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Get Off the Bandwagon and Remove those Halos

5/2/2021

 

strategies for balancing voices and minimizing cultural-bias

by Third Eye Education, consolidated by Heather M. F. Lyke
I am addicted to podcasts. There is something about cramming learning into my commute, pairing it with laundry, and adding it as a workout buddy that fits my hectic lifestyle. Even when life slows down, I enjoy learning while listening in the bathtub, while swinging in my hammock, or while taking a scenic drive.
 
It is because of my podcast addiction that I recently learned a few new strategies for balancing voices, and in-turn minimizing cultural-biases, when collaborating with colleagues or facilitating student discussions.

Turn and Learn

Catching up on old episodes of Unlocking Us, I listened to Brené Brown’s talk with Dax Sheppard and Tim Ferriss. This is the part of the conversation that perked my ears:
Brené Brown:
When I work with leaders around how to run meetings, I always say like, worry about the bandwagon and the halo influence. So the halo is whoever has the most influence, everyone changes their answers to that person, and then the bandwagon is just human nature to gather around the common mean…
 
Dax Shepard: 
...I’m really interested in what you just said. Those obviously are road blocks to creativity or productivity, so those are to be avoided?
 
Brené Brown:
 Yeah, so let me give you an example. So halo effect is the person with the most influence, if they share first, will, without question, shape and change the answers of the people who share their opinions behind that person. That’s the halo effect. The bandwagon effect is even if people are all lateral in terms of power and influence, there is a tendency to gather around the group mean. So one of the things we do when we talk about time estimation for projects, I’m worse at time estimation than I am at any other thing in my life. I mean, it’s awful…
 
And so what we do is, we’ll say, “Okay, Tim, Dax, we’re going to launch this new project and we need to make sure the website is up and ready, blah, blah, blah. How long does everyone think it’s going to take?” And then we write on a post-it and we flip it, it’s part of Scrum and Agile process to do this, we flip it over at the same time, and that way we avoid any halo or bandwagon, and mine will always say 90 days and the chief operating officer’s will say 1.5 years.
 
Dax Shepard: 
That’s a great hack, because I was thinking, oh gosh, you’re going to have to single out who the halo maker is, which will make that person defensive…What a great easy way to handle that.
 
Brené Brown:
Turn and Learn, that’s what we call it, the Turn and Learn. Yeah, it’s really effective, and it also just surfaces massive problems right off the bat because people’s expectations and understanding of things are so different.​
“People’s expectations and understanding of things are so different:” now, isn’t that pure truth. Yet, in leadership roles and as classroom instructors it’s often easy to inadvertently allow halos to form and for bandwagons to take over. Not only does this enhance only certain voices, but it also can minimize the variety of perspectives that are brought to the table.
 
For instance, sticking with the element of time noted above. My husband has a degree in American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota. He has shared stories about his sophomore year Ojibwe Language class—during which he was often the first student in the room. For my husband, a cis-gendered white male from a middle class family with European heritage who was raised by parents who often noted “if you’re not early, you’re late,” being on time was par for the course. Had you asked the sophomore version of him what was going on, he’d have likely said, “everyone else is late,” “they’re not respecting the professor,” or “I thought that if you’re not early you’re late.” ​

That said, had you asked is fellow classmates—most of whom were idigenous—to write down on a sticky note about the importance of being “on time,” you’d have seen a wide swath of answers:
  •  A disrupter of authentic conversations
  •  A regimentation brought in by European colonization
  •  An approximate time for gathering
  •  A way to show respect to the facilitator (that would've been my husband’s sticky note)
 
Now, if the professor flips his sticky note first, people may wish they’d changed their response (bandwagon). If there is a classmate that many respect who flips first, others may wish they’d shared a similar response (halo). However, by flipping all sticky notes at the same time all voices get put on the table and, as in this instance, different cultural beliefs come to light. 

