“Resistance isn’t refusal. It’s a signal of unmet needs.”  Becca Silver, the founder of The Whole Educator and the designer of the Resistance Remedy, shares how to diagnosis common unmet needs. Coaches questioning and listening emerges as key to change and commitment.

Visit The Whole Educator website and get in touch with Becca here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.300] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.700] – Steve
Redefining resistance. Joining our podcast today as Becca Silver, the founder of, “The Whole Educator” and the designer of, “The Resistance Remedy.” Becca hosts the “Coaching The Whole Educator Podcast” where she breaks down the messiness of adult, learning and change leadership into practical and doable next steps. I had the privilege of being Becca’s guests on her podcast earlier.

[00:00:59.400] – Steve
I’m really excited to have her join us here. Becca Silver helps school leaders, sistrict leaders, and instructional coaches to do one of the hardest things in education – lead people through resistance, beyond buy-in and into real commitment. With two decades in education, she’s worked with thousands of Educators and leaders across the US and internationally. Welcome Becca. I’m just really excited to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:35.600] – Becca
Thank you. Excited to be here, Steve. I love talking to you and I love how our conversations like you say, just don’t seem to end and so excited to talk with you on your podcast today.

[00:01:47.000] – Steve
Well and the the whole topic of looking at resistance and how people look at resistance to find it address it, I think that’s a biggie.

[00:01:59.500] – Steve
So questions about resistance emerge rather quickly when you engage in conversations with coaches, middle level leaders and school administrators. Why is that such a pressing topic?

[00:02:14.100] – Becca
Well, I think so, first of all, there’s a big – Peter Block, who’s a bit, a kind of a big voice in the Consulting world, right? He has this quote that I use all the time, which is, “when we have changed, we have to expect resistance.”

[00:02:29.600] – Becca
I would say they’re besties. They come together, right? And so one thing we can always expect schools to have is change. Schools will always be changing will always be improving. And yet when change happens, we often get like frustrated or surprised by the resistance instead of being proactive and expecting it. So one thing is, when change happens, expect resistance will happen too.

[00:02:59.700] – Becca
It’s so funny because we kind of create this situation. We the people we hire are the people we want to hire are critical thinkers. We interview our teachers, where we’re talking to people and one of the things we’re listening for and looking for, in the quality of the teachers were bringing into our schools, is we want them to think critically about what’s going on in their classrooms. You know, who can they differentiate for for students? Can they adapt a lesson plan on the fly?

[00:03:29.900] – Becca
And yet, when a change comes down the pipeline that they didn’t choose, they’re expected to comply with it and some teachers do, they’re like, “okay, sure you want me to do this thing now? Not a problem. I’ll do it.” And some teachers, engage – they engage with the change and sometimes that grappling that critical thinking about whether they agree or disagree, or they like, or they don’t like, or they think they’ll be successful with this change sometimes that looks like resistance

[00:03:59.500] – Steve
So we’re off already. I was listening to a podcast on on a walk just a day or two ago and it talked about that the human brain is designed not to want to have to work. In other words, if I can get what I need without having to do that extra work, evolution-wise were designed that way.

[00:04:30.400] – Steve
And I don’t know why, but that just jumped into me as I was listening to you because change is actually signaling people up front. That there’s some kind of extra work effort energy in front of them, compared to staying with the status quo.

[00:04:51.600] – Becca
Yeah. And I think another way that I put it is our brain is formatted to do what’s easiest.

[00:04:59.500] – Becca
We always are looking for the easiest route but we don’t realize with the easiest for you is different than what’s easiest for me. So some teachers, what’s easiest for them is to comply. It’s like, okay, you give me a new direction, it’s easier for me to comply then cause some kind of kerfuffle, and some folks is easiest for them to resist because there’s a harder thing out there for them that they’re navigating.

[00:05:29.500] – Steve
So now you’re raise another question for me. Is complying a different form of resistance?

[00:05:32.800] – Becca
It could be, it could not be. I’m very weary – I could probably do a whole other podcast just on the different forms of compliance. Some compliance comes from people-pleasing. I just want you to be happy with me. Some compliance comes from kind of giving up, right? Like, and that could be a form of resist.

