In his book Group Genius, Keith Sawyer describes 10 conditions that must exist for "group flow" to emerge in Professional Learning Communities.
1. The Groups Goal
“One study of more than five hundred professionals and managers in thirty companies found that unclear objectives became the biggest barrier to effective team performance.”
If you grade level teams, departments, or PLC’s don’t know what they are meeting about and what they are expected to achieve, results are going to be poor.
The principal or chair of the group needs to manage what I call the Innovative Goal Paradox. That is, you want to be clear on the objective that must be achieved or the product produced, but flexible on the means the group achieves it. It’s like telling them the destination on a map, but leaving it up to the group to determine the route, time of travel, method of travel, etc.
2. Close Listening
Are your PLC teams listening to each other?
“Group flow is more likely to emerge when everyone is full engaged—what improvisers call ‘deep listening,’ in which member of the group don’t plan ahead what they’re going to say, but their statements are genuinely unplanned responses to what they hear.”
Let the student work, data, etc. drive the dialogue. Don’t come in with preconceived ideas.
“Innovation is blocked when one (or more) of the participants already has a preconceived idea of how to reach the goal…”
3. Complete Concentration
Time is valuable, especially when you are taking time from the teachers to have them meet in their PLC groups. You want to maximize the use of the time to honor the participants and the process.
Deadlines are not a productive tool for developing innovative ideas. Similarly, keep distractions away from meetings.
“Group flow is more likely when a group can draw a boundary, however temporary or virtual, between the group’s activity and everything else.”
4. Being In Control
“Many studies have found that team autonomy is the top predictor of team performance. But in group flow, unlike solo flow, control results in a paradox because participants must feel in control, yet at the same time they must remain flexible, listen closely, and always be willing to defer to the emergent flow of the group. The most innovative teams are the ones that can manage the paradox.”
This is one of the toughest to get for teachers because they work in isolation and have much autonomy and control of what they want to do. In the PLC, teachers will need practice letting go of control individually, while being allowed to have control of the process.
5. Blending Egos
“In group flow, each person’s idea builds on those just contributed by his or her colleagues."
In other words, everyone needs to contribute to get the best result or idea for how to meet the needs of students. Everyone!
6. Equal Participation
Group Flow won’t happen if everyone isn’t participating.
“Group flow is more likely to occur when all participants play an equal role in the collective creation of the final performance. Group flow is blocked if anyone’s skill level is below that of the rest of the group’s members; all must have comparable skills.”
Now this presents an interesting question. Do all teachers in your grade level or department PLC’s have comparable skills? Yes, they all have credentials (or we hope), but there could be varying levels of years of experiences, staff development training, and technology knowledge. Is this a factor? Maybe, but maybe not.
Group Flow is also blocked when one person dominates the group, believes he or she doesn’t need the group, of looks down on the process.
Another potential block to PLC flow, is the principal sitting in the meeting. If the principal does sit in the meeting it is important to, “…participate in the same way as everyone else by listening closely and granting autonomy and authority to the group’s emergent decision process.”
7. Familiarity
PLC members need to learn to the styles of each of the members because familiarity increases productivity, decision-making effectiveness, and the ability to understand what is happening in classrooms.
“When members of a group have been together for a while, they share a common language and a common set of unspoken understandings. Psychologists call these shared understandings tacit knowledge—and because it’s unspoken, people often don’t even realize why they are able to communicate effectively.”
However, here is an interesting paradox to the point above. Tacit knowledge is a part of group flow, but we don’t want PLC’s made up of people who think so exactly alike that nothing new can come out of the meeting.
This begs the question, how long should a grade level be kept together? Obviously, departments are dependent on credential, but at the elementary level, this isn’t so. Teachers can move grade levels easily. So, how long do you keep your current grade levels together before they become too stagnant? Principals need to balance the need for familiarity, which allows for good decision-making and creativity, with the need to avoid over familiarity and stagnation.
Another interesting fact is this, familiar groups are great for problem-solving creativity, but unfamiliar groups are better for problem-finding creativity. So PLC’s and the need to examine student work, data, and teaching benefit from familiarity, but school wide problem solving that requires new ideas and innovation might benefit by being made up of teachers and staff from various grade levels and departments.
8. Communication
“Group flow requires constant communication.”
Principals should be talking with their groups frequently. Feedback on how the PLC is doing and fact finding on what the PLC has discovered or decided on is key.
But, group flow can happen outside of the meeting too. Spontaneous conversations allows for group flow. Not every conversation has to take place around the conference table.
9. Moving It Forward
“Yes, and…”
This is a powerful sentence stem for your PLC’s to use in their meeting. When teacher are sharing ideas, members should listen closely, accept it, and build on the idea by using, “Yes, and…” Members validate the ideas of others, while simultaneously building on the idea with other ideas. This is a great way to generate powerful plans for improving student learning.
10. The Potential for Failure
Before lifting weights or going for a run, we should all warm our muscles up. The same could be said for our minds.
“Many groups require a preliminary warm-up period to move into group flow.”
Also, some ideas to improve student learning won’t. It’s just that simple. The principal and the PLC member need to understand that creativity is often accompanied with failure. We must allow our PLC’s to come up with ideas that fail. If we don’t, the quality of ideas and instruction will suffer because they won’t feel the trust they need to innovate.
Creative Tension is the just the right environment. “Group flow happens when many tensions are in perfect balance: the tension between convention and novelty; between structure and improvisation; between the critical, analytic mind and the freewheeling, outside-the-box mind; between listening to the rest of the group and speaking out in individual voices.”
Catalytic Questions
Is the timing right at your school in develop and inculcate these conditions in your PLC’s?
What patterns have you detected in your PLC’s that might prevent or allow for these conditions to flourish in your PLC’s?
In what ways might you loosen your control of PLC’s to give them autonomy in decision making and planning?
How might you challenge the prevailing conditions your PLC’s operate under?
In what ways might you connect what you know about group dynamics and creativity to your PLC’s?
What alternatives might you employ to create the 10 conditions of group flow?
How might these 10 conditions for group flow change the way your teachers think about PLCs?
In what ways might your view of PLC’s change if you viewed it from the perspective of a visiting teacher or visiting administrator?
In what ways might new a new idea for your PLC’s make a positive impact? What might that idea be?
In what ways might technology be used to enhance these 5 conditions?
How might the organization of your school’s PLC need to change to achieve these 5 conditions?
What probing question could you ask of your grade level or department PLC’s to determine the level of these 5 conditions being present?
What is your hunch about these conditions in your PLC’s?
In what ways could you better focus your time and energy to ensure these conditions exist?
How might you question your assumptions about your PLC’s and investigate what is truly happening?
In what ways might you adapt these conditions to your PLC’s?
How might you put existing time for teacher planning, meetings, etc. to better use and increase PLC time?
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