Inspiring Growth: Part 3

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Lonely at School

How ‘being known’ can contribute to overall confidence, communication, and cognition.

Harvard Business Review released its November – December 2024 issue. On the front cover, it highlights an article located on pg 68 titled: We’re Still Lonely at Work – It’s time for companies to take a different approach.

HBR is headquartered in Brighton, Massachusetts. They are a non-profit publishing entity tied to Harvard Business School. Current popular topics HBR covers includes:

  • Managing Yourself
  • Leadership
  • Innovation
  • Managing People
  • Strategy
  • Organizational Culture
  • Decision Making & Problem Solving

In taking a deep-dive into the November – December issue – we got to thinking… What if the same observations and considerations we study regarding organizations/business, actually have pivotal and groundbreaking implications for the institution of education?

Organizational Leadership & Business, or Education?

Ethan Burris (Professor, McCombs School of Business), Benjamin Thomas (People Research Scientist, University of Texas at Austin), Ketaki Sodhi (Senior Analyst, Microsoft), and Dawn Klinghoffer (HR Vice President, Microsoft) compiled a piece called: Turn Employee Feedback into Action. An educational leadership and HR facing article emphasizing ‘know what to listen for – and how to respond’.

The first claim within the article states, ‘Enhancing how a company supports and engages its employees can attract talent, improve retention, spur innovation, and increase customer satisfaction’. Right out of the gate, there are educational implications. How would this read if we replaced the term ‘company’ with ‘school’ or ‘educational organization’? How would this read if we replaced the term ‘employees’ with ‘learners’? How would this read if we replaced the term ‘customer’ with ‘community’? Let’s find out!

‘Enhancing how an educational organization supports and engages its learners can attract talent, improve retention, spur innovation, and increase community satisfaction.’

Sounds like a well-written inspiration for a mission/vision statement doesn’t it?

Building Connections with Meaningful Strategies

As we continued walking through the article – the authors list ‘common challenges and identify several innovative strategies for overcoming them’.

Please keep in mind that these strategies were created by Burris, Thomas, Sodhi, and Klinghoffer. Our goal is to infer how these strategies can be incorporated within educational organizations and how the physical learning space can support this process.

  1. Making Sense of All that Data
  2. Making Sure Employees Feel Heard
  3. Identifying the Actual Underlying Problems
  4. Protecting Employee Privacy
  5. Navigating Conflicting Views
  6. Not Burying Bad News
  7. Providing Meaningful Follow-Up

For the sake of length, we are going to dissect strategies 1 – 2, and create connections to the institution of education. For further connections, stay tuned for upcoming blog postings.

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Building Connections with Data Intake & Voice

Growth can begin, only when there’s a concrete realization of a current state. HBR focuses attention on data gathering and feedback processes, which can include ‘qualitative methods such as town halls, focus groups, task forces, and interviews’. Intake and analysis of data can drastically improve outcomes within both business and educational environments. Connecting this strategy to the classroom – oftentimes, we offer feedback opportunities, such as surveys, to higher ed learners. Allowing them to provide an evaluation of their instructor. This happens less frequently in high school and rarely in younger grades. Why?

It’s no debate, schools are no strangers to gathering data. Whether it’s academic performance, attendance, behavior, engagement, assessment, literacy, language etc. schools collect tons of data. How can this data provide deeper insights which spark authentic relationships within intimate spaces of learning? HBR initiates lessening the number of individuals that have access to data measure and increasing the analysis of data from specified personnel. Creating deeper connections and understanding of data from a peripheral perspective.

Data intake can also reassure that learners feel heard; know that their voices have meaning. As HBR states with strategy #2, ‘people won’t speak up if they don’t believe their input will be genuinely considered’.

The National Library of Medicine defines the abstract of voice as:

‘They are the medium through which we do a lot of communication with the outside world: our ideas, of course, and also our emotions and our personality. The voice is the very emblem of the speaker, indelibly woven into the fabric of speech.’  
J Nat Sci Biol Med. 2012 Jan-Jun;3(1):3–11. doi: 10.4103/0976-9668.95933 

Allowing individuals, of all ages and physical/cognitive capabilities, a voice when it comes to the educational data gathering and feedback process would be as purposeful, if not more, as integrating the same process for organizational leadership and business. It can be inferred that if it’s that meaningful to adults in a workspace, it would be equally, if not more, meaningful to learners in a learning space. 