[00:05:55.200] – Steve
Actually, complying is easier.

[00:05:59.400] – Becca
Yeah, compliance is like, fine – I won’t win anyway. It’s like a form of resignation, they’ll beat me down anywway so fine, I’ll just do it. But it could, it depends on where the compliance is coming from on whether it’s resistance or not.

[00:06:14.500] – Steve
So I pulled this statement from some of your work that I did that. I’d like to use as our jump off point and your statement is, “resistance isn’t refusal. It’s a signal of unmet needs.”

[00:06:29.600] – Becca
Yes. So underneath all of this is we want to stop making statements about resistance and start asking questions. And so what ends up happening when we’re experiencing resistance and us busy coaches and leaders, we’re like we just need you to do this, please – it’s what’s best for students. We can get real, like they should do this, they shouldn’t do that. And what we need to be doing instead of making statements about their resistance, we want to start asking questions.

[00:06:59.400] – Becca
And the big question is, what unmet need do they have? Because underneath all of this, all these layers is the one thing that causes resistance is unmet needs and we want to be asking, what are those needs that aren’t being met?

[00:07:17.400] – Steve
So talk to us about what some unmet needs might be and how does a person go about diagnosing what the unmet need is?

[00:07:28.700] – Becca
Yeah, that’s a really great question. And I’ve been using the word, “diagnose” a lot in my work the last couple years. Like let’s diagnose – and you and I before I jump into this, you and I were talking about this yesterday. So when we think about teaching children reading, I’m going to give an analogy – when we think about, like, Joe needs to read.

[00:07:46.900] – Becca
Okay, well, Joe doesn’t know how to read. What we don’t do is we don’t say just try a reading strategy with him, but we do this with resistance we say so and so is experiencing resistance or we usually say so and so is resistant, resistant. And then we say, just try resistance strategy.

[00:08:09.400] – Becca
And it’s like hold on – we would never do that when teaching a child how to read. We would diagnose what they need help in and give them the strategy or the tool that would help them get better in that way. We need to do exactly the same with resistance. Instead of saying, “they’re resistant” and having some kind of like try the resistance strategy, it’s like we need to ask, why are they resiting? We’re human beings, right? Humans are complex.

[00:08:38.400] – Becca
And so I’ve created this framework called, “The Catalyst Mindset.”

[00:08:41.900] – Steve
I want to stop you before you go into your framework because you used the phrase that I that I jotted down. You said, “is resistant versus experiencing resistance.”

[00:08:56.800] – Becca
Yes. Okay, good. I love talking about this. This is very nuanced language, but I think it’s really important for us to distinguish us when we say, “This teacher, this person is resistant,” or we say, “resistant teachers,” when we label people resistant we keep them the very thing that we don’t want them to be.

[00:09:08.600] – Becca
Instead, my language swap is, “is this a person experiencing resistance?” Human beings aren’t resistant. I’m not resistant, you’re not resistant. We experience resistance.

[00:09:33.900] – Steve
We don’t want to be resistant.

[00:09:38.100] – Becca
We just aren’t. It’s the same as emotions. I’m not a happy person, I’m not a sad person. I experience happiness and I experience sadness and I experience resistence. It’s something I move through in different areas of my life. Sometimes I experience resistance with a certain person in my life or certain area like learning guitar is my current their resistance experience. But I’m not a resistant person. I just experience it on and off throughout my life and we all experience resistance.

[00:10:08.200] – Steve
Great. So let’s talk about what some of those unmet needs are then.

[00:10:17.900] – Becca
Okay. Yeah, so this framework I’ve created helps us, look at, okay, folks, in our schools, they’re experiencing resistance. Why are they experiencing resistance? What unmet needs to they have? My framework is called, “The Catalyst Mindsets.” And so we want to ask ourselves essentially five questions.

