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Breaking Through Resistance with Difficult Conversations with Becca Silver, ep. 227

Image of 3 teachers talking at a table. These words are on the image, "Breaking Through Resistance with Difficult Conversations with Becca Silver".

Have you ever found yourself rehearsing a conversation with a teacher in your head, dreading how it might go? I know I have!

As instructional coaches, we sometimes have to initiate tough conversations, even when we would rather not!

This week we’re continuing our series about better coaching conversations. In this episode, Becca Silver from The Whole Educator joins me to discuss breaking through resistance with difficult conversations. Becca offers practical strategies for working with teachers experiencing resistance and she shares real-life examples of coaching conversations.

During the episode, we talk about why coaches experience resistance from teachers, the Change Adoption Curve, and addressing unmet needs. You’ll hear about different types of difficult conversations instructional coaches avoid and things to keep in mind when you talk with teachers. Becca explains how to build trust and why coaches need to listen for what is important to teachers. We also explore addressing our own resistance and how not to bring our preconceived notions about teachers to our conversations.

To get all the details, be sure to listen to the episode. Below are some of the highlights!

Understanding Resistance in Teachers

During the episode, Becca and I discuss why teachers experience resistance. Becca emphasizes that resistance is a natural part of being human and something we all experience.

She explains that teachers are critical thinkers who want to understand new approaches and initiatives. The goal is for them to actively engage in change, rather than just comply. What may seem like resistance is rarely about being difficult, it’s often a natural part of how educators process and evaluate change.

That’s why Becca is intentional about calling them “teachers who experience resistance” rather than “resistant teachers”. She says that the moment we label someone something we risk keeping them stuck in that identity. They can become the very thing we don’t want them to be – resistant!

The Change Adoption Curve

Teachers are hesitant to try new things for a variety of reasons, and each one will adopt changes at their own pace. To help us understand the process, Becca introduces us to the Change Adoption Curve and the different groups along it.

She explains that the Change Adoption Curve illustrates how many people will adopt change at various stages. At first, only a small group of people dive in excitedly and immediately. However, over time, momentum builds as the innovators and early adopters share their success in the classroom.

Unmet Needs and 5 Key Mindsets

Becca says if she were to boil down resistance to two words it would be “unmet needs”! She highlights that resistance stems from these unmet needs and concerns about implementing new approaches.

During the conversation, Becca introduces five mindsets that instructional coaches can listen for to better understand teachers’ unmet needs. They offer a way for teachers to get unstuck and feel empowered. These mindsets exist along a continuum.

Here are the five mindsets:

  1. Growth Mindset – I believe I can improve
  2. Success Mindset – I believe I can succeed
  3. Belonging Mindset – I believe I belong here
  4. Value Mindset – I believe it has value for me
  5. Ownership Mindset – I believe that by taking responsibility I can change things

Effective Conversations & Coaching Strategies That Break Through Resistance

Becca and I discuss the importance of having meaningful conversations to create real change in schools. Becca explains that these conversations don’t need to be hard. Instead, they’re all about building relationships and finding mutual purpose.

Throughout the episode, Becca shares real-life examples of her work with teachers and coaches. She offers strategies coaches can try to help break through to teachers experiencing resistance.

Here are a few suggestions Becca offers during the podcast to make conversations successful:

  • Create a connection before addressing challenges
  • Focus on mutual purpose
  • Listen intentionally
  • Gather information about the teacher’s concerns and complaints
  • Avoid bringing your tension or assumptions
  • Understand underlying needs and fears
  • Show genuine interest in the teacher’s perspectives and concerns

For coaches working with teachers, Becca recommends trying these broader strategies to support growth and overcome resistance:

  • Listen attentively to the teacher’s concerns and needs
  • Build trust
  • Provide in-the-moment coaching that provides specific, actionable support
  • Address our resistance and don’t bring it into your work with teachers
  • Use compassionate, non-judgmental approaches
  • Help teachers see the value of the changes
  • Support teachers by giving them quick wins and demonstrating you can help them produce successful classroom results

Breaking Through Resistance with Difficult Conversations

In this episode, Becca and I dig into breaking through resistance with difficult conversations. Becca always offers valuable insights on how to work with teachers experiencing resistance and how to make change happen. I appreciate her research-based approach and the real-life examples she shares during the episode.

Listen now to hear all the details!

