Changing Mindsets . . . but not in a good way!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  As a coach, what do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  [this is the change that isn't very good to see]

So here's the story, the situation, the conundrum that I find myself thinking about for the last few days.  I will try to keep this as anonymous as possible, as I think this through as a write it all down.   But don't expect any answers here . . . I haven't got that far with my thinking.  Maybe you might have some input on all of this for me . . .

There is a colleague that I work with who embarked on a big project to revamp the online presence for part of the school.  They inherited a spaghetti map of different systems and platforms which wove together a piecemeal online existence, from their predecessor.  That previous colleague essentially built bits and pieces of the overall resource over a number of years, using whatever tool was on-hand, convenient, or in their field of view at the time.  In short, it is/was a mess and needed to be completely overhauled and replaced.

Enter my new colleague who fought and fought with maintaining this old plate of spaghetti, and came to hate it.  Once they had reached their tipping point where they wanted to fix it, change it, update it and make it their own, we started working on it together through regular coaching sessions.  My new colleague (how about I just call them Bob from now on) . . . Bob . . . started conducting a ton of research into what other schools were doing, their look and feel, their functionality and content, and their audience.  Bob also had a pretty good idea about what they wanted, as he had done a similar project at their previous school with much success.  The big difference between these two projects, is that the previous school did not have a system/platform already in place and they hired a developer to build everything for the school.  In the here and now, there is no big budget to pay someone, and the culture is more of a DIY project.

So Bob took it upon himself to rebuild everything from scratch, and made this their goal last year.  By the end of last year, we had built parts of the new system, but had not "released" it for use yet.  In other words, the old plate of spaghetti was still on the table and was still being served to the school.  At the start of this year, Bob really wanted to focus on building the last remaining pieces of the system and to get everything up and running as soon as possible.  As the beginning of the school year got busier and busier (as they do), this project got put on the back burner to simmer and stew.  We revisited it and worked on it periodically during our coaching sessions, but more often than not, something else would take precedence and would be more immediate.  When we did work on the project, development was often slow or at a standstill.  In Bob's own words, he often "could not remember how to do something" or "could not make a decision on what he wanted."  It was one step forward and three steps back, but we kept com in back to it, as it was/is important.

Then Bob dropped the bomb on me . . . he told me that he is so stressed out by the project and his inability to make any progress on it, that it is affecting his health.  Boom!  In order to preserve his health, he was going to drop the while thing, and perhaps we can salvage some of the pieces that we have already built.  "Thank you for your time and effort and patience in coaching me, but I can't work on this any longer."  Boom!!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  The project involved rebuilding resources which are really important to the school, which support teaching and learning across school divisions.  Bob has a vision for what this could be, and would use it in his teaching everyday.  However, Bob really does not understand why he could not grasp how to use these tools to build his vision, and why it is so hard for him.  This is the clash or the difference between what they want to do, and having the skills/expertise to accomplish that goal.  As a tech coach, I see this as part of my job - to bridge the gap, which is what we have been working on for almost a year now.

What do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  In the beginning, Bob clearly had an growth mindset towards this project - he saw it as a challenge and a point of deep learning on his part to work through it.  But all of that changed gradually as the frustration grew and the health issues started building.  Are these two things connected?  Bob seems to think so.  I, on the other hand, think that it has more to do with the steep learning curve that the project represents, combined with growing health issues related to his age . . . both difficult subjects to brooch in a conversation or coaching session.  With Bob's growing frustration and lack of progress, this turned into a downwards spiral which resulted in his mindset flipping over into the fixed position.  He is now thinking that he cannot learn these skills and tools, and that this project is just too big for him the tackle.  He even said that he will just leave it for someone else to fix and build once they are gone.  Totally defeated.  Bob no longer sees it has job to do this kind of work, and knows the school is not going to pay a developer to build it for him.  Totally stuck.

