This is the second in a series of four posts about barriers to collaboration in Professional Leaning Communities.
Some Professional Learning Communities struggle with team members who do not share ideas, do not share knowledge, do not share data, and seemingly do anything they can not to participate or cooperate with the rest of their team members. They are “hoarders.”
I previously addressed this barrier to collaboration in my post “A Hoarding Culture vs. A Sharing Culture.” In a hoarding culture, teachers and schools keep their expertise, their knowledge, their ideas, and their innovations to themselves.
According to Hansen, the “hoarding” barrier is manifested in four typical ways.
1. Competition
“Competition inside a company undermines people’s willingness to collaborate.”
Schools that put individuals teachers against one another in a competition for resources, for status, or for test scores are creating a culture of competition and creating a barrier to collaboration. When teachers, schools, or districts believe they are in competition with others, then they are going to hoard their ideas, creativity, innovation, data, research, knowledge, expertise, and wisdom.
All students suffer when educators compete against each other. Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives leverage their ability to increase student achievement on their abilities to collaborate. Competition prevents this. Competition has no place amongst our schools and our teachers.
2. Narrow Incentives
“When people are rewarded only for how well they do their jobs, they tend to focus attention on their jobs exclusively.”
Teachers or schools that are only acknowledged or esteemed for high-test scores unwittingly sabotage their ability to further raise student achievement through greater collaboration. If it is only about the test score, if a single score for a single test is how teachers will be judged and evaluated, they natural result is that they will turn inward and focus on themselves and “hoard” their best from the rest of the group.
It is absolutely essential that Professional Learning Communities, Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives, and administrators reward and judge each other on sharing and collaborating, rather than a narrow test score.
3. Being Too Busy
“Paradoxically, the emphasis on performance management over the past decade has created what Harvard Professor Leslie Perlow calls a ‘time famine’ at work.”
Every single educator I know is suffering from time famine. Educators are being asked to teach more standards the same amount of time or even less time. Educators always feel behind in the classroom and then have the added burden of outside meetings, trainings, etc. Time famine is running rampant.
“As people are pressured to perform, they feel that they don’t have the time to help others; reasonable requests for help are seen as burdens that put them behind in their own work. So people are faced with a trade-off—to do their own work (but not help others), or to help others (but get less work done).”
The current economic crisis has forced many schools and districts into layoffs and reductions of support staff, district staff, etc, but the work still needs to be completed. The pressure to keep up and complete just one’s job responsibilities is increased when those you work with and depend on are laid off or transferred.
Time saving measures need to be pursued vigorously. Further, instruction time and collaboration time need to guarded jealously. It will take creative thinking and innovative solutions, but time famine must be defeated to increase collaboration time.
4. Fear of Losing Power
If knowledge is power, then the one with the knowledge has the power. And those with power are often loath to give it up.
“…why share that knowledge with others and thereby make oneself less powerful and ultimately redundant? If people fear they will become less powerful and less valuable to the organization by spreading their wisdom, they will be inclined to hoard it.”
Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives must overcome the collaboration barrier of the fear of losing power by ensuring that all members are empowered through access to data, information, knowledge, expertise, and wisdom. Empowered teams do not fear losing power, but rather feel empowered when their share their knowledge. Sharing is empowering, hoarding is disempowering. When PLCs or PNLCs share, they overcome the fear disempowerment. They empower collaboration and reap its rewards.
Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaborative must overcome the “hoarding” barrier and create a culture of sharing. Sharers know that their fellow teachers, their fellow principals, and their fellow schools should benefit, can benefit, and will benefit from their knowledge, ideas, creativity, and information. Sharers get a “reward” out of helping others benefit from what they know. Sharers attempt to overcome silos by sharing with others so that the entire school or school district can benefit.
Some Professional Learning Communities struggle with team members who do not share ideas, do not share knowledge, do not share data, and seemingly do anything they can not to participate or cooperate with the rest of their team members. They are “hoarders.”