Opportunity to share ‘voice’ also allows for more foundational group development. After all, learners are in their environments 180+ days out of the year. These are mini ecosystems, existing with norms, regulations, celebrations etc. Teamwork and group development is an integral part of building ‘school culture’.  

Tuckman’s Teamwork Theory provides 4 stages of teamwork and group development: 

    • Forming
    • Storming  
    • Norming 
    • Performing 

Tuckman theorizes that once a group has developed a base relationship, connections, and norms, they can move on to ‘increase focus on both the task, and on team relationships’ which when combined ‘provide synergy’. (The Happy Manager) 

HBR stresses a tactic called reflective listening when discussing feedback and voice. HBR defines this process as, ‘involving actively demonstrating an understanding of what’s been heard – by, for example, summarizing and openly sharing themes from surveys and meetings’. One could make the conclusion that this is, essentially, parroting. 

Parroting is a therapeutic technique where the therapist repeats or reflects what a patient has stated for both affirmation and clarification. ‘Its goals are to ensure that the therapist has heard what was said correctly, to encourage the client to clarify their thoughts, and to help the client feel heard and validated’. (Fritscher, 2024)  

Between giving opportunities for feedback within data gathering processes and unpacking what group development can be – it seems as though these strategies were built for educational organizations.  

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Connection to Physical Space

The physical space can contribute significantly to overall comfort, confidence, and cognition. If an environment seems uninviting, cold, sterile, and stagnant, one could deduce that overall feedback and voice would diminish. 

Considering data gathering and feedback processes mentioned above, combined with psychological theories on the perception of space – here are connections we can draw: 

  1. Circles can be symbols of stability and collaboration. Designing a learning space which involves cyclical considerations can boost overall engagement and collaboration. Rectangles and squares on the other hand can communicate strength and security. Triangles are the rebel of the group, promoting subconscious excitement, risk, and balance between realities. (Tubikblog) Incorporating these shapes (either in seating arrangement, patterned fabric, storage layout etc.) subconsciously elevates the purpose of each section of space – allowing individuals to create associations with their environment. 
  2. In the set-up process, facilitators can, and should, include learners’ voices! Although it can be daunting to think of incorporating a group of learners, there are a variety of activities one can use to make this process more manageable:
    1. Guided Discovery – pick one section of space at a time, modeling how the space can be used, incorporating individuals to model for the group. Ask for group feedback and to brainstorm other types of activities that can be completed in that section. Co-create lists of potential activities, norms for that section, diagrams for use etc. 
    2. Exploration – have learners work with a partner or small group to explore the room, filling out a chart of what they observe. Discuss what each group has seen. 
    3. Notice & Wonder – have learners work individually or with a group and explore the room. Then, meet together as a whole group and co-create a ‘notice/wonder’ diagram. Analyzing what was noticed and creating a list of essential questions they can look forward to answering. 
    4. Fort Building & Gallery Walk – have learners work individually or with a group to construct a ‘learning zone’ utilizing the pieces in the space. Create a rubric of expectations and a time limit for the activity. Afterwards, do a gallery walk throughout the space having each learner or group justify their work.
  1. Seating differentiation, work surface variation, textural integration, color consideration, and audio/visual stimulation, and biophilic components must be considered when creating a learning space. Having variances of materials and mediums within an environment creates personalized connections with learners of all capabilities. Offering needs-based opportunities which purposefully reach all individuals.
  1. Including lightweight, mobile pieces that learners of all ages can push, tug, kick, pickup, flip etc. can be instrumental in the psychology of group development. When a group can work together to construct or change their own space, they have a chance to move from forming and storming to norming and performing. Physically speaking, not only does the space account for accentuated lower and upper gross motor movement, it accounts for supports such as spinal decompression, dexterity, pressure, and core stabilization.
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Business or Pleasure?

Inspiring growth considers strategies that might otherwise seem outlandish, different, rebellious, or strange. It seems ironic that these strategies are making their way through the world of organizational leadership and business – but are only just now being introduced to the world of education.

Education has always been an institution, a system. Grade in and grade out. We are now breaking the barriers as to what it means to learn – the process of knowledge acquisition and how it differs for everyone. We are now breaking free from systematic chains which narrow learning down to single lanes. If world leading entrepreneurs are utilizing these strategies for employees in a workplace – how much more would it benefit society to introduce them into learning spaces?

Stay tuned for more in-depth thoughts on HBR November – December 2024 publication and how the worlds of organization leadership, business, and education can intersect for inspiring growth.