Topics and Questions Discussed in Episode 227 – Breaking Through Resistance with Difficult Conversations with Becca Silver

  • Strategies for overcoming resistance in coaching conversations
  • Understanding why teachers experience resistance
  • The Change Adoption Curve
  • 5 key mindsets
  • Types of difficult conversations instructional coaches avoid
  • Identifying and addressing unmet needs
  • How listening for what’s important to teachers helps break through resistance
  • Things to keep in mind as we approach difficult conversations
  • Real-life examples of challenging conversations that resulted in changes
  • Building trust and efficacy by demonstrating you can help teachers produce results in the classroom
  • How resistance triggers resistance: Addressing our resistance

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Podcast produced by Fernie Ceniceros

Breaking Through Resistance with Difficult Conversations with Becca Silver, ep. 227, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran 00:01
Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked now, I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode. Hey coach and welcome to episode 227, of instructional coaching with Miss B. We are talking about breaking through resistance with difficult conversations with my fantastic guest, Becca silver. Becca has been a guest on this podcast before, and you loved her, so she’s back to share more of her expertise about resistance and coaching with you and with me. You. This is a part of my series on better coaching conversations. We had a great episode about this last week about how to record your coaching conversations and keep track of the kinds of conversations you’re having. And then today, we’re digging into this topic of resistance and how sometimes we need to have these conversations, even when we feel very reluctant to have them. If you are struggling with a resistant teacher, a teacher who is unaccepting of your charms, maybe unresponsive to your charms, you can get my coaching resistant teachers free mini course, if you just head to buzzing with Miss b.com/resistance that’s resistance with a CE at the end, and that will give you the mini course and some five days, plus one of steps that you can take to actually change that coaching relationship. So let’s go ahead and welcome Becca to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Becca, and thanks for being here.

Becca Silver 01:43
Thank you for having me. I always love talking to you, and I’m so excited to

Chrissy Beltran 01:48
be here. Thanks. Okay, so I know you’ve been on the podcast before, but as a quick way to introduce yourself, we would love to hear about a few things. Who do you help and how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Becca Silver 01:58
I help instructional coaches and school leaders and district leaders and even Statewide Leaders these days. So it’s been, like, really exciting to work with all those folks.

Chrissy Beltran 02:10
Nice. Okay, and how do you spend your time and energy? I

Becca Silver 02:14
spend my time and energy within schools. I go in, I gosh, I do a bunch of stuff. I do professional development. I have my academy. So I love, like, doing these, like PD modules and coaching in between, and giving that, like kind of infused support. And I,

Chrissy Beltran 02:37
I go into classrooms, and I observe teachers, and I, I love. One of my favorite things to do is modeling for coaches how to coach when I am coaching teachers. Awesome. Okay, and then my second step, well, my second part of this is, what is a hobby you love? And that is because I am on a mission to share hobbies with coaches, because we often don’t make enough time for ourselves. So what is the hobby you love to do? And

Becca Silver 02:58
it’s, I want to say this. You know, when I first read this, and I was, I was talking with you, I said, Oh, isn’t it great? I have a hobby because I, too, struggled with finding a hobby. So this is a recent hobby. I’m learning to play guitar, and I have discussed so I have a goal. So one of my I’m very goal oriented, and I’m sure folks listening are also very goal oriented. So I’m like, not only am I going to learn guitar, I’m going to learn guitar well enough to perform at a an open mic night. Yeah? No, that’s my, that’s my goal. So there’s like, a, you know, it’s like training for a marathon. That’s, that’s, I have a future, yeah? So, so I’m practicing guitar, and I downloaded this app called Guitar tuna, T u n, a, and it teaches me guitar, and it plays the song along with me, and it sings along with me too. So I feel like I sound much better than I probably do

Chrissy Beltran 03:52
to the radio. And then you turn down the radio and you’re like, wow,

03:56
oh no, I sound terrible. Well,

Chrissy Beltran 03:59
that’s so cool. I love that hobby. That’s great. Good for you. Okay, so today we’re talking about resistance, and we are talking about how we need to have, like, maybe challenging conversations to help coaches actually break through some of the resistance that they are seeing from teachers. So I want to get started with just like, a basic understanding of why do coaches experience why do coaches experience resistance

Becca Silver 04:24
from teachers? My answer is, because teachers are human. Resistance is a human experience. We all experience resistance, and it’s, you know, if we think about the context of school, right? We hire critical thinkers. We want our teachers coming into our schools critically thinking about how to differentiate for their students, what to do when a pivot needs to happen, when Joe is acting out again, how do I get him from throwing the chair right? So we want our folks critically thinking. Thinking, and the context of it’s a default compliance culture. Essentially how change typically happens in schools is someone makes a decision and then tells everyone else, hey, you have to make this change. And so when our beautiful critical thinkers are engaging with the change, right? Some of them are like, Okay, that sounds great. And do it. And some folks are grappling with the change, right? And so one of the things I like to say is, what would we call it if all of our teachers all at once, if we said there’s a change happening, and everyone said, yes, we’ll do it, and they immediately applied it, what would that be called? And it would be compliance, right? And what we don’t want just blind compliance in our schools. We want engagement from our teachers, just like we want engagement in classrooms. And sometimes engagement looks like grappling with a change, and sometimes grappling with a change looks like resistance.

