7/29/2019 Anticipate change: Design a transition meeting

1/2

NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (800) 727-7288 VOL. 25, NO. 4 FALL 2004 JSD 65

Anticipate change:Design a transitionmeeting

The school is small, the leader well-loved. The work is challenging, hectic, and performed in crampedquarters. Dedicated teachers have worked hardtogether for many years. Childrens work is evident every-

where. Harmony and emotional bonds are core values.People come first.

Soon, much of this will change.Carolyn McKanders and I have been asked to design

and facilitate a two-day workshop to herald and support

this staff through impending change. Soon the school willhave new leadership, a third of the staff will depart, new teachers will be hired, the student population will increasedramatically, and classrooms will be added.

The challenge of change is common. Carolyn and I setthree outcomes for this meeting:

1) Enhance the staffs capacity to cope with change;2) Help them plant seeds to use change as an opportu-

nity for school improvement; and3) Increase their sense of power and control about ele-

ments of the change.

COPING WITH CHANGESchools regularly face daunting shifts: They adopt pro-

grams, change assessments, reorganize schedules, revisecurriculum, reinvigorate instruction, or change personnel.Some schools encounter multifaceted change, others sin-gular. The challenges are similar.

William Bridges (1980) notes that it is never thechange itself that is difficult. It is the psychological adjust-ments the natural processes of disorientation and reori-entation that accompany change that are challenging.

He describes three phases: endings, neutral zones, andnew beginnings. For individuals to cope effectively withthese stages, its useful to know what they are and to haveideas on how to deal with them.

Endings. People make beginnings, says Bridges, only if they have first made an ending and spent some time in a

neutral zone. But most change work focuses on the begin-nings with attempts to explain the new or to generate buy-

in for the changes. Leaders serve faculties and school effortsbest when they understand in what stage of transition peo-ple are and then organize their information and learning experiences to be congruent with these transition zones.

Our first task is to acknowledge loss. Every transition, even about joyful events, starts withan ending. My wife and I just bought a new house. We are thrilled about the new setting and envision time there with family andgrandchildren. Yet, there is still an aching sense of loss at leaving our existing home. I

will miss the porch on which I sat with my

dad and watched sunsets. Sue will miss thehours of activity our grandkids had in a play-room she designed. In schools, a new programor curriculum no matter how positively anticipated brings an end to the old ways of doing things: the familiarity of texts and rou-tines, instructional strategies, patterns of rela-tionships with other adults, and perhaps changesin status.

It is normal for people to feel a sense of loss.It is sometimes a slow process, for we may have identifiedsome portion of who we are with what is past. We may feel disoriented, disenchanted, angry, or depressed. Perhapsthe most important service leaders provide is to let othersreact to the ending. Endings are, after all, experiences of dying, and in some sense we may feel that they may meanthe end of us. Yet our logical minds know that an ending marks the beginning of a new life.

During endings, leaders must expect and accept signsof grieving. People may be sad, angry, depressed, irra-tional, frightened, or confused. We must, without judg-ment, provide processes for them to express feelings. Wemight have pairs list all the losses involved in this change,or have small groups list the worst things, the best things,and the most probable things that might happen.

Because letting go engages the right brain more thanthe left, we will develop metaphors or ceremonies thattouch emotional cores. In one school transitioning from a nine-month to a 12-month calendar, the staff held a funeral for the old calendar. They designed a casket, theprincipal read eulogies, and later they met at a local pubfor a wake.

The neutral zone. Bridges (1991) calls the second

In each issue of JSD ,

Robert J. Garmston writes

about the challenges of

creating effective groups.

His columns can be found

at www.nsdc.org/library/

authors/garmston.cfm

group wise / ROBERT J. GARMSTON

ROBERT J. GARMSTON is co-founder of the Institute for IntelligentBehavior and a professor emeritus at California State University,Sacramentos School of Education. You can contact him at 337Guadalupe Drive, El Dorado Hills, CA 95762-3560, (916) 933-2727,fax (916) 933-2756, e-mail: FABob@aol.com.

