Cephalopod Coffeehouse: July 2017

Welcome one and all to the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, a cozy gathering of book lovers, meeting to discuss their thoughts regarding the works they enjoyed most over the previous month.  Pull up a chair, order your cappuccino and join in the fun.  If you wish to add your own review to the conversation, please sign on to the link list at the end of my post.

Title: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High
Authors: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

via Amazon

I think it's fair to say that the school district where I work is struggling at the moment.  Turnover has been high at both the administrative and faculty levels.  An atmosphere of mistrust - festering for decades - has reached near toxic levels.  Even summer hasn't given us much of a break from the troubles.  Yup, we're in rough shape.

Administration gave us a book to read over the summer.  It was not required.  It was suggested.  It's a book about improving your communication skills.  Just as there was a couple years ago when we were required to read Mindset (read here), there has been resistance in the ranks.

"How dare they give us this book to read.  They're the ones who can't communicate."  And so on.  You know how it goes.  I was always going to read it but even I went into it with a pessimistic attitude, thinking maybe it might provide ammunition in a difficult meeting one day.

The truth is, the book's actually quite good.  The authors are business consultants who have spent years watching successful people, dissecting what they do differently from everyone else.  Their thesis: everyone has crucial conversations in their lives, both personal and professional.  The people who stand out are the ones who handle those conversations effectively.

According to the authors, a crucial conversation is one in which opinions vary, stakes are high and emotions run strong.  In education, such conversations happen all the time: teacher-student, teacher-admin, teacher-colleague, teacher-parent, student-student, student-bus driver, etc.  The book offers several tactics they have found to be effective in these tense situations.  Each chapter focuses on a particular skill.  For example:

• Chapter 3: Start with Heart, How to Stay Focused on What You Really Want
• Chapter 5: Make It Safe, How to Make It Safe to Talk About Almost Anything
• Chapter 8: Explore Others' Paths, How to Listen When Others Blow Up or Clam Up

In the midst of reading the book, I attended a school board meeting and realized the deep levels of dysfunction we're currently experiencing.  The book's recommendations are good ones.  I am hopeful that at least a few of my colleagues will set their resentments aside and give it a go.  In all honesty, our communication difficulties predate our current troubles by decades, probably generations.  I am at a point in my own career where I'm starting to seriously ponder future leadership roles for myself and I expect the principles outlined in the book to be highly useful - both in considering if that's what I really want and in preparing myself to do the work.  It's a book I'll share with others and keep around for reference.  Relationships are everything in education - truly, in life.  How could one not want ideas about how to improve them?

Please join us and share your own review of your best read from the past month.  This month's link list is below.  I'll keep it open until the end of the day.  I'll post August's tomorrow.  Meetings are the last Friday of each month.  Next gathering is August 25th.