Chrissy Beltran 05:57
Yeah. I mean, I can, I can relate to that I shared before in the podcast that as a teacher, I was not the first one to say, Oh, I love them and drop everything and do this new thing. I absolutely did not, and I wasn’t. My intention was not to be resistant. I don’t think that people most, most of the time, people are not going, I’m going to be resistant about this. I am going to resist what they’re bringing to me. It’s more like I don’t know about that. I don’t know if that’s going to work. Is that really better than what I’m doing now? Is that a good use of my time? Do I think that’s actually going to meet my kids needs? And so we see all these, you know, it can feel like, whenever you’re the coach, oh, they’re just fighting everything. And, you know, in reality, they are. I like what you say, they’re thinking critically about, you know, what it is that they’re being asked to do? Because they have to consider a lot of factors whenever they’re going to implement something and though the ones I gave were just like the, you know, tip of the iceberg, yeah, things that teachers think whenever they see something new, yeah?

Becca Silver 06:50
And if we’re going to boil down resistance to two words, it would be unmet needs. And everyone experiences resistance. We resist people. We resist your mother in law, we resist going to the gym. We’re like, Yeah, I know I’m supposed to go to the gym, but I’m not going to the gym, right? We resist also eating healthy. So we resist all sorts of people and things in our lives. And it’s not, it’s, you know, we don’t want to ask ourselves, do I am I resistant? Do I experience resistance? No, it’s when do I experience resistance? We all experience it.

Chrissy Beltran 07:24
So can you share a little bit about the change adoption curve to help us have sort of that, that visual in our mind as we have the conversation?

Becca Silver 07:33
Yeah, so I want, I want to kind of envision a bell curve, right? So we are we’re starting. We have a tiny, you know, piece at the beginning, and it goes up and it goes down, right? And so this change adoption curve describes how many people will adopt a change at one time. And so at the beginning of that curve, you see a small amount of people. When a change comes down the pipeline, everyone says, Okay, we gotta adopt this change. There’s a tiny portion of people that will jump on board immediately and excitedly, and they’re called the innovators, and typically like and sometimes and change initiatives, you’ll see a pilot group that’s the pilot group, or it’s just the excited people. They’re like, I’m gonna do it first. And they’re eager and like, go for it, guys, right? And they do it. And then after they do it, you’ll see a larger group afterwards be like, Oh, that happened in MS Smith’s classroom. It seemed to work for her. She seems to be excited, now, I’ll adopt it. And so you see a larger group after that adopt it, and they’re called early adopters. And then we go to early majority, and we see a lot more, we start to see a lot more momentum of change, all right? And we have a late majority, and the change adoption curve people named the last piece of people, laggards. I do not like that term. I don’t like calling people laggards, because I feel like it implies somehow, like they were whatever, you know, like, yeah, yeah. So I call them the latest adopters. Yeah, you’re just the latest. And that’s who we often call resistant, is our latest adopters, and they’re hesitating for really a wide, variety of reasons, right? We don’t know. We can’t say, oh, it’s always this, this thing. We don’t know. But what I can say, it’s some unmet need. Often it’s fear that is, is, you know, they’re grappling with in their mind, so they’re waiting to see, how does it go with this other person? How’d it go with these other people?

Chrissy Beltran 09:38
Yeah, that I that old Simon Sinek video. That was my favorite part of that. That video that he did think it was the same one as the why, right? Isn’t that the same one? Yeah. Well, my the part I really liked about that video was the change adoption curve. And I loved it because the example he gave about the only people these the only reason these people don’t have rotary phones at. Still is because they can’t get them, like, the only reason they just can’t buy them anymore. And so that’s that was kind of like, as far as technology goes, I will use technology. I have no problem with it, but I don’t feel the need to update it all the time. And I was mentioning before, my husband is a is a video, photo, you know, audio guy, which means that we always have stuff everywhere. And the only reason I got a smartphone is because, whenever we were dating, he bought me one. And I was like, I don’t want this. Then I’m reachable. Like, oh no, a cell phone. It was a cell phone. I was like, I don’t want I’ll be I’ll be reachable all the time. I will be like, I don’t want people to i Why can’t I just come home and check my answering machine and see what happened when I was gone? I don’t understand that. I didn’t need it. And now I’m kind of like, I feel like I was right. Like, I feel like I wish I didn’t have this thing a little bit. But I can relate to those people in that way. And I feel like in our lives, many of us have an element in our lives where we are the latest adopters, for sure. You know, I didn’t get cable. I didn’t I had a TV with rabbit ears until he moved in. I was like, great, I guess not to have a nice TV. I don’t want I have my console TV from when I was, like, seven years old. And I was fine with that. So we can all relate to that in some element of our life. I think, yeah, oh yeah. We see that’s working against us. Is whenever it’s teachers who are the latest adopters at our school, right? That’s how we are frustrated by that, which is not unreasonable to be frustrated, but somebody else is frustrated with us. My husband was so frustrated with me, with my TV.

