How do school districts achieve Cultural Change? We know we need to but knowing how to is a different story. 

One model for creating cultural change is listening to the community by hosting a gathering. If you are just looking to check the “action of meeting” off the list to say you “listened” you are missing the opportunity for real transformation. You are working from a technical approach, which means you have a clearly defined problem and already have solutions ready to roll out. 

Community input sessions are not part of a technical approach; rather, it is an adaptive approach that engages a variety of ideas through caring, inclusive, and culturally sustaining interaction. An adaptive approach means you are working with a problem that is harder to define and the solution requires change and involves people. You are open to shifts in perceptions. If you conduct focus groups or observe a group of students in ways that are cold or transactional, you’ll miss out on finding the root cause. Remember, an adaptive approach is where the real change can come from. 

Listening sessions, empathy interviews, focus groups, and community engagements are ways to listen. Listen to those you are serving, and get a feel for their perspective on how it’s going.  For the sake of simplifying, I’m going to call this approach, focus groups.  The outcome of the encounter (an adaptive approach) is only as good as the facilitator. Choose wisely.  Be sure you have someone that is approachable, understands the concept of listening to gather, and fits well in the community (looks like and/or speaks the language).  Be prepared to listen, I don’t just mean passively.  Active listening at this level means hearing and seeking to understand “why”.  Asking follow-up questions to further understand and checking to hear you heard it correctly. Have an intention to learn. 

Let me give an example.  Working with 5th and 6th-grade students during a focus group they were talking about school safety.  They had indicated on a previous survey they did not feel safe at school.  Adults at school begin planning to fix the fences, add cameras, and increase drills for school safety.  In talking with students, the conversation of safety wasn’t related to “school safety”, it was the bullying taking place in the bathroom.  

You can see how the lens through which we look at the situation has a huge determining factor in how we approach solutions. Now think of the potential opportunities and perspectives from holding focus groups that could result from engaging students, educators, families, and communities. There can be some powerful insight and true change that results from these sessions. Yes, it might feel weird and awkward the first time. You might catch yourself wanting to defend or respond that you already do “xyz”.  Just pause. Listen more. If you just listen and look at the information for what it is, the opportunity for engaging authentically and the potential for transformative change increases.  

Before hosting focus groups create clarity among the leadership about what you intend to do with the information.  Let me share another example from when I was working with a district to host a series of focus groups that provided a wealth of information and systemic issues. Students, families, and community members shared their perceptions of the culture, programs, and services with me. They shared authentically what was going well and the challenges.  When the results were shared with the leadership it wasn’t in alignment with the direction of where the leadership wanted to go. It was not what they wanted to hear, so the valuable data wasn’t shared. This created more distrust and was the opposite of “listening”.  

Be sure you are open to hearing and doing as a result, or you’re wasting time.  Be sure your board understands the purpose and definition of focus groups.  Beacon Results has worked with many school districts across the state to help them lean into learning about their community and learn how to create cultural change. Hosting Focus Groups can be a vital step to help realize Cultural Change. 

“The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges.”  Ronald A. Heifetz