Originally published in SmartBrief, September 26, 2024
The Solution Circle offers school leadership a new approach for collaborative problem-solving in both in-person and virtual meetings, writes Jeff Rose.
Most leadership development still consists of people passively listening to lectures. But as educators, we know that real growth occurs when learners are engaged and active. It’s ironic that vital professional learning uses a method that results in only a tiny fraction of knowledge being retained.
After stepping down as a school superintendent in 2018/19, I began developing professional learning community, or PLC, protocols that engage school system leaders in active learning – collaboration, problem solving, and reflection – in the limited time they have. Since joining Cognia, a nonprofit organization that supports continuous improvement in schools around the globe, I’ve been honored to conduct those protocols with even more education leaders across the United States.
One popular protocol, the Solution Circle, can be put into practice easily and be modified as needed.
How the Solution Circle works
The Solution Circle is a modification of the School Reform Initiative’s consultancy model. Suitable for both video conferences and in-person meetings, the protocol helps leaders quickly gather solutions, strategies and support from peers. The rules need to be tight, and confidentiality should be discussed beforehand.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the protocol:
- A group member summarizes their problem and poses their question in three minutes or less. That person should be the only one speaking at this point.
- The other group members spend 11 minutes asking for details. No input or advice is given during this step, and the other members must be careful not to make passive-aggressive statements in the form of questions.
- The individual who presented the problem visually withdraws from the group but listens and takes notes. If it’s an in-person meeting, that person will move their chair a few feet away and turn their back to the group. If it’s a video meeting, they’ll turn off their camera.
- The rest of the group spends nine minutes discussing various ideas, recommendations, and considerations.
- The participant with the problem re-joins the group and shares how the feedback has shaped their thinking.
Times and steps can be modified based on factors such as group size, online vs. in-person and the experience of the group. The timing provides guardrails, and ultimately, safety, for participants. When the timer goes off, facilitators stop the speaker, even mid-sentence. This forces participants to share the floor.
Leaders who have made the protocol their own
Superintendent Michael Lopes-Serrao of Parkrose School District in Oregon is a regular PLC participant who now uses the Solution Circle to facilitate leadership PLCs within his own district. Lopes-Serrao first used the protocol with Parkrose’s six elementary principals during the 2020 school closings to resolve issues such as the timing on lifting mask mandates.
The Solution Circle’s original format consists of just one person presenting a problem of practice. However, Parkrose’s version has been adapted so that the protocol is applied repeatedly as the principals go over multiple challenges during dedicated 90-minute meetings.
While Lopes-Serrao asks the principals to submit problems in advance, he keeps the format flexible so that they can also share problems spontaneously. “Since they’re so busy, that happens just as often as something that’s pre-planned,” Lopes-Serrao said.
An unexpected benefit of using the protocol is that the principals now get along much better. In fact, they often hold Solution Circles on their own. “They can naturally draw support from one another,” Lopes-Serrao said. “That’s a great outcome.”
Debra Murdock, chief operations officer of Cherokee County School District in Georgia, has introduced use of the Solution Circle to groups other than education leaders. “We’ve taught teachers and counselors,” Murdock said. “And now we’re exploring using Solution Circles with kids. ”
Murdock introduced the protocol among Cherokee County’s middle and high school students and has experimented with regular-sized circles (six or seven participants) as well as ones that were much larger. In fact, the first student Solution Circle involved 20 students. That event, which took place at Cherokee High School, involved one student sharing a problem: the limited availability of appealing lunch-break activities. The students followed the protocol while school and district administrators listened outside the circle.
As of this writing, Cherokee administrators are researching the possibilities of putting the students’ suggestions into practice. “And the kids are researching an app for signing up for different opportunities within their lunch-hour period. It was so much fun to see them run with it,” Murdock said. “Some of the high school’s student leadership teams have been using the strategy to solve problems with other clubs and organizations.”
Practice makes perfect
The Solution Circle will be a new approach for most leaders, so it will take a few iterations for the protocol to feel like second nature. As Murdock put it, “You have to be a student of the process.” She believes that the reason she’s felt comfortable adjusting the protocol to different situations is because she knows it so well.
But the benefits of gaining perspectives and support from peers will be evident from the start,
“When you’re around colleagues who are listening, supporting, and sometimes even offering differing ideas, that’s where I think leadership can become more powerful,” Lopes-Serrao said. “You learn more as a leader that way.”
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.