I previously addressed this barrier to collaboration in my post “A Hoarding Culture vs. A Sharing Culture.” In a hoarding culture, teachers and schools keep their expertise, their knowledge, their ideas, and their innovations to themselves.
According to Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, “Unlike the not-invented-here barrier, where people do not want to ask others for input, the hoarding barrier concerns people in the opposite role: those who might provide help but do not offer it.”
Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives are built to share. Not only should members be asking for help, members should be constantly sharing and offering their help, ideas, strategies, knowledge, and expertise. This is why we call them communities or collaboratives.According to Hansen, the “hoarding” barrier is manifested in four typical ways.
1. Competition
“Competition inside a company undermines people’s willingness to collaborate.”
Schools that put individuals teachers against one another in a competition for resources, for status, or for test scores are creating a culture of competition and creating a barrier to collaboration. When teachers, schools, or districts believe they are in competition with others, then they are going to hoard their ideas, creativity, innovation, data, research, knowledge, expertise, and wisdom.
All students suffer when educators compete against each other. Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives leverage their ability to increase student achievement on their abilities to collaborate. Competition prevents this. Competition has no place amongst our schools and our teachers.
2. Narrow Incentives
“When people are rewarded only for how well they do their jobs, they tend to focus attention on their jobs exclusively.”
Teachers or schools that are only acknowledged or esteemed for high-test scores unwittingly sabotage their ability to further raise student achievement through greater collaboration. If it is only about the test score, if a single score for a single test is how teachers will be judged and evaluated, they natural result is that they will turn inward and focus on themselves and “hoard” their best from the rest of the group.
It is absolutely essential that Professional Learning Communities, Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives, and administrators reward and judge each other on sharing and collaborating, rather than a narrow test score.
3. Being Too Busy
“Paradoxically, the emphasis on performance management over the past decade has created what Harvard Professor Leslie Perlow calls a ‘time famine’ at work.”
Every single educator I know is suffering from time famine. Educators are being asked to teach more standards the same amount of time or even less time. Educators always feel behind in the classroom and then have the added burden of outside meetings, trainings, etc. Time famine is running rampant.
“As people are pressured to perform, they feel that they don’t have the time to help others; reasonable requests for help are seen as burdens that put them behind in their own work. So people are faced with a trade-off—to do their own work (but not help others), or to help others (but get less work done).”
The current economic crisis has forced many schools and districts into layoffs and reductions of support staff, district staff, etc, but the work still needs to be completed. The pressure to keep up and complete just one’s job responsibilities is increased when those you work with and depend on are laid off or transferred.
Time saving measures need to be pursued vigorously. Further, instruction time and collaboration time need to guarded jealously. It will take creative thinking and innovative solutions, but time famine must be defeated to increase collaboration time.
4. Fear of Losing Power
If knowledge is power, then the one with the knowledge has the power. And those with power are often loath to give it up.
“…why share that knowledge with others and thereby make oneself less powerful and ultimately redundant? If people fear they will become less powerful and less valuable to the organization by spreading their wisdom, they will be inclined to hoard it.”
Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives must overcome the collaboration barrier of the fear of losing power by ensuring that all members are empowered through access to data, information, knowledge, expertise, and wisdom. Empowered teams do not fear losing power, but rather feel empowered when their share their knowledge. Sharing is empowering, hoarding is disempowering. When PLCs or PNLCs share, they overcome the fear disempowerment. They empower collaboration and reap its rewards.
Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaborative must overcome the “hoarding” barrier and create a culture of sharing. Sharers know that their fellow teachers, their fellow principals, and their fellow schools should benefit, can benefit, and will benefit from their knowledge, ideas, creativity, and information. Sharers get a “reward” out of helping others benefit from what they know. Sharers attempt to overcome silos by sharing with others so that the entire school or school district can benefit.
Also see:
Part 1: Overcoming the "Not-Invented-Here" Barrier In Professional Learning Communities
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