Joel Zehring

Democracy is a brutally efficient system for stamping out less-than-popular ideas. It’s far less useful for making wise decisions that perpetuate improvement and renewal.

For a professional learning community, consensus beats democracy left and right. Here’s what I mean by consensus: if one member of the community can’t live with a choice and it’s consequences, then we don’t move forward. We take more time to listen, discuss, and persuade, or we find an alternate option that everyone can approve.

Consensus-rule values all members equally, all the time. There is no majority and minority. There are no winners and losers. No one gets left behind.

Through consensus, every member is consulted, and every member enjoys veto power. We don’t move forward unless “we” includes every single member. Bonus: later on, when things get tough, no one can say “I never wanted to do this in the first place,” because each member had a chance to stop the train before it left the station.

Consensus honors the spirit of Galileo in the community. At some point, the future of the community may depend on a lone voice of reason among the choruses of “we’ve always done it this way” and “trust us, this many people can’t be wrong.” How many times in history has the pivotal realization been championed by a single person or small collective of dissidents? How many times in history has the ruling faction actually worked to suppress sanity and reason to preserve the status quo?

If my first allegiance is to the community, and my community is committed to consensus, then the best and most sane answer will almost always win out. It just might take a lot longer than the five minute slot on the staff meeting agenda.

When it comes to promoting the beliefs of professional learning community, what you say is important. How you say it is even more important.

Despite the wisdom of Marshall McLuhan’s words, administrators and district leaders continue to promote community through staff meetings, prescribed agendas, assigned readings, and mass emails. It’s no wonder teachers are hesitant to buy in to the PLC model. Just before the principal touts it, the teachers find out that they are losing their prep periods to a district in-service meeting.

To teachers on the receiving end of this kind of corporate propagandizing, professional learning community is simply another item to check off the list, rather than a powerful framework for redefining school in the twenty-first century. Schedules, agendas, tasks, and assignments are not necessarily bad things, but they are not sufficient for building vibrant professional learning community.

Community, even among professional learners, is organic and human and messy. It does not always fit nicely in a bullet point on an agenda, nor does it stop when a meeting is concluded.

The PLC message must be proclaimed through the media of community. Community is forged through questions, conversations, laughter, conflict, forgiveness, vulnerability, and patience. It is born out of proximity, permanence, shared history, and shared vision. Community requires more than passive attendance. Professional learning community demands passionate engagement from every member, and long-suffering empathy from every leader.

Teachers can be leaders. This doesn’t mean they get to call all the shots in their schools. It means that teachers can influence other teachers and even administrators, and they can help to direct the course of their schools.

Steven DeMaio wrote a post over at Harvard Business where he describes some of the leadership principles he follows as a teacher. Steven doesn’t wait to be vested with authority. He simply thinks about how he might use his everyday words and actions to influence others. The leadership he describes isn’t heavy-handed, but he is intentional about his attitude and demeanor:

“In essence, the effective informal leader is inquisitive rather than watchful.”

I’ve seen a number of teachers lead with answers and proclamations and complaints. A far more effective approach might be to lead with questions. The questions I ask reveal my values and beliefs, as well as engaging others in thinking about their own values and beliefs. A conversation about values and beliefs is a leader’s conversation, rather than an administrative conversation.