So what do I do with this project?  On one hand I could jump in and build it for Bob, but that is not my role or my job, and does not really involve coaching in any way.  Furthermore, Bob would not be in a position to maintain and further develop their system from whatever point I brought it up to . . . I would be signing up to be the gatekeeper and custodian for his system.  On the other hand, I could just accept that Bob is giving up and try to salvage some of the work we have already done, but that would effectively making part of the plate of spaghetti taste a little better, while at the same time making the plate bigger.  Not a very good outcome.  So what should I do, to move forward with this project and with Bob as a colleague whom I coach?  Any ideas?

Reflections on being part of the Learning 2 Africa Organising Committee

Being asked by John Iglar to be part of the Learning 2.014 Africa Organising Committee about a year ago, after it was announced in Singapore, has been both an honour and a curiosity to me. My immediate response to him at the time was "you know that I am not in the Africa region" to which he replied "I know, and I still want you to help with putting the conference together." Now that the first ever Learning2Africa is complete, we could talk a little more about the process and how he had to defend his decision to include me on the committee with both his own staff and the Learning 2 Advisory.  Which is fair enough, as I pointed that out from the beginning. John later told me that he wanted my enthusiasm and experience with Learning2Asia to set up the conference in Addis Ababa, as only a few others on the committee have been to an L2 conference before.

Working on the conference from afar was not a problem at all. Sometimes the Skype on GHangouts connections would get dropped during our weekly meetings, but other than that, everything was communicated asynchronously through email and shared GDocs. I suggested that I work on the Cohorts, Cohort Facilitators and Workshops remotely and to keep John and the committee in the loop as things progressed. 

As the cohort set up with Learning 2 conferences is so unique and important to the success of the conference, I decided to take my own approach to setting up the cohorts. My plan from the start was to align good leaders with each cohort, to have an innovative and effective leader embedded in each cohort. With this goal in mind, started contacting people at I know who would make good cohort facilitators who are either in the region, or nearby and who might want to come take part. This proved to be a really successful approach as it served to pre-advertise the conference, and provided the selected people with a little more leverage with their schools in order to attend the conference in a leadership role. I was only able to pre-select about half of the facilitators roles in the end, but this gave us a good base of people in these important roles. It also encouraged these schools to send more faculty to this new, unknown conference.

As the conference neared, some other advancements that I wanted to introduce into the process included:

• provide each cohort facilitator with a list of the members, schools they are coming from, and their roles/positions there
• having the cohort facilitators contact their cohort members in advance to front-load them with information to connect them and to start the networking process
• have the cohorts start thinking about their own "burning questions" , big take-aways and goals for attending the conference
• build in an orientation meeting for all of the facilitators prior to the conference opening, to form them into a team and to come to a common understanding of the philosophy of Learning 2 (which is new to most of the conference participants)
• daily check-in meetings with the facilitators to set them up for the cohort sessions later that day)
• daily debrief meetings with the facilitators to see how their cohort sessions went and to gather feedback from the cohorts; interestingly, these immediately became joint Learning 2 Leaders and Cohort Facilitators debriefs 

#baboon - Other than #Learning2 and #buses, #baboon was a trending hashtag during the conference (but we never did have a school baboon alarm)

As the conference got underway, the Learning 2 Leaders were asked to attach themselves to a cohort of their choice which was wonderful. Not only did the Cohort Facilitators enjoy having the Leaders present and participating in their cohorts, but the Leaders really connected with the participants through the cohorts. In the debrief meetings, the feedback that came out of the cohorts was inspiring and exhilarating - participants were connecting, sharing, collaborating and networking which are all the main goals of the conference and what distinguishes Learning 2 from other conferences (which have typical job-alike meetings). The best feedback came out of the second cohort session where each group is cussed their "burning questions" using a simple protocol based on the Final Word - Critical Friends. Having the chance to discuss issues, problems of practice, challenges and open "how to" questions with a group of peers in a non-threatening/judgemental environment (through the protocol) was fulfilling, enlightening and productive. Many of the Cohort Facilitators came away from that session raving about their group and how they really came together as a team. At the end of the conference, some were talking about how they would like to continue having cohort meetings online every day - surely this is the best possible outcome for the conference which is all about sharing and collaboration, especially beyond the conference.