Becca Silver 11:36
I love it, and that’s yeah, I was a teacher that experienced resistance many times in my career, and was brought into the principal’s office like I was in trouble. I was like, I’m not doing it. And I think that really that helps me have so much compassion for those experiencing resistance. And I want to say one thing about my language around resistance, I’m very specific that I say teachers experiencing resistance and not resistant teachers, because the moment that we label someone something, it keeps them stuck in that way, and the very thing we don’t want them to be, which is resistant. So I say many, many extra syllables, you know, to just really be crystal clear about what resistance is, which is an experience we move through and not a thing that I am yeah

Chrissy Beltran 12:23
all the time, because these people may not be resistant about all things, right? It’s just no

Becca Silver 12:28
no one is Yeah. No one is Yeah. So okay, what I remember as a teacher,

Chrissy Beltran 12:35
my school was having some issues with, like, accountability and our and it was mostly because our principal didn’t hold anybody accountable. That was my principal, yes, yeah. And so the I remember him coming in at the beginning of the school year during in service, saying, you know, we’re going to have those difficult conversations. We’re going to start having difficult conversations. That’s what he kept saying. I never actually heard of any difficult I heard one difficult conversation because somebody rolled her eyes during a staff meeting, and that was but other than that, I heard no difficult conversations coming out from the people that you might have heard them coming from, like, like, talk to me about this. He didn’t do it. So those conversations, we tend to avoid these conversations, right? They make us uncomfortable. But what are some of the kinds of difficult conversations we avoid that if we would just have them, they could have real impact on the way our schools work. And it’s interesting.

Becca Silver 13:29
We call them difficult conversations because I, I’ve actually, I’ve led many workshops on these, and I’ve called them different things, like Courageous Conversations. I’m kind of in the courageous conversations camp right now, but like, just all, you know, there’s all the, all the, what’s the other c1 something? Conversations, Crucial Conversations, right? So that, you know, and difficult, hard and tough conversations, right? My assertion, this is Becca assertion, and not the truth. My assertion is actually, they don’t have to be tough, they don’t have to be hard. We’re saying they’re going to be hard. And so those conversation, oh, wait, I might have lost your question, but I think my point, I think, is that, like, they’re really about connection, like my point of when I start those kinds of conversation where a big change needs to happen, or a change that hasn’t been happening, we really need to be happening, right? I My goal is to create connection first in that conversation. What was the question? I feel like I’m like, kind of answering it, but I really

Chrissy Beltran 14:34
want to answer the whole question. Okay, now the stage has meant that. So yes, what are some of those conversations, like the conversations that if we would just have them, we could see real change, but we avoid them because we’re afraid of them being uncomfortable.

Becca Silver 14:46
Yes, yes, yes. Okay, great. So here’s the great thing, if you shift from it being like, I’m going to make you do I need you to teach science of reading, and you’re still. Lucy Calkins, is it right? I, you know, and it’s like, I need to make you do it. Yes, it’s going to feel awkward and hard and uncomfortable, right? The way I start those conversations is I actually look for mutual purpose, so I do the work beforehand to talk with them. I want to hear their complaints, so there’s pre work before these conversations, and I do my very best not to have tension be in our relationship before this conversation. So I’m checking in. Hey, how’s it going? I’m reflectively listening. Oh my gosh, wow. It sounds like you know you’re having a hard time with behavior. Yeah, right. So I’m I’m checking in, and I’m listening to their complaints, because in their complaints is gold. Within their complaints is what’s important to them. And that helps me have this kind of conversation, because when I go into it, I can say, hey, what I’m committed to in this conversation is XYZ, and I know what’s important to you is XYZ, right? And so I can language it in the in a way that both shares and does not dilute what’s actually important here. And and they so that they can hear it.

Chrissy Beltran 16:19
Yeah, that’s right. I think that one of the things that we do is we have all this anxiety or tension about talking to somebody about a certain thing or a certain person that we’ve, you know, maybe had some friction with, and we bring it with us, and we assume they also bring it with us, with them, yeah, you know, so with them, yeah, exactly. We kind of make assumptions about how everybody’s feeling and about what everybody’s intentions are, and I think that that’s, it’s a mistake. I mean, we do it in all relationships humans. This is something humans often do, like we think, we think, Oh, well, if I’m feeling this way, they’re probably feeling this way, but it just makes everything so much harder, because you, you are, you’re coming into it with so much emotion, and you’re assuming they have the same but you’re kind of, like, in a defensive pose, and then every now and then you might, like, attack with a jab, you know, like you need to do that, yeah? And that shouldn’t be the nature of those conversations, but that’s kind of how we approach them when we’re bringing all of these feelings,

Becca Silver 17:17
yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah. And, you know, I think one of the things that I mean I still catch myself kind of becoming kind of contentious, is the right word. But I’ll get into like this mode. And the thing that get the one of my biggest barriers to creating connection and mutual purpose with another teacher is my shoulds when I think they should do or be a certain way, or shouldn’t do or be a certain way. And I do, and I mean, I catch myself with my coaches that I work with, and I’m like, who you know I was. I was making up. The story I was telling myself was that he was being difficult when, in fact, it felt vulnerable for him to ask open ended questions instead of giving advice.