[00:10:38.900] – Becca
And it’s looking at people’s beliefs because there’s some underlying belief that is keeping folks experiencing resistance. A mindset is simply a belief and that’s one thing – I worked with the psychologists and researchers. I worked with Carol Dweck with Growth Mindset, I did Growth Mindset work with them, so it’s very close to the original Growth Mindset work, not the stuff that ends up on TPT.

[00:11:08.600] – Becca
And so I am like, look, mindsets are not a bulletin board. They’re not working hard, they’re not resilience. They can cause those things, right? So mindsets are simply beliefs. So the five catalysts mindsets – one is growth mindset. I believe I can improve.

[00:11:28.700] – Becca
Another mindset is success mindset. I believe I can be successful which is self-efficacy we love to talk about efficacy because the John Hattie’s effect size research, right? Belonging mindset – I believe I belong here. Value mindset – I believe this has value for me – value purpose, meaning relevance. And ownership mindset. I believe that by taking responsibility, I can make a difference.

[00:11:57.800] – Becca
And what’s cool is within this framework, we can actually say, okay, hold on. They’re experiencing resistance what’s having them be stuck or feel stuck and it could be one or more of those mindsets that’s unsupported. And there’s also a very specific I use very specific language and I love that you caught that first piece. Another piece of language that I try really hard to stay integrity with is, I don’t say they’re missing a mindset. None of us are missing, mindsets.

[00:12:27.100] – Becca
Brains – we have neurons, neural pathways – we can have unsupported mindsets.

[00:12:33.900] – Becca
So my question is, which of those mindsets are unsupported?

[00:12:39.700] – Steve
Would you describe a listen-for as a coach that signals – let’s go back to using diagnose. I’m guessing it’s engaging the teacher in conversation that causes beliefs to emerge. And so am I listening to the beliefs and the beliefs are helping me identify which of those area mindsets may be the – can I say cause of the resistance?

[00:13:08.300] – Becca
Yeah. The cause of resitence or finding the root cause. That’s exactly it. And so I love that you said listening for and I think this is one of the most under talked about skills in coaching. We don’t just listen, we listen for certain things.

[00:13:38.400] – Becca
One thing I always recommend is listen to people’s complaints. There’s gold in people’s complaints. Often in coaching, we’re like, “We’re too busy. We gotta get there. There’s now time for complaints.” And we Tty to glaze over toxic positivity. “Well, it is what it is.” And it’s like, hold on, there’s gold in someone’s complaints. I have given coaches assignments. I’m like, go back to that teacher and just listen to their complaints because you’ll hear what’s important to them in their complaints. And so, part of that, someone’s experiencing resistance.

[00:14:08.300] – Becca
We can listen to their complaints and sometimes hear what their unmet needs are. Sometimes it’s a bit of a smoke signal – not smoke signal, sorry – smoke in mirrors. It’s like, that’s not the thing. There’s something underneath it. For example, if I’m listening to someone’s complaint and they could, they could be saying something like, “I just don’t have time for this. I don’t have time to do this. You know, plan this new curriculum.” So, it sounds like they have an unmet need around time management.

[00:14:38.400] – Becca
And that may or may not be true. Often, it’s actually not. That’s one of those smoke and mirrors ones. Usually there’s something is like a secondary complaint. There’s usually a primary complaint that’s underneath that like, hmmm, why don’t you have time? Is it a time management skill issue, or is it you don’t find this change relevant – value mindset. So it’s like, you actually just don’t want to spend the time to do it.

[00:15:08.300] – Steve
There’s opportunity when I’m working with a school trying to implement the peer coaching and the the teachers response is, you know, they don’t have time to be in another person’s classroom. And so a question I’ll go back with is, “what would happen in a coaching situation that you engaged in that would cause you to say that was worth the time.”

[00:15:33.300] – Becca
Yeah, that’s exactly it.

[00:15:38.400] – Steve
And that really helps me find out then but certainly values and beliefs come out of that. But almost always, when time is the resistance, it’s not the real resistance. I describe it as a socially acceptable resistance.

[00:15:54.600] – Becca
Oh, that’s such a great term. It’s a socially acceptable – that’s exactly it. If I don’t have time, because then I can sit back and people get really bought into these kinds of complaints.

