Moves to Transform Collaboration
May 5, 2025
In the last two months (March and April) I articulated how important the teacher team leader is to the implementation of Professional Learning Community principles and processes, which is the most promising strategy for improving teaching and learning (DuFour et al., 2021). As part of this, we explored the role and responsibilities of the team leader, as well as some helpful assumptions and mindsets. In other words, the last posts highlighted key characteristics of your own approach to being a teacher team leader.
A Brief Review
To briefly review, the role of the teacher team leader that I propose in my book, The Teacher Team Leader Handbook: Simple Habits to Transform Collaboration in a PLC at Work®, is to ensure the effective functioning of the team in improving student learning, in guaranteeing that students learn essential outcomes. The three responsibilities are to
1) Make it safe,
2) Build capacity, and
3) Do the work.
As a teacher team leader, it is helpful to hold certain assumptions, or things that you hold to be true (Sparks, 2007). I propose five assumptions:
1) People do the best that they can,
2) You can only control you,
3) Behavior communicates,
4) People want to get stuff done, and
5) Conflict is good.
And, finally, effective mindsets, or attitudes leading to action (Mindset Works, n.d.), might include:
1) To see what others don’t (yet) see in themselves,
2) To be humble with a posture of learning, and
3) To spread the contagion of joy.
Teacher Team Leader Actions
With a foundation of clarity about your approach to the work, let us now turn to actions that you can take to transform collaboration. The book goes into great detail and provides descriptions, tools, reflective questions, and next steps on the moves, techniques, and strategies for transforming collaboration in a PLC at Work®. For our purposes here, I have highlighted just a few moves that I have found to be the absolute most impactful in my work with teams. I affectionately refer to these as the three “Magic Moves”, and next time we’ll explore what I call the seven “Sweet Strategies.”
There are three “Magic Moves” that you can take as a teacher team leader that will immediately and dramatically impact the work of the team: Pause, Paraphrase, and 3rd Point.
The Pause
The pause is the single most powerful nonverbal move in your toolbox (Grinder, 2018), and it is just what it sounds like: It involves being silent. Of course, it’s also helpful to breathe during that pause. And a subtle breaking of eye contact (to reduce the potential for perceived intimidation) adds to the effect of a pause.
Paraphrase
The second Magic Move is the paraphrase (Garmston & Wellman, 2016): It’s magic because it’s disarming, doing two things: 1) Ensuring that you understand others, and 2) Ensuring that others feel understood. Even a clumsy paraphrase is better than no paraphrase, though the key is to be genuine. This communicates to others their value as a person, as well as their value as a professional, and this greater understanding builds relationship and community.
3rd Point
Finally, one of my all-time favorite moves is the use of a 3rd Point, because it’s not only highly impactful, but it’s probably the easiest to implement. The term third point (Grinder, n.d.) comes from the notion that you, yourself, are the first “point” in any given interaction. The other person or people are the second “point.” The third “point,” then, is an object. For example, when you use an agenda and have it projected on a screen for all to see, the screen is your third point. If you have data posted on chart paper, the data on the chart paper is your third point.
A third point does two things for a group: 1) it shifts energy and, 2) helps with psychological safety. Regarding shifting energy—especially in tense conversations—a third point enables that energy to be directed toward the third point instead of each other. This helps to maintain relationships as we engage in a focused conversation where we can be hard on ideas and soft on people. This shift in energy facilitates your #1 responsibility (psychological safety), then, because we have now shifted our energy to this “thing”—our third point—instead of at each other. The psychological safety thus engendered makes it far easier to engage in productive conflict.
Summary
We know that becoming a Professional Learning Community is both challenging and rewarding–both for the adults and ultimately for the students we serve. The role of the team is critical to this process (Kramer, 2019), as is the team leader. In addition to the consideration of your internal state (explored last time), a few, simple, go-to moves (and strategies explored next time) will ensure that it all comes together for the improvement of professional practice and results for students.
Reflective Questions
- Which of the three moves would you like to strive for using?
- When and how will you go about practicing and then implementing them?
Rib Review
I had some absolutely amazing ribs in April! At one point, I had ribs from four different places over the course of less than a week. With so many options, let me just share one set that were quite possibly some of the best I’ve had: the Rib Crib in Wichita Falls, Texas. While it is a chain with most of its restaurants clustered in or around Oklahoma, the meat was literally fall-off-the-bone, and I didn’t even look for sauces to use with it because the flavor was so good without it.
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References
DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., Many, T. W., & Mattos, M. (2021). Revisiting professional learning communities at work®: Proven insights for sustained, substantive school improvement (2nd ed.). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Garmston, R. J. & Wellman, B. M. (2016). The adaptive school: A sourcebook for developing collaborative groups (third ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Grinder, M. (2018). The elusive obvious: The science of non-verbal communication (3rd ed.). Michael Grinder & Associates.
Grinder, M. (n.d.). 2-point vs 3-point communication. Accessed at https://michaelgrinder.com/2-point-vs-3-point-communication/ on December 2, 2023.
Kramer, S.V. (2019) What’s a PLC meeting, anyway?. Accessed at https://www.solutiontree.com/blog/what-is-a-plc-meeting/ on March 31, 2024.
Mindset Works (n.d.). Decades of scientific research that started a growth mindset revolution. Accessed at https://www.mindsetworks.com/science/ on April 3, 2024.
Sparks, D. (2007). Leading for results: Transforming teaching, learning, and relationships in schools (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