Chrissy Beltran 18:04
Uh huh, yeah, you know, yeah. And so I’m sure about what that’s going to be like, so they’re kind of afraid of it, yeah, yeah,

Becca Silver 18:10
yeah. So it really goes into so then I can start going into diagnosing what’s actually happening here, right? What I’m always asking because I love, I love when I’m in schools. I’m like, give me your teachers experiencing resistance. Like, resistance is my jam. Let me model with the with the coaches, like, who is resisting? Bring them to me. I love those, right? I don’t, I don’t shy away at all, because I know all I need to do is figure out what their unmet needs are, and I do that by asking questions and listening and making sure that they’re heard and I’m listening for what’s important to them. What are they afraid of, what’s frustrating for them.

Chrissy Beltran 18:55
So can you talk a little bit more about those unmet needs and what that looks like? Yeah, for sure.

Becca Silver 18:59
So something that I have, I’ve diagnosed, not diagnosed, sorry, that I’ve discovered is these five mindsets that we can listen for to see what needs support, and then underneath those are kind of unmet needs, right? But there’s only five, right? So for folks to make progress, to get unstuck from making progress, and to, like, feel empowered around it. And I’m just like making I’m not strong arming you, and to do it is these five mindsets. One of them is a growth mindset. So it’s a belief that I can improve. Then there’s a success mindset. I believe I can succeed. There’s belonging mindset. I believe I belong here. Value mindset. I believe this has value for me. This is one of the biggest missing ones and Ownership mindset, I believe that by taking responsibility, I can change things

Chrissy Beltran 19:56
interesting. So then you’re identifying any. Each person, like, is there like, a scale on the mindset, like, a spectrum, kind of, or like, what is, oh, yeah, there’s,

Becca Silver 20:04
yeah, there’s, there’s kind of, like, like, they have opposite mindsets. So there’s a called a catalyst mindsets. And so there’s, you know, growth mindset has fixed. Mindset is the kind of, I call it the opposite mindset. And they it is a continuum. All these aren’t continuums, by the way. And it’s, and it’s so funny, like, you know, in growth mindset, we’re like, you either have a growth or a fixed,

Chrissy Beltran 20:22
which is a fixed

Becca Silver 20:26
mindset inherently Exactly. It’s all on wild continuums, and most people really live somewhere in a mixed mindset of of all of these, right? And so, yeah, there’s, they’re all like, belonging mindset and disconnected mindset. There’s Ownership mindset and victim mindset, so that, yeah, they all kind of have these, these, these opposite mindsets. And there’s elements to each one of them. And, I mean, I could go very deep, because this is what I’m writing, my my book about. But you know, one of my favorite kind of elements of, you know, kind of when you look at like, oh man, they’re missing or they need support in an Ownership mindset, like, maybe they feel like a victim about what’s going on here, right? Like taking responsibility to really support them. There are three elements to Ownership mindset. There’s agency. I can take the reins. I believe I can take action here. There’s optimism. I believe it’s possible, and there’s accountability. I can own the outcome like I can own the outcome

Chrissy Beltran 21:27
interesting. So the one you mentioned that is like lacking the most is the value mindset. Is that, right? That’s something

Becca Silver 21:34
that’s, that’s my opinion, not like a, like a boom, the research says, but yeah, in my experience, maybe I should say that. And I’m actually curious, you know, from you, you know, when you listen to these mindsets, in my experience, the most prominent unsupported mindset, I’m trying very hard not to say missing mindset. It’s easy, but I’m like, we’re not missing a mindset. It’s just unsupported. But the the most prominent unsupported mindset is, is value mindset, because often this is, like, just one of those missed opportunities when change happens. I do think you know, leaders and coaches try to take the time to be like, hey, this change is happening, and this is why. But the missed opportunity is to make sure that those external goals and reasons align with the teacher’s internal goals and priorities, right, right? And and allowing that teacher to make that connection, we don’t take the time to do that.

Chrissy Beltran 22:38
Yeah, that’s very interesting, and it makes sense. And I think what’s challenging is that whenever you’re presenting something to a whole school, that’s going to be a lot of different internal values, that you are going, you know, that you’re not going to get to everybody in that whole group. PD, during in service, you know, like, everybody, yeah, the value at that time. But

Becca Silver 22:57
I also wonder, like, but could it be, or, and could it? Could it be a reflection question we have teachers answer privately, jotting notes, turn and talk, reflect with your neighbor. What about this change? Could help you in your classroom? Yeah, absolutely. How do you see this helping? Blah, blah, blah, right? So like, could we whole group cut tier one support? Right with our teachers? How do we tier one support? How do we have them all reflect and then, how do we tier three, one on one support, teachers? But what? Because some of them are going to adopt the change, and we’ll be like, off you go. On my levels of willingness. I call this the eager and the willing. Our willing teachers are like, we follow directions. We just want to know the expectations. Just tell us what to do. Yeah? And the eager teachers are like,

