Catalytic Thinking

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend an informational seminar presented by the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, with several community members, educators, business leaders, and board members from Desoto, Charlotte, Sarasota, and Lee counties.  The theme was An Exploration of Catalytic Thinking.  Hildy Gottlieb was our presenter for the morning.  She spoke to us about how just by changing the questions we ask when tackling issues, it can change the way we approach and see the world. 

I quickly realized that there are so many amazing groups of individuals who all share the same goal, improving the academic success of our children, our futures!  Hildy's main suggestion was to have us change the questions we are asking in order to change the world.  It is not enough to just ask what the problem is or what we should do about the problem or how should we solve the problem.  We spend too much time living in negative situations.  We are in a reactive state when we only look at what we can do to solve a problem.  Think of a number line with -1…0…1.  -1 is the issue or problem.  When we solve the problem or partially solve the problem, it only brings us to zero.  If we have 47% of our 4^th and 5^th grade students who are below proficiency and our goal is to increase that number to 67%, we still have 33% of our students below proficiency.  That keeps us in the negative.  Eliminating a negative situation is only going to get us to zero and not get us ahead.  We end up striving for less than zero.  The goal is to aim higher.  We must stop living in negative space.

We usually react to what we don’t like or what we do not want and our questions are related to what we do not want.  We need to turn our questions into those that create the future we DO want.  For example:  Instead of asking what we should do?  We can ask, what do we want to accomplish?  Instead of asking, What is the problem and what will we do to fix or solve it/  We can ask, What would success look like?  Success for whom? What results do we want to see and what will it take to create that?  Instead of asking How can we solve our problems?  We can ask, How will we create the future we want? 

Sometimes the questions we ask may reinforce the worst in each other.  We should be looking and asking questions that bring out the best in each other.  For example, instead of us asking, Have you tried _________? (This makes people feel like I know better than you).  We should ask, could you tell me what you’re thinking about? What have you tried?  Instead of asking, What are our weaknesses?  What are our threats/obstacles/challenges? What might stop us?  We can ask, What excites us about this? What is working well? What is important to us? What do we value most? What will it take for this effort to succeed? 

We can reach our potential when we feel safe and secure.  Our students are the same way.  If we know what to expect and how our systems work, we can create an environment that is optimal for learning and growing to take place with our students and our staff.  Our goal is to create systems that bring out the best in each other.  We need to encourage ourselves to bring out the best in all of us.  Some questions we can ask that bring out the best in people include the following:

Who else cares about what we care about?

What could we accomplish when we work together?

What will bring out the best in all those people who care about the same things?

There is no such thing as going it alone.  Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.  We share a thing called “Collective Enoughness”.  That means together we have everything we need; it is only on our own that we experience scarcity.  We are in this together and should not expect to do any of this alone.  Some questions that we can ask that will generate collective enoughness include:

What do we have together?

What would it take to share all that good stuff?

Who else cares?

This catalytic thinking will help our students and staff succeed.  Catalytic thinking consists of three points.  Catalytic Listening: Brining out the best in others and yourself.  Catalytic Decision-making: Reaching for what is possible, and creating favorable cause and effect conditions towards that result.  Collective Enoughness: Sharing resources with others who care about what you care about.  We have a community filled with resources who want to see our schools succeed.  Use some time this week to reflect on some of the questions listed above.  Have a wonderful week.