[00:16:08.300] – Becca
Like “oh, they’re overwhelmed. We need to take things off their plates.” Or we go into like scurry mode of, “we don’t want them to burn out. Don’t give them too much.” When in fact, what’s underneath all this isn’t that there’s too much. It’s actually that it’s – I don’t want to say the wrong things but it’s like they don’t like the things on their plate.

[00:16:27.100] – Steve
Yeah. Or let’s go back to would this be the value mindset – that they’re not seeing the value personally for themselves.

[00:16:38.300] – Steve
And I don’t mean that derogatorily. They may not be seeing the value for their students from what it is you’re asking them to asking them to invest it.

[00:16:52.600] – Becca
Yes, that’s exactly it. And I’m going to give you actually a peek into one of my frameworks. So each each mindset has its own framework and so for the value mindset, one of the frameworks is, I call it VUIC.

[00:17:08.300] – Becca
VUIC is the four elements that create that gives tasks value. It’s called task value – the researchers called task. value. So, there’s four things, one of four things, one or more of these four things give all tasks value in our lives. So we can start to say – and one thing we need to be real careful about, I want to say this before I go into VUIC it is our should’s. The way we bring resistance into conversations is we think they should or shouldn’t think or be a certain way.

[00:17:38.300] – Becca
Or do certain things, right? And usually has to do with us, like I wouldn’t do it that way, so they shouldn’t do it that way. And so just because I value something and you know, sometimes people can get caught into like they should value that same thing and it’s like, hold on. Let’s actually step back to what I think they should be doing and actually look at what they actually are valuing, not what I think they should value. So I want to say that.

[00:18:08.200] – Becca
The four elements, VUIC, is values aligned, which is something could have value for me if it aligns with my identity. This is who I am. So I do things because it aligns with who I am. The the U is usefulness and this is probably the most common one. Does this thing, does this task, is it useful to me in some way including solving a problem? If I implement this reading program, will it help me with behavior management.

[00:18:38.300] – Becca
They’re certainly not the same thing, but if I have a problem with behavior management and that’s my main focus, will this other thing you asked me to do help me solve that? I is interesting and this is pure interest. This is, I think this is enjoyable and fun.

[00:18:59.400] – Becca
That could give a task value, right? And then part of task value, when we’re weighing whether something is valuable for, us is also, the C is cost. We’re weighing, what does this cost me? And so for me, like playing guitars a great example, for me, I think it is interesting and fun. And yet the cost is time. I have a time cost issue. I’m like, well, if I play guitar, then I won’t be able to do this other thing. And so I’m weighing time cost.

[00:19:29.600] – Steve
It’s triggering a strategy that I’ve tried to lay it out as a picture for coaches to have in their mind when they’re working through that. But I talked about a balance scale and if you have benefits on one side and cost on the other side, if you’re asking the person to make a change, you’ve got to get the balance scale to tip.

[00:19:58.700] – Steve
So the payoff side, has to outweigh the cost side. If you look at it science-wise, you’ve got two options there. One is you can increase what the payoffs are. So you’ve got a nice list of payoffs there, or decrease the cost, or both.

[00:20:17.800] – Becca
That’s exactly it. And learning what a payoff and a cost for that person is

[00:20:23.600] – Steve
Bingo.

[00:20:24.600] – Becca
And it’s some people are fueled by praise. Some people like you praise me, I’ll do whatever you want.

[00:20:28.600] – Becca
I am not fueled by praise, so that wouldn’t really motivate me a lot, but there’s a lot of people that are. So figuring out what is a payoff for that other person? And I think one of the biggest things that keeps us from understanding other people is our shoulds. It’s because we project on other people and I am repeating myself because I see this so often in schools that we get caught up in our own heads as leaders and start to imagine that the person in front of us thinks the same way we do.

[00:21:04.900] – Steve
Trying to put a couple pieces that are coming at me here. I am big on questioning and listening for coaching. So that the, you know, the critical skill sets for coaches – questioning and listening and having the listening drive your questions.