Chrissy Beltran 23:50
wow, we just did it. We’re not sure, but

Becca Silver 23:52
it’s gonna be great. Yeah, right. And then, and then there’s the hesitant and the stop teachers that are like, Oh, we don’t know. And that’s where the coach comes in and asks again, one on one, hey, how like, you know what in you know what? What do you value? Could you value about this change? What is important to you? How could this change help that? Yeah, yeah. I like

Chrissy Beltran 24:16
that. I love that. I remember I started, there was a grade level in our school that I feel like were the willing grade level. They were very much. And I just remember as a teacher, oh my gosh, yes. And didn’t necessarily understand why they were doing what they were doing, but they did it. We got a teacher from that grade level one year into our grade level, and we were like, We were hesitant, we would embrace things, but we were like, I don’t know. We have to think about, like, why this is, you know, yeah, work. And I remember this teacher was like, Well, what we do is, whenever we plan together, is we all take out our notebooks and somebody says, Okay, on Monday, this is what we’re all going to do in reading. And we all write down Monday reading, and then they write down everything they’re going to do on Monday reading, and then they go, Okay, on Tuesday, this is what you’re going to do on reading. And then everybody understand what they did on News. On in reading. And we were like, Okay, we don’t do that. So sorry, you’re gonna have to, I don’t know that’s not gonna fly around. It was really strange, but that was that grade level was very compliant, or very willing and very compliant, yeah, so that’s so interesting, yeah,

Becca Silver 25:15
yeah, yeah. It’s different levels of willingness. And anyway, there’s research around, like, different stages of concern when change happens. People actually go through these different stages of what they’re concerned about and, and it kind of, that’s where my levels of willingness came from. But it’s, it’s yeah, like, you know, and even thinking about Stages of Concern, like, people are concerned about different things, and when the change happens, right? You know, even, even if that helps shift a mindset like, oh, what? What are they concerned about, listen for that even, right? So listening, you know, oh gosh, I can, ooh, I’m gonna take us down a scenic route just for a second, if that’s okay. Okay, listening is, and I know I’ve said this a bunch, but like, listening can be so powerful in terms of is, actually, this is my assertion. Listening is the most powerful thing you can do to start breaking through resistance, because you are information gathering. And the only way you can information gather is not only to listen, but listen well. And when you listen well, you’re intentionally listening for something. So you’re like, Okay, well, I’m listening for what’s important to them. I’m listening for what they’re concerned about, right? I’m listening people generally say to understand, right? And I’m like, we can have more distinction around that. But you know, like, what are you listening for that you that would help you address your unmet needs?

Chrissy Beltran 26:36
I like that. Thank you. Okay, so I would love to hear some example of of conversations that people may view as challenging, but that have resulted in change. So can you share a little bit about that with us? Like, some of your experiences?

Becca Silver 26:49
Oh, for sure, for sure. So, like, yes. Okay, so a situation, there’s a teacher that, do you want me to be generic? Or do you want me to, like, give me a very specific example of something that specific as an example. Yeah, good, good, good. I had a teacher that was struggling with behavior management. Shocker, yeah, and this was at a high school, and he was having a hard time. I was I was modeling. I was working with a coach. And so me coaching him was really me modeling for her. And so, um, she was doing her very she was, like, a super talented coach. Is a super talented coach. And so she was doing her very best to impact this guy, and he would explode on her sometimes, like, there was some yelling, there was he, he would be defensive. Sometimes he would, like, Be okay with implementing something, but wouldn’t implement it well. And I my first meeting with him. The interesting thing about being a consultant, when I come in, I’m like, Hey, nice to meet you. I’m going to coach you, right, yeah? Versus the benefit of being Yeah, like, I gotta build trust in five minutes, yes, right? Versus all the months. And so don’t

Chrissy Beltran 28:08
have the same baggage. That’s true, right? They they know you’re there from the outside. So it’s like a different kind of relationship, you know, like they’re the teachers I’ve worked with, generally, are a little more responsive, just because they kind of feel like they have to be because they know you’re

Becca Silver 28:23
being paid to be there. But yes, yeah, exactly, yeah, for sure. Actually, once in a while I have a teacher that it’ll, it’ll, it’ll be opposite. They’ll be like,

Chrissy Beltran 28:31
you’re not even here. You don’t even have a classroom, like you’re not even Yeah, yeah. What do you know exactly, like, I like my Yeah, yes.