To me, the cohort experience has been the most important part of the Learning 2 Asia conferences that I've attended. To bring this experience and connection to Africa for the first time is very satisfying and fulfilling for me. To take this another step or two forward, I have now been tasked by the Learning 2 Advisory to collaborate with L2Bangkok to help organize their cohorts, embed my additions to the process for setting up the cohorts, and to rewrite the "playbook" for future L2 conferences. And to take my own participation in Learning 2 a step further - I will be facilitating the Curriculum Leaders cohort at L2Asia in Bangkok. 

Unprofessional Development

In thinking about and reflecting upon last year as a tech coach, it is hard not to dwell on the bad bits and negative stuff that happened over the year.  It's not that there wasn't anything good to think about . . . there were lots of victories and advancements big and small.  In fact, I would characterise last year as a series of really high-highs and low-lows.  Kind of a Karsh mountain-scape straight out of China.  Everyone always remembers the bad bits though - it's just human nature.  Last year, I had three events where people acted unprofessionally towards me, so I am going to devote my first posting of the school year to reflecting on some positive take-aways from those events.  First off though, I will not be getting into the who said/did what . . . no airing of dirty laundry here.  I have moved past all of that now - the perspective of time does wonders.

So here is my list of top-three take-aways from last year:

1. Perception can be everything - As the first tech coach in the HS here, how the people that I work with view and understand my position/role might not coincide with my day-to-day reality.  I am always there to help with anything tech-related, be it big or small, complex or simple, physical or digital, systems or tools based.  As a result, some people see me as being in charge of anything and everything that goes "bing", has a screen on it, or uses electricity (this is part of what I am talking about when I say "guilty by competence").  One of the incidents from last year revolved around what a faculty member thought was my job, as I was helping them with a number of issues and challenges.  But in fact, I was just trying to help mediate between Tech Services and the teacher, and support both sides of the equation.  This  ended up in a big mess and some heated talk when some decisions were made which were not in the teacher's favour.  My take-away . . . try to ensure that the people I work with understand my role, what I am in charge of and when I am merely a facilitator or mediator.  Being a teacher is so much simpler as everyone knows what your "job description" is . . . being a coach is a lot more fuzzy in many people's minds!
2. Sometimes you can't fix it and you just have to wait - Last year, I was put in a very uncomfortable position with an administrator where I had to sit on my hands and wait it out, no matter how illogical and irrational the "process" became.  I was unable to affect any positive change in the situation, nor could I inject any rational thought into the matter at hand.  Instead, I had to just wait for the year to end so that positive change could happen with the start of the new year.  My take-away . . . have faith that cooler/rational heads will prevail in the long run, and that things will be "put right" with time and patience.  Sometimes it is hard to give up that time, to have that patience, and to have confidence that things will get sorted out properly . . . this is one case that I will look back on that worked out in the long run.
3. You can't help everyone, and you can't make everyone happy - As a coach, my position means working with the entire HS faculty.  But what do you with a faculty member who is in a really bad place, and who is negative about everything concerning the school?  On a sports team, this would be like having the un-coachable player on the team . . . and there are no cuts and no trades.  Working with this faculty member became impossible as the year wore on, as they were prone to very unprofessional outbursts and rants directed at anyone nearby.  Unfortunately, I was on the end of one of those outbursts . . . but had no recourse other than to report it and move on.  Not a satisfactory conclusion by any means, but the person in question was leaving at the end of the year anyways so Admin thought it was best left alone.  My take-away . . . when working with faculty, they have to be in the right mindset in order to be receptive to coaching, must be internally motivated to learn and grow, and timing is everything (just-in-time learning rules).  If any one of these conditions is amiss for any reason (let alone all three of them), then the act of coaching may be poorly received or ignored altogether.  And sometimes, these conditions and the mindset of the faculty are completely out of your control.

Have you ever had negative incidents at school which were unprofessional in nature, that seemed to overshadow everything?  Did these incidents cause you to doubt yourself, or make you think that you somehow doing a poor job?  Was it hard to move past these kinds of incidents?  Reflecting upon them, and trying to pull some "lessons learned" from them is the best way to move on and take charge of things which you have no control over.  What stories do you have?