7/29/2019 Anticipate change: Design a transition meeting

2/2

66 JSD FALL 2004 VOL. 25, NO. 4 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

g r o u p w

i s e / R O B E R T J . G A R M S T O N phase a neutral zone because it is a nowhere between two

somewheres. In organizations, anxiety rises and motivationfalls. Performance declines. People get overloaded, signalsare mixed, systems are in flux, and more things go wrong.

It is important to foreshadow this so individuals do notthink something is wrong with them or the school

when difficulties arise. The critical task at this stage is to

give in to the emptiness one experiences and trust that,metaphorically, a death and rebirth cycle is in progress.Normalize the neutral zone. Forecast its occurrence,

processes, and benefits. Select metaphors with positiveattributes to describe the changes that people are experienc-ing. Instead of a family breakup, speak of new chapters orexpanded families. Use metaphors of life cycles, seasons,and growing things to talk about the changes.

The neutral zone can be a hothouse for ideas. Carolynand I will design processes to identify and develop ideas toaddress key challenges associated with the change. The neu-tral zone is the best place to generate and test new ideas.

New beginnings. Genuine beginnings start within us.They are psychological phenomena that we come to, para-doxically, only at the end of something else. This is thetime for action and the pursuance, step by step, of a plan

to take us to the new place.Focus faculty on process-

es that will lead to outcomes,not the outcomes themselves.Daniel Goleman (2000)notes that the pacesetting style of leadership fixating on high standards nega-tively affects performance.People get overwhelmed andburn out. Foreshadow thenormal brief decline in effec-tiveness that occurs when

working with any new strate-gy. By alerting people to theeffort required to reach thestage of conscious compe-tence in any innovation, you

encourage them not to abandon ship during the rough seasso they can stay on board for the smooth sailing after.

FROM CRISIS TO OPPORTUNITY The Chinese symbol for crisis, we are told, is both dan-

ger and opportunity. We see this meeting as an occasion toplant seeds for school improvement and illuminate thestaffs sense of power and control.

Is there an established design that will help staffs turnchanges into opportunities? We dont know. However, hereis an agenda that reflects our thinking:

Welcome, purposes, and overview Bridges work on transitions Structured interviews Refresh staff on dialogue skills Dialogue on essential elements from interview Identify and plan for action on selected items

We set about the work in this way: In structured inter-

views, each member interviews others on questions perti-nent to the changes. (See box at left.) Each participantrecords responses on interview sheets, and the group thenorganizes and summarizes the responses to each question.The summaries are posted on flip charts.

An important point is that staff members are the listen-ers; people give voice to their stories. This format allowsstaff to hear from each other.

Carolyn and I will facilitate the next portion of themeeting where the full group will study the charts andselect ideas to pursue. We will help them refine dialogueskills (talking to understand, not to decide), then groups

will identify areas in which they need action plans.In this meeting, we focus on teacher dispositions and

strengthening the professional community to weather andprofit from changes. These are two of the five elements ofgood schools (Newmann, as reported in Fullan, 2001, p.64):

Teachers knowledge, skills, and dispositions; Professional community; Program coherence; Technical resources; and Principal leadership.School leaders will want to identify specific behaviors

participants need in order to accomplish the change responses they identify. They need to be explicit about andteach skills, then plan for implementation, mutation, mon-itoring, and redesigning.

In all changes, everyone is urged to treat the past withrespect. Frame whatever is passing as useful to what you amoving toward. Remember that people may identify withpast practices in a positive way never, never, neverdemean the old way of doing things.

While change is difficult, a thoughtfully plannedprocess can turn problems into opportunities.

REFERENCESBridges, W. (1980). Transitions: Making sense of lifes

changes.New York. Perseus Publishing.Bridges, W. (1991). Managing transitions: Making the

most of change.New York: Perseus Publishing.Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change.San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Goleman, D. (2000, March-April). Leadership that

gets results.Harvard Business Review, 78 (2) 78-90. I

Structured interview questions

What is over and what is not? What do you value and want to

continue? As individuals and as a group, what can we do to supportourselves through changes?

What are some areas in which wemight need to tap into our creativi-ty?

What are some areas in which wemight need to manage the chaos of transition?

If this phase of life for this schoollooks like clouds, what might besome silver linings?