlight this as a significant contextual understanding when working with people and we use the metaphor of the Elephant/Rider developed by Jonathan Haidt and used by Daniel Kahneman to help explain this vital neuroscience and the impact it plays when working to build engagement with individuals and groups. Check it out here.

Looking for a daily practice to help keep you or others connected to your ‘self’ and the world around you? Check out The Elementals – a new product from Vlogٷ.

 

]]> /best-virtual-meeting-strategies-2/feed/ 0 Savannah Ducharm – Letting Go of Bittersweet Defenses /letting-go/ Sun, 03 Jul 2016 09:48:37 +0000 /?p=1114 My truth is that there are a lot of things you can say to convince yourself and other people of who you are. You can fill your lungs with what you think they want to hear. But if you do that, nothing comes back to you. You are left exasperated. Letting go isn’t comfortable, since these things become bittersweet defenses to things you feel you can’t change. In a new country, with these new people, you’ll want to hold onto these defenses more than ever. You’ll feel small at times and out of control.

I used to criticize myself for holding on so tightly. You’ll see why it had to be that way. You were small so you could grow. What’s hard about being told to grow is wanting it so badly. Just know, that whatever you’re feeling is okay. My advice is to try and listen before you think of what to say. Forgive yourself when you don’t. Mind the gap that carries all that space between where you are and where you want to be. Be grateful. There is something in you that begs for this. And now you are being given an opportunity to learn some humbling, beautiful, extraordinary lessons.

There are times, often times, when I feel like that sixteen-year-old girl in another country, (Kenya) for the first time. Right now I’m sitting in an empty pink bedroom, in a creaky green house, in the colorful city of Valparaíso, Chile. There is no way I could have prepared myself for how uncomfortable I am. But I laugh about it. I’m constantly falling in love with this strange place. In large part because of my training, I am patient. I listen like my life depends on it. I regard people as leaders. I regard myself as a leader. My story rests somewhere like inspiration. When parts of my insecurity catch me, I am patient again.

Just remember, despite how it might feel, you’re the one who asked for this. Your future self will look back and regard you as a teacher.

]]> Understanding Alignment /alignment/ Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:39:49 +0000 http://boldleaders.net/?p=1039

Brady Rhodes

Co-Director, Vlogٷ

Understanding Alignment

For the last 15 years I have been able to chew on, think through, play with and take apart some concepts and conversations that I find really valuable. The best part has been that I have done this in tandem with thousands of people from around the world, diverse in every way you can imagine. One such concept has been the difference between Agreement and Alignment.

Think through this with me: it is easy to Agree or Disagree with something. We simply do it and our position is NOT dependent or tied to another person’s position. It is happening all over the world today: silos getting built, either-or’s staked to the ground, the seemingly black or white choices set to anchor. There may be and often are lots of others who are agreeing or disagreeing with us – most of the time it is why do it to begin with – but ultimately it doesn’t matter if they are there or not. When it comes to our agreement or disagreement, we can do that all on our own.

Contrast that with the idea of Alignment, which when we look at the definition includes positioning something relative to something else. When a mechanic aligns the wheel of a car, he/she always does it in relation to the position of the other wheels. When working for alignment with another person or idea, I must hold my perspective up and adjust its position relative to the perspective of others, who are doing the same thing from their viewpoint. We all need to squint and adjust and take out some other tools (such as observation, listening, participation, questioning, voice) to tap and shift and line up the angles so that our perspectives – which may still be different – are in alignment. Can I disagree with another’s perspective yet still align myself with them in a direction that we both believe is needed? You bet! My aligning with another – whether flavored by disagreement or not – now allows for the possibility of coherent movement together towards some other thing. It is this OTHER THING which is the whole point of the alignment: to jointly move towards, with the possibility of arriving at, some perspective or outcome that was not visible to us before. This OTHER THING could actually have only been created by our mutual aligning.

The Agree/Disagree way of being could never have gotten us there. To keep with the analogy, an Agree/Disagree tire (perspective) can be positioned any way it wants because it does not need to reference its location against anything else. Tighten the lug nuts and off we go, for better or worse! When I agree or disagree, there is no need to reference my position or perspective to anything or anyone else; “I agree!” or “I disagree” is enough! Listening, considering, questioning, noticing – none of this is required in this world. Simply saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ gets you to a location or a direction to set your wheel.

Another term to consider when aiming for alignment is Paradoxical Curiosity – being able to jointly hold two disparate truths in existence long enough to uncover a third thing that was not in existence before. That can only happen if I hold my ‘wheel’ up against your ‘wheel’ and adjust each until they drive straight in tandem with each other at the same time. Then together we can journey down a road that may lead us to a place we would not have gotten to on our own.

In Vlogٷ we ask people to look at where they are spending a lot of time and energy agreeing or disagreeing. We also ask them to consider what a conversation for alignment with the ‘other’ would look like, and what the potential value might be. We do this against a backdrop of connected ideas and methodologies that help cause Bold Leaders, which we say issomeone who chooses to move beyond the limitedparameters of what is commonly accepted in order to cause valuable perspectives to arise that were not apparent before.

Are you interested in being a Bold Leader? Try out the Mind-the-Gap Master Class! This is an on-demand, virtual class you can do at your own pace that takes key elements of our Framework and gives them to you through a series of engaging video presentations and visuals.

Learn More About The Master Class
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