Becca Silver 28:39
So true. It’s so true. So I sit down with this guy, and I’m like, I mean, I kind of heard about all the things. I’m like, what is happening, you know? And so I I’m asking him questions. What Is he frustrated? He’s frustrated with the behavior. Okay, great, at least you’re, you’re seeing the same things I am. Great. Okay, why do you think that’s happening? And so I give him coaching. We, we did. We ask them questions. Oh, what, you know, what? I’m wondering, what could happen here? And he, like, comes up with some solutions. We go into his classroom the next week, and it was the same. He was like, trying, and he tried to, he was trying to implement. He wasn’t just not implementing, but it was not going well. Yeah, and I had a I had a moment where I was like, This guy does not really know me, and I am not sure how this is going to go, but I thought to myself, he has been what’s been happening is he’s been observed and then gotten feedback, and then, you know, coaching on what to do next. And then he goes and tries to do and then gets, you know, it’s the typical, like, observation, feedback, and I’m like, that has not been working. And so I’ve got to do something different. I’ve got to interrupt this. And so Bill, you know, standing on whatever meager trust I had with him, I actually he had a moment where he was. In the back where I was, and I said, Hey, can I give you a suggestion? And I gave him that in the moment coaching. And that was, that was a risk for me, but I it was one of those so and he, he did it. I gave him a suggestion. He went and did it. He saw results. He he was like, Oh, this is great. He emailed me and his coach the next day and said, like, I kept doing the thing, and this is the best day I’ve had at this school this year. And so, you know, one of the things to think about, so, one of the mindsets that he would he needed support him, was success, mindset, self efficacy. And so knowing that one of the things I was able to do with him was given, there’s key sources to building efficacy. Our friend Albert, Albert Bandura, who I’ve come to know very well from his research. He you know, he says, Look, there’s actual, intentional ways we could build efficacy, right? And one of them is having success experiences, yeah. And so I, you know, I we can, we can have people have success experiences by talking it out and having them do it. And this guy, I was like, Look, just do it now, right? Yeah, and then reflecting afterwards, and that totally changed his perspective on, like, his classroom and teaching in what was possible. So I supported, I mean, just to wrap this around with with resistance, right? He got, we got to break through his resistance by supporting what he needed. I didn’t need to have a difficult conversation. I needed to figure out what he needed. Support him.

Chrissy Beltran 31:35
Yeah, I think that’s, it’s a good point that that I, I’ve seen happen so many times too, is we can give feedback and maybe provide some direction and support, but if it’s not embedded in the moment, sometimes teachers do not make the connection, and they can’t picture it. They just can’t see it, and they they don’t know, well, when am I supposed to even do that? Or how do I how do I make it effective? Because maybe we’ll say, Okay, make sure everybody hears the directions before you, you know, move on to the next step. And they’re like, but what does that even look okay, did everybody hear it? Yeah, okay, good. They don’t know. They cannot picture it. They do not know. So being really specific in that moment and saying, okay, so what if you did this? You know, can you try this? And then he saw immediate, a quick win in that moment. He was like, oh, things can work. Things do work. But it’s not just the kids. I could change something that could make an impact here.

Becca Silver 32:24
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, one of the things as us coaches, we really, you know, we talk about building trust, and the the trust definition and kind of thought process around trust that I use is from the Speed of Trust and and Stephen Mr. COVID from that book, he says trust is the confidence we have in someone’s character and competence. And when I talk with coaches, and I run workshops on trust, you know, we talk about characters, integrity and intent. Do they know you have good intentions? Do they know you walk your talk? And then there’s, there’s competence, right? And that is made up of capabilities and results, and the results that people trust you, people to know you can produce results. But what coaches don’t this is a big mistake coaches make. They think the results teachers want to know is how good of a teacher they were in their classrooms. I often hear coaches go when I was in the classroom, I did, and you see the teachers check out. They’re like, and I’m done with this conversation, like, Thanks for tooting your horn, right? It just doesn’t it doesn’t build trust. What does build trust is when coaches can prove to teachers that they can help them produce results in the classroom. That’s the results I can help you produce results, not the results I produced in the classroom. And so what happened in that moment with this, this teacher and me, is I built trust. So I was standing on whatever meager trust I had with him, like, Hey, do you trust me? We tried this thing, and then when he had, when we produced results, our trust skyrocketed. So we were, we were partners in this. And just like trust is in all of this, like resist in all the mindsets trust is, I’ve been calling it a reciprocal relationship. I’m not entirely sure if that’s the right word, but it’s like I he needed to trust me to have a success experience, right? Build his his success mindset, and when that happened, he trusted me more,

Chrissy Beltran 34:26
yeah, yeah, yeah. It like builds itself, yeah. It builds itself, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. That’s something I’ve talked about as well. Donald Miller talks about how trust is empathy and credibility. Like people need to know that you believe that, that you can, like you actually care about them, and like you can actually you want them to be successful, and that you can help them be successful. That you know that, oh, some people have lots of empathy, but they don’t have a skill set. And then some people have a great skill set, but they don’t. People don’t feel really believe that. That they care about them so they’re not interested. Yes, you know, yes. And the credibility, one of the things I tell people to do is quick wins, give them something that shows that, that shows that you are credible, that because it affects them positively, they have a positive outcome, and that they will come back to you and say, Oh, that actually works. That thing actually helped. Because now I know you, you know something that’s exactly

Becca Silver 35:22
it, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so one of the things i i say is without trust, coaching is just noise,

Chrissy Beltran 35:29
yeah, yeah. It’s just more stuff that people are going to ignore. Yeah, a lot of input they’re ignoring, and that’s just one more thing, yeah. You want to share one more example before we go, of of some kind of interaction that has created change.

