[Tracy Bousselot]

The quote that stood out for me in this chapter is also one of the ones that I see Ted selected: “Specificity in gathering doesn’t have to mean narrowing a group to the point of sameness.” I appreciated the discussion at the beginning of the chapter about both including and excluding well. We tend to think of exclusion usually as a bad thing, but if our purpose is to be intentional about who we bring to the table so that there is a mix of voices and experiences to be shared, this thoughtfulness about grouping is very important. We want our leaders to have something in common usually within our groups, but if they all have too much of a muchness, there can be a stagnation rather than stimulation. Not every group is going to gel; that is just kind of the nature of setting up groups. So besides trying our best to be intentional from the start, what happens AFTER a group is established and they don’t immediately click? I was left still wondering about this a bit after reading the chapter, and it took me back to the importance of relationship building again.

[Tracy Bousselot]

I saw coaches do two powerful things to build relationships this year.

1) They listened empathetically and carefully and tried to respond with either a reiteration or reframing of what they heard and always bringing it back to something they were working on in Portico. They then often asked others in the group to respond or agree/disagree.

2) They brought things they were working on with each school leaders in CoPilot to the Counterpart meetings to let them share and discuss. This use of real time, real world examples seemed very effective.

Even though it was COVID hard times for most of the year, there were also times to just laugh and share personal stories of things they were doing outside of school. This was very important for some people when they were having a particularly rough day. It made some of the immediate school issues fade for a bit as they remembered they had a life and people outside of school, including themselves.