The thing about listening to podcasts is that it’s passive. I hit play and I take in new learning. Sure, I have autonomy over what podcast I listen to, which episodes I download, and what I may opt to fast-forward past—but it’s still passive. If we’re not careful, meetings and classroom instruction can become passive, too.
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Sharing Circle

Last week, our Third Eye Education collective came together for our April session. During our time together, John Alberts of Austin Public Schools shared a new-to-him strategy that he had learned from the IDEAL Center: we all tried it. Like Brené Brown’s Turn and Learn, this approach balances voices in a way that helps disrupt some dominant cultural norms.
 
Here is the process Alberts took us through:
  1. We each identified a small object that could be held in our hand—this was the virtual world’s version of a talking stick. (Had we been together in the same space, we would have all shared the same item—one talking stick for the full group.)
  2. The facilitator (in this case, Alberts) shared a set of questions to work through on our own: gave us time to jot down our own thoughts.
  3. The facilitator randomized participants names: this became our speaking order.
  4. The first speaker (the first name listed) held up their talking stick and shared one answer from their list of reflections—there was a choice here in what they shared, and had the option to pass if uncomfortable. When done, the talking stick was ‘passed’ to the next speaker (second name listed). This process continued until all had shared.
  5. For the second round—the second topic discussed—the person who started the rotation (noted in #4 above) was not the first randomized name listed, but rather the second. In other words, with each round, who begins the sharing circle shifts to a different group member, a different voice.
 
There is some magic in what may seem like a simple rotation of ideas and share alouds: each woven in intentionally by the IDEAL center in the way it was shared with Alberts and his team:
  • There is an opportunity to think first (jot down ideas) and then speak, which helps offset the verbal process which tends to naturally take over conversations.
  • It disrupts the pivoting back to a lead facilitator—rather, by knowing who speaks when the talking stick is passed from participant to participant, creating an equally distributed level of leadership and inclusion.
  • There is an intentionality with everyone having an opportunity to speak—everyone has a voice. There is an added intentionality with knowing the order of who will speak when while also having it selected randomly—knowing when you will speak reduces anxiety, while the random distribution of who speaks when can disrupt any typical pecking order that otherwise might emerge.
 
Additionally, to assist in the above process and purpose, the IDEAL Center has at its foundation these shared norms (which are always evolving, according to a recent communications with their team):​
The 10 IDEAL Center Norms
Of course, depending on where you are in your journey with racism, cultural understanding, and appropriation, understanding why structures such as the Turn and Learn and Sharing Circles help (especially if the intentionality of these strategies are rooted in awareness) break down the dominant white-culture norms that tend to permeate many organizations across our nation.

​To increase one’s awareness of how white supremacy exists in our communities and organizations, often without individuals even knowing it, is broken down in Tema Okun’s “
White Supremacy Culture” article from Dismantling Racism, which was shared by Shavana Talbert, the Statewide Culturally Responsive Practices Technical Assistance Coordinator for the Wisconsin RtI Center. Understanding the imbalance is one of the first steps to creating balance. How might these characteristics show up within you? Your organization?
When it comes to those norms from the IDEAL Center, my personal favorite is the second half of the last one: “what’s learned here leaves here.” Perhaps that’s why I love podcasts so much: there is power in sharing one’s learning and at its root, that’s what podcasting does. Podcasters share their knowledge, while in turn their listeners can share new learning with others. Unlike podcasting, however, Turn and Learn and Sharing Circles are less passive and less presumptive: they create a place for active engagement that leaves room for authentic individuality. (Maybe this is why we at Third Eye are so anxious to try out Clubhouse some day, as it’s a refined version of podcasting: it removes the passivity and presumptiveness. Anyone want to toss us an invite? Let us learn from you!)

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Third Eye Education is a cohort of midwestern educational leaders seeking and sharing insight from educators, districts, and learner-focused communities. 
​Heather M. F. Lyke is the Teaching & Learning Specialist for Dover-Eyota Schools and author of numerous articles focusing on quality education. ​​


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  • Read
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