[00:21:33.600] – Steve
I think I’m realizing, as I’m listening to you, that a critical part of that is teacher beliefs and values, which they, now might broaden my definition of, to your list of mindsets.

[00:21:59.000] – Steve
But if I’m if I’m going to be effective as a coach and getting the teacher to reflect on, whatever change it is we’re doing, the more I know about the teacher’s thinking in each of those mindsets, the better. It’s really giving coaches a great set of listen-for’s is what i’m hearing.

[00:22:22.900] – Becca
Oh my gosh. Yes, you’re the first person to put this together. Thank you.

[00:22:28.500] – Becca
Exactly. And I use it all the time and I’ll ask myself these questions. I listen for even myself. “Why am I resisting that?” I’ve had coaches, learn this framework and they’re like, “my relationship with my teenager got better” because they’re listening for what is an unsupported mindset here? That’s exactly it. Because it can be overwhelming to say, okay, why are they doing this? What’s the root cause of this, right? Or even just like, what’s important to them?

[00:22:58.400] – Becca
But if I can listen to her five basic things, I have somewhere to start.

[00:23:03.500] – Steve
Yeah. So what do coaching leaders need to believe about themselves in order to support the mindsets of their clients?

[00:23:17.500] – Becca
Leaders need to, first, I think the fundamental belief that I have a lot of analogies with resistance but one, that resistance is a compass and not a dead end. I think, one, we need to view resistance as that and two, as leaders that we can have the tools to figure out what is causing the resistance and to believe that we can help them make a total turnaround. Like this can we can actually have a breakthrough.

[00:23:48.900] – Becca
And I think there’s a belief in there that it’s going beyond what we have previously seen happen in schools if that makes sense. Sometimes within our schools, we have these contexts. So I’m going to I’m going to go real broad right now. We have the way we do school has certain contexts, I actually call them – ooh, I never share about these on podcasts. I call him the silent progress killers and there’s kind of a nickname – the Kryptonite, there’s a kryptonite on the way that we do school, that actually actively works against each of these mindsets.

[00:24:18.700] – Becca
So for ownership, mindset ownership mindsets’ silent progress killer in schools is our compliance culture. The way we do school, the superintendent buys a curriculum and then tells everyone to do it and then holds everyone accountable and we can look at the usage rates, right? That is compliance culture.

[00:24:45.100] – Becca
And yet, we are trying to develop teacher ownership.

[00:24:49.900] – Becca
And so I think one belief – this is, I know, I’m zooming out real big, but there we need to understand and start looking at sometimes, the way we have assumed that we have to do school actively works against us developing these and supporting these mindsets in our teachers. So one, a really a willingness to zoom out and say, huh, how am I supporting and inadvertently accidentally on supporting these mindsets?

[00:25:20.700] – Steve
Your mindsets should – here comes a should – it’s the core of what a teacher wants to make happen with his or her learner’s.

[00:25:34.900] – Steve
Yes, that’s exactly it. They can go – every human where it might growth mindset has gone, catalyst mindsets can go. That’s exactly it.

[00:25:41.900] – Steve
Because with the time pressure curriculum on teachers, the tendency is to run over resistance. You know nothing that to see resistance from kids as they’re not seeing the value or they’re not believing they can succeed and that that’s what I need to be addressing.

[00:26:09.000] – Becca
We try to compliance our way out of resistance. And that is absolutely not – it is trying to put – I like to say it’s like putting icing on a mud pie. We’re like trying to like, you know, just force it to happen and it this is where we see repeat behaviors for students. “Why do they keep doing that every week?” Teachers, “why do they keep her returning back to their old ways?” Because we’re trying to compliance our way out of resistance.

[00:26:37.900] – Becca
It is rare – and I’ve been doing this work for many, many years, over eight years – when I’m in schools, it is rare that pure accountability is actually the thing that’s needed. Rare, rare, rare. I could say, maybe a handful of times in all of the years and the thousands of people I’ve worked with across the US, that it’s pure, accountability that needed to happen.

[00:27:06.700] – Becca
Usually, it’s one of those five mindsets.

