the uplift
elevating and amplifying women's voices and issues in higher ed.
the uplift
Planning for Access: Teaching and Leading for Engagement and Inclusion, with Stephanie Cawthon
Today we wrap up our month of conversations about what teaching and leadership have in common in a conversation with Stephanie Cawthon, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Stephanie uses her experience as a stage manager and her lifelong love of teaching to find innovative ways to engage the folks around her -- whether they're in a campus classroom, an online course, or an administrative meeting on Zoom.
Our conversation is grounded in our love of Priya Parker's book The Art of Gathering, which is a wonderful guide to creating spaces where people feel welcomed, included, and purposeful.
Stephanie spotlights the advantages of combining a clear framework and self-driven learning abilities in both teaching *and* leading. She also shares strategies for engaging students online and in person, which translates remarkably well into planning efficient meetings and honing our leadership skills.
This episode is very special to me: it was my first experience working directly with ASL interpreters, auto-captions, and video to make sure our conversation is widely accessible. I'm super grateful to Stephanie and her team for teaching me. You can watch the video podcast here.
Readings and resources
Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Joan Gallos & Lee Bolman, Reframing Academic Leadership
Ken Bain, What The Best College Teachers Do
Other episodes you might enjoy
Episode 63, How Teaching Prepares You for Leadership
Episode 46, How to Use Feedback to Build Trust
Episode 41, The Role of Dissent in Psychological Safety
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Hey there, welcome to the Uplift podcast, where we talk all things leadership for women in higher ed. I'm Carol Shabryus and I want to help make your leadership path a little easier, a bit brighter and a hell of a lot more fun. Here at the Uplift, we mash up real stories, real feelings, real theory and occasional f**k bombs, all to help you become the kind of bleeping awesome leader you would love to follow. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump in. Hey there, welcome to this week's show. We