Becca Silver 35:43
Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay, um, oh, let’s see. Okay, hold on. I’ve, I’ve like five of them that just flooded my brain, yeah, um, I was coaching a coach a while ago. So this is a coach experiencing resistance. So this is, oh, this is great. Okay, okay, this is the thing I want to say. Want to say. This is actually, I’m so glad I chose this example, because what we don’t realize is our we have a little mirror neurons in our brains, right? And the same thing that I makes me yawn when you yawn makes me resist when you resist. It’s the same thing, and our human brains do that, okay? So often when resistance is experienced on the other end, our brains do the thing where we start to resist too, and we put up our barriers and our guards. Yeah, okay. So often when coaches are experiencing resistance, first thing I actually do is help them work on their own resistance first, because our resistance triggers their resistance. It’s again, it’s this resistance cycle that we get

Chrissy Beltran 36:44
into, like we talked about earlier, bringing those feelings to the meeting, bringing all that with you, then you’re more likely to get that in response. Yeah,

Becca Silver 36:51
yeah, exactly. So I was working with a coach, and she was telling she she was running weekly, weekly PLC meetings, and teachers weren’t showing up okay, and they were like, some sometimes, and sometimes they didn’t. And and she was so frustrated. She’s like, these teachers don’t care. And so I actually did some work with her around it and and we, we because her behaviors where she was like, sending emails and calendar invites and being very like, electronically insistent, okay, yeah, and, and, I think, and her other behaviors were like she was checking in with the teachers that actually responded to her. And she had the mindset that is inaccurate, but she had the mindset that we can only coach the people that want coaching. Yeah, well,

Chrissy Beltran 37:45
then what’s up? A lot of times, those people are going to be pretty independent learners anyway, like you are not exactly breaking their career, but you might. You’re going to make or break somebody

Becca Silver 37:54
else you know exactly. And all teachers can be coached. All teachers. It’s not a growth issue. All teachers want to grow. It’s a discomfort issue. Yeah? They just don’t want to be uncomfortable. Yeah? So, right. So there she is, and she’s going around interacting with some teachers and emailing everyone, and she was mad, and so I was coaching, I was like, Okay, I got it. And so we actually had to do some work for her herself to understand, like, what? What’s the story I’m telling myself here, right? And so what she realized is she had made up in her head. Her interpretation was her teachers were lazy, uh huh. And this is a pretty common interpretation people have when we get down to it, and everyone listening. I want to say this to you if you don’t think you that we all have ugly interpretations that we have about other people. We just have to be willing to get over that it’s ugly to be like, Ooh, I actually feel that way. Yeah. And so, right? So she was like, I, you know, it’s like, I have this interpretation that they’re lazy. And so once she realized that she saw her resistance to them was keeping them, keeping her from listening to them and figuring out what they needed. And so she actually became like this master in like listening. So she started, she stopped talking to the select few that wanted coaching, and started talking to everyone. Because she was like, I gotta figure out what’s going on here. And she, like, had compassion. She’s like, Oh, they’re not lazy. She’s like, they just had big concerns that it wasn’t being met. And I started meeting them. She now, like, trains other people. She’s like, listen the new coaches. She’s like, you have to listen. So that’s so, that’s, you know, that’s my other story about resistance, like in the coach realm, right? Like we have a responsibility too, not to bring our own resistance to the conversations. Yeah, I love that. Thank

Chrissy Beltran 39:49
you for sharing about that. So thank you so much for everything you shared today about resistance and conversations and how we can make change happen. How can people keep learning from you if they want to follow up? Oh,

Becca Silver 40:00
there’s a few ways. One is, I have my own podcast that I am excited to have you on sooner than later. So my podcast is called coaching the whole educator. I have my website, the whole educator.com that’s my company, the whole educator. You can follow. You can find me on LinkedIn, at Becca silver. You can find me on Instagram at the whole educator, and you know, from there, feel free to reach out if you would like any kind of support. One of the the big things you’ll find on my website is a lot of information and free downloads around the catalyst mindsets, including a new interactive quiz. So, um, yeah, like which mindset does your team need? Most important? So, so, yeah, yeah, feel free to reach out or check out the stuff. Awesome. Thanks so much.

Chrissy Beltran 40:51
Becca is always so full of such great information about resistance and working with teachers who are experiencing resistance, and, you know, making change happen. I love the research based approach that she had, so definitely check her out if you’re interested. And remember, you can get my free mini course coaching resistant teachers at buzzing with Miss b.com/resistance next week, we are continuing our coaching conversations, better coaching conversations mini series with Dr Joe lane. We’re talking about how to talk so teachers hear you, we’re looking at providing better feedback, because sometimes our feedback is kind of missing the mark, and that’s why we’re having so much trouble getting teachers to actually respond to it, because we’re kind of not telling them what they need to hear. So definitely join me for that episode. Until then, happy coaching. Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with Miss b.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIBee and check out the podcast show notes. Happy coaching!

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