The Listening Leader, Shane Safir
Chapter 1: The Transformative Power of Listening
Listening Leadership is not a recipe or a curriculum, but an adaptive framework whose core beliefs are often at odds with current educational policies - especially those that try to teacher-proof curriculum.
Data usage is discussed in this chapter in a new-to-me way. 3 levels:
Satellite - like summative, broad, system informing
Map - like formative & diagnostic - what instruction needs shoring up
Street - qualitative re: experience, internalization
Street data is the everyday observational data that educators do. By naming it, Shafir is calling out that it must be listened to and regarded. Action taken on street data will have the most immediately meaningful impact.
This chapter poses that inequity is pervasive and a listening stance that also seeks to name what’s uncomfortable is the key to unlocking and changing inequitable systems.
Key ideas:
Listen to your community and to what you believe is right.
Act on what you belive is right
Cultivate your emotional intelligence
A listening stance helps you address trauma
School transformation arises from the micro-interactions that happen each day
Chapter 2: The Core Tenets of Listening Leadership
The pace and realities of school life can cause the brain to bypass rational/calm function of the neocortex, short circuiting to a survival response. Awareness & mindfulness can slow this down & prevent bypass.
Recognize fight or flight in others. Use reward activation to slow or circumvent it (see p. 43).
“Be sure to couple new content with practice, reflection, and repetition” (p. 46). This reminds me that the brin likes patterns, but learns from novelty. Every brain grows with/in the right conditions: emotional safety provides feedback, room for error.
Core tenets from neuroscience:
Wired for survival ….. Feed the lizard
React to threats … Calm the amygdala
Social threats … Reimagine rewards
Brain grows in the right conditions … Water for deep roots
Organizations have core memories … embrace storientation
“Create a culture of affirmation to release happy neurotransmitters which tell our brains to remember and repeat the behavior that elicited the affirmation so that we can feel good again” (p. 49).
Chapter 3: Listening for Equity
Be tuned in to structural racism. Turn the script and think of schools as opportunity structures (adapted from john a. powell).
Ask - what opportunity structures are available to my students, and what are lacking?
Check out p. 60 - the birdcage as a metaphor for structural racism. “Transformational schools move the equity needly by eeakening or eliminating the education wire on the birdcage, cracking open space for the bird to leave.” Beautiful!!
Listening leaders tune in to cultural difference and have the capacity to:
Recognize & respond positively to difference
Read subtle cues and adjust their moves
Embrace humility and a learning stance with respect to culture
“Cultural proficiency is a lifelong process that takes active work because culture, language and context are constantly shifting” (p. 69).
This chapter is an excellent discussion of equity, systematic racism, implicit bias, white fragility…it is clear, frank, and resonates very strongly. Revisit this chapter when you are working with concepts or realities that will challenge your privilege.
Chapter 4: Getting Ready to Listen
This chpter included lots of great ideas for building trust and getting started in a leader role. Worth a reread when engaging in a big new role with people looking to you to set the tone.
Technical dimensions of change/a belief you can assign roles & things get done:
structure
pattern
process
Relational dimensions of change:
information
relationships
identity
When stakeholders have access to information, and processes support exchange of it, significant change begins to happen.
Chapter 5: Practicing Deep Listening
Deep listening has 1 purpose - help him or her empy the heart. Switch off your fix-it brain.
p. 107: If relationships function as currency, relational capital is like a big savings account of trust and good will. Every time someone makes a bid for your attention, you have the opportunity to invest in this account. When you need to push them, it is the opportunity to make a withdrawal. Make sure you have cash in the bank.
p. 118: The practice of mature empathy will help you balance compassion with boundaried support: you are saying, in effect, ‘I care about you and will listen to you, but I also want to help you solve your own problem.
90% of meaning in a conversation is conveyed nonverbally - and nonverbal cues ave 4.3 times the effect of verbal cues. Physical posture is most efficient in reinforcing status.
Affirmation paves a path for feedback.
Great reminders about how to listen with your whole body, remember mirror neurons, use positive feedback as a front runner toward fixing feedback.
Chapter 6: Practicing Strategic Listening
“By learning to pose the right questions at the right time, you will open up cognitive windows to new learning,” (p. 129)
Orientation to vision:
purpose = focus
motivation = dopamine
empowerment = faith
bar for excellence = goal
This chapter includes tips for data-driven listening (see p. 136)
Chapter 7: Listening to Parents
Build trust by learning about a parent’s child - listen to them - this is very different that telling them what you know about your student. Some great questions to ask parents (p. 155-156):
Tell me about your child. What do they like to do after school? How do they learn best?
Describe a tiem when your child was really successful in school. What do you think made that possible?
What are your biggest concerns about your child? What do I need to know to be her advocate?
Think about how you approach parent/teacher conferences. Is your approach closed, where the teacher informs or tells parents how the student is doing in school (pretty traditional), or are they open, where the school community solicits input, schedules flexibly, and where the teachers listens before sharing.
It is vital to consider a variety of ways to find common ground with parents.
Chapter 8: Listening to Students
This discusses the student/teacher relationship as an intellectual enterprise. A life of learning and exploring ideas needs a clear mentor - someone to listen to you and take you seriously as you grapple with ideas that are enw to you.
I didn’t think I’d like this chapter but I was wrong! Ideas about building and maintaining a democratic society are presented, and remind educators to make sure to recognize and respect students as thinkers and players in our world. ‘Talk moves’ on p. 182-183 are great instructional moves and the challenge that inquiry-based teaching poses to the status quo are here too. Makes me want to go deeper with the concept and practice of essential questions.
What are you doing today?
Why does it matter?
What worked for you?
What didn’t work for you?
Chapter 9: Influencing Complex Change
This chapter is like a recipe for organizational change -the only thing it seems to be missing is continuous improvement cycles - but that concept is sort of enmeshed here. There is an element of ‘easier said than done', the recipe is strong. When building:
Current state - name it
Name the equity imperitive
Identify a few simple rules
Create a ‘skinny plan’
Establish a few clear metrics
Distribute leadership/build capacity
Chapter 10: Leveraging Listening Routines
Practical ideas for using meetings and times for learning from each other. When there is an affect or a conflict that’s challenging, the protocols and key moves given here can be leveraged to diffuse & move forward.
Key moves for diffusing
Name to neutralize
Affirm
Inquire
Redirect
Within a routine meeting frame - a time that is structured - more difficult discussions can be had. When the conversation gets too difficult, make the moves to diffuse.
Chapter 11: Growing a Listening Culture
This chapter serves as a toolbox for the work. The whole chapter is valuable and should be used to guide the building of a strong, respectful, and successful culture of learners.
Chapter 12: Listening for Liberation
A call to action.
“Public schools are the last remaining hope of a democratic society…the one institution that holds the potential to level the playing field” (p. 261).