[00:27:09.800] – Steve
So one last thought from me that’s running in my head and then I’ll open the floor for anything you think we’ve missed that you want to lay out here, but I’m thinking that a common coaching problem, is the coach responding with resistance to resistance.

[00:27:27.800] – Becca
That’s exactly it. Yes, thank you. That’s exactly right. So us as coaches and leaders, we enter a conversation and we can also bring resistance, right? And usually, and I’m going to bring this up one more time, it’s in the form of shoulds and I like to say we’re shoulding everywhere and making a mess. It’s a shouldy stinky mess and I should on other people – you should or shouldn’t be doing that and I should on myself – I should or shouldn’t be doing that but I can look like perfectionism sometimes.

[00:27:57.000] – Becca
And we want to be careful that when we are entering into coaching conversations and relationships that we self check and we make sure that we’re not bringing the resistance because, what we resist, persists.

[00:28:14.900] – Steve
So if I’m if I’m hearing resistance from a teacher and it raises my resistance, it’s gonna bring persistence in the teachers.

[00:28:29.200] – Becca
That’s exactly it. And my recommendation for folks who are like, “oh no. I think I do that. I think I should on them when they’re doing things that I don’t think they should be doing that.”

[00:28:44.800] – Becca
The Nuance of that – of the should’s – I have my expectation continuum, which I share in The Resistance Remedy is, we want to shift from should’s, which is having an expectation and there’s a value judgment there. I think it’s good or bad that you’re doing that. We want to shift to support. So that’s the same expectation. But now I’m bringing curiosity. How could I support them in meeting that expectation? And that’s where we can ask those five mindsets. What do they support in?

[00:29:16.700] – Steve
So open floor – anything about this topic that you didn’t get a chance to put out there at our conversation so far that you want to use as a wrap up?

[00:29:28.500] – Becca
I think one thing I just want to hammer home around listening – listening is one of the most powerful tools to diagnose why resistance is happening. And the quality of listening is super important because we can be bad listeners, right? Just because I’m quiet does not mean I’m a good listener at all.

[00:29:46.100] – Becca
And neurologically, people can sense whether I’m actually actually listening. And it tends to be a subconscious thing, right? So one, when I’m listening, I make sure that I have put aside my should’s and two, when I am listening for what I – to try to help them peel back the layers, I use a lot of reflective listening and I’m sure a lot of folks listening to this podcast probably know some of, you know, saying what I heard you say was, sounds like you’re feeling.

[00:30:16.000] – Becca
It seems like, you know, it’s happening this way for you. Right? Repeating back. Not parroting, right? But repeating back what someone is saying helps them peel back the layers, to get to the root cause so we can get beyond, “I just don’t have time for this,” right? And so I really want to recommend as folks are listening, to reflectively listen to help to get down because the most powerful pieces, when we get down to that root cause – how if, I mean, I’ve had teachers go from, “I’m not doing anything you’re saying” to showing up to my office to other coaches offices saying, “what should I do next.”

[00:30:50.000] – Becca
And it can happen within 24 hours when we actually address the actual root cause.

[00:31:08.900] – Steve
Well, thank you so much. I was looking forward to this. I knew it would be great and it’s been that way. What’s the best way for listeners to follow up with you with questions or check out the resources that you have available?

[00:31:24.600] – Becca
Yeah, so my website is thewholeeducator.com and if you want to check out “The Resistance Remedy,” its $370, which tends to be like, you don’t need approval from a principal.

[00:31:37.700] – Becca
If you want a cheap resource that explains all of the nuances around all of these mindsets, it is there in my website. You can listen to my podcast, “Coaching The Whole Educator” and if you want to just email me, feel free to do that. Becca@thewholeeducator.com. So if we put the link to your to your website, into the podcast, lead-in – easy for folks to find you and follow up.

[00:32:07.520] – Becca
For sure.

[00:32:07.700] – Steve
Okay. Well, thank you so much.

[00:32:10.200] – Becca
Yeah, thank you for having me.

[00:32:13.600] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.