This is blog no. 2 in a special August series to help teacher and leadership teams launch successfully for the school year. More details on this leadership move in the bestseller Intentional Moves.
“It's important to remember cultural differences among teachers we are leading, just as we would consider cultural differences when teaching and giving students feedback.” - Teacher Leader
Primary Intention 2:
Establish Team Learning Expectations
(in a culturally responsive way)
Yes, your team needs to get clarity about how you agree to work together. (Moves 2.1 - 2.3 give you three processes for team norm setting.)
But…
Instead of spending time debating WHAT behaviors should make it to your list of norms, spend time learning about WHY people exhibit the behaviors they do.
This school year, set shared expectations for your team in ways that foster empathy and inclusivity of diverse cultural norms.
The cultures in which we were raised, the generation in which we are from, the gender and race with which we identify - all influence why we act in the ways we do when we work together.
Unless people take time to understand the beliefs and values that drive behavior,
the group norm-setting process that we lead becomes at best, a superficial act of rule-making, and at worst, one leader unintentionally imposing their cultural norms on the group.
Think like a teacher.
In culturally responsive teaching we intentionally learn about and bring in students' cultures to the classroom.
On p.107 of my book, Intentional Moves I reference an educational equity specialist and teacher who poses a key question in this Ed Week blog:
"Are my class rules and expectations culturally empowering to my students?"
At the start of this year, let's ask a similar question of our teacher teams:
"How do culture and past experiences shape the norms of our team?"
Foster Sensitivity for Cultural Norms (Move 2.4 p.106)
Note: I define “cultural norms” as traditions, values, beliefs, habits, social behaviors that include, but are not limited to race, nationality, region, gender, generation, religious affiliation, sexual orientation and organizational culture.
Erin Meyer, in this HBR podcast explains that people need to feel safe with one another in order to give and get feedback. But that it is especially hard, she says, for diverse teams where we are hard-wired to mistrust those who think and do things differently from us.
One thing she recommends is learning about one another's cultural norms with humility and curiosity.
For instance, feedback is different among diverse international cultures and teams that don't understand these differences often experience miscommunication and conflict.
🔹 Meyer gives an example of colleagues of a Ukrainian woman who took offense at her blunt-style of feedback vs their American-style of sandwiching feedback between two compliments.
🔹 Harvard professor, Francesca Gino writes about cultural norms and explains that in Italian culture, interrupting people is a way to signal interest in what the other person is saying.
🔹 Recently, I read that in Japanese culture, it's rude to give feedback to a person but acceptable to do so about a practice or policy.
🔹 And my Turkish hairdresser told me it is a high compliment to give someone the feedback that they “look tired” after doing something that required a lot of hard work, because you are acknowledging the herculean effort they put in.
We cannot be experts on every cultural norm*, but we can foster sensitivity by sharing our personal histories.
Guiding questions (adapted from my book) for your team discussion:
What cultural norms have shaped your approach to feedback?
What similar or different experiences has our team had?
What shared agreements can we make to honor where we come from and also foster a safe place for feedback?
With this leadership move, norm-setting shifts from generating a list of group rules to building empathy and inclusivity on a team.
Bring in-person or virtual professional learning to your team leaders.
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