So you want to see a change in practice and you thought coaching was the answer. Well, without seeing the adult behind the behavior, not even coaching can save you.
In this special blog post, I’m sharing a conversation I had with Laura Fish, therapist, counselor, and teacher advocate and trainer who helps us understand, that just like our work with children, we have more success when we shift our focus from trying to stop a behavior, to understanding the meaning “behind the behavior.”
This means our goal is to achieve a change in practice, not by eliminating something wrong or broken, but by enabling something new and better to emerge.
This approach to professional development is someting I explore in my Deep Dive Master class on teaching adults to get results. Learn more at https://kristiepf.com/deep-dive.
But for now, get ready to learn about how all behavior, that of adults and children alike, stems from the drive to meet three basic needs: for safety (physical or emotional), satisfaction, and connection.
The challenge for us, as coaches, consultants, and supervisors, is to attune to their thoughts, feelings, sensations, needs, abilities, culture, and in fact…developmental level.
By “tuning” into the other adult’s perspective, we have greater success in choosing strategies that prevent behaviors that challenge us (e.g., defensiveness, pushback, rigidity), promote emotional intelligence, and meet everyone’s three basic needs.
Click here for the transcript from the audio file conversation.
Top 10 take-away tips from the strategies discussed during our conversation.
- Sometimes our job is morphed into a habit and that habit is worrying about other people's habits. ~ Inspired by fellow #ECE {r}evolutionary, Lisa Leslie
- We call upon compassion, loving kindness, and non-judgment to help us remain in an open, receptive state of mind.
- It's not just the children that are having the challenging behavior that is the issue. It's also how we relate to that behavior that matters.
- Borrowing from Dr. Dan Siegel, one of the “mind methods” we have to change is learning how to harness the power of attention and to create choice. Shift your attention inward and notice what you are thinking, feeling, perceiving, believing, sensing...this is harnessing the power of intrapersonal attunement.
- It's brain hygiene: pause to notice, and name to tame your emotions. When you pause to tune into what you are thinking, you can learn to respond versus react. Acknowledging the emotions helps you release them and make choices about how to respond.
- Time well spent is time necessarily spent, and it's not just giving false praise or coddling people. It's really understanding that by our actions, we’re helping people stay in the "green zone".
- It's not looking at it as “Pollyanna” or positive thinking. It's looking at it from a brain perspective, asking people to change their mental models, their understanding perhaps of how to engage with adults and how to engage with children.
- There's no shortcut to brain changes. We have these mind methods of tuning in, to move us from activation to installation...to be able to keep our upstairs and downstairs brain connected so we respond versus react.
- Unfortunately when most of us tend to start look inward, we criticize, so be sure to look inward with compassion, loving- kindness, and non-judgment.
- When safety, satisfaction, and connection needs are met we tend toward a mental state of peace, contentment, and love. When they aren’t met, we tend to shift toward fear, frustration, and heartache.
Click here for the Pre-K Teach & Play podcast episode Laura Fish and I did on "seeing the child behind the behavior".