Knoster’s Model for Managing Complex Change: Motivation

Welcome back to our blog series on navigating complex change. For this blog, we’re going to dive into one of the most nuanced parts of Knoster’s Model for Managing Complex Change: Motivation. To start, I’d like to invite you to consider a time, personal or professional, when you felt highly motivated. What were the conditions that helped you reach your goals? Take a moment to stop and jot.

When I first started considering motivation, I approached it through the lens of incentives. I was conditioned to believe that motivation might stem from tangible rewards or incentives because that’s how many leaders in past organizations had tried to spark it. I’ve since learned that motivation is so much more than a jeans pass (not that I don’t love them).

Now, let’s see how your experience compares to some of the ideas in this blog.

Creating Shared Beliefs

In our second blog in this series on vision, we discussed the importance of creating shared beliefs, values, and commitments that align with your organization’s vision, mission, and goals. When the vision (goal) and mission (how your organization will attain this goal) are clear and the basis for the work, it is easier for those you support to understand the connection between what they’re being asked to do and how it aligns with broader goals.

“Collective Teacher Efficacy is the collective belief of teachers in their ability to positively affect students. Collective teacher efficacy is strongly correltated with student achievement.”

John Hattie

The concept of collective teacher efficacy goes back to earlier research by Albert Bandura, who defines collective efficacy as “a group’s shared belief in the conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the course of action required to produce given levels of attainment.” In other words, when educators believe that the work they do every day matters, they can positively impact students. Take a moment to reflect on this question: How is your organization’s leadership connecting both broader and narrow goals in a way that all staff members believe that doing x, y, and z will impact students?

In addition to connecting the work to broader goals and shared values, the conditions must be ripe for adult learning. Organizational leaders must cultivate a culture of error and growth so that the educators they support feel they can take risks and even make mistakes as they learn and implement new practices. Amy Edmonson, a lead researcher in Psychological Safety and author of The Fearless Organization, describes three steps that leaders can take to create an environment that leads to greater growth:

• One: Setting the Stage
• Two: Inviting Participation
• Three: Responding Productively

When leaders effectively set the stage, they ground people in the why behind the work, ensuring everyone understands the importance of what they are doing and why it matters. Leaders reframe mistakes and failures as opportunities to learn and refine practices. They also value each team member’s contributions and expertise to improve decision-making and implementation.

Setting the Stage

According to Amy Edmonson, there are a few tips for Setting the Stage:

• Lay out the work in a way that’s easy to understand
• Explain why the work matters, how it makes a difference, and who it impacts
• Share how complex the work can be, how the team will collaborate, and face the unknown together
• Emphasize that the team will dig into lessons learned from mistakes and perceived failures

Inviting Participation

Effective leaders demonstrate situational humility to invite participation. This means they show vulnerability, ask open-ended questions, and share their own mistakes and lessons learned. Research shows that when leaders express humility, other team members are more inclined to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. When a team has a leader who is genuinely interested in the team’s ideas and elicits input, the team is more likely to share valuable insights and perspectives.

Inviting participation may look like:

• Showing vulnerability and expressing that you don’t have all the answers
• Emphasize continuous learning and genuine curiosity
• Asking sincere, open-ended questions
• Openly sharing mistakes and lessons learned
• Creating systems to gather ideas and concerns to cultivate open and honest dialogue

“Don’t obsess about the failures. Instead, investigate and clone the successes.”

Chip Heath, “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard”

Responding Productively

The third concept in cultivating psychological safety is responding productively to situations. One starting point is to express appreciation when team members share their thoughts and perspectives with candor. This shows the team that their views are valued. This also opens the door for others to share mistakes and seek support to mitigate and learn from them, rather than feel ashamed or hide. Strong leaders also address violations of values or norms that negatively impact the group’s work in a way that upholds respect.

When responding productively, you might:

• Listen thoughtfully to convey that what you’re hearing from your team matters
• Encourage others to speak up by expressing gratitude for the thoughts of others
• Offer help and support when teammates come to you with concerns or challenges
• Destigmatize failure and reframe it as an opportunity to learn
• Set clear expectations and boundaries about behavioral expectations that are grounded in the values of the work
• Address when team members do not demonstrate the values of the work and respond in a way that will influence future behavior

“Psychologicial safety is a belief that no one will be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”

Amy Edmonson

Now, compare your earlier stop-and-jot to the ideas in this blog. What similarities or differences do you notice? As you reflect, consider what elements of motivation are your strengths and what are some areas you would like to focus on with intentionality moving forward?

Additional Resources

Follow our blog series, The Constant, where we break down each component of change in Knoster’s Model. Read the first article in the series, Knoster’s Model for Managing Complex Change: An Introduction, on the ESC Region 13 blog. Find additional articles on the topic, too.

For more information about the Texas Instructional Leadership (TIL) program at ESC Region 13, contact Megan Cruz at megan.cruz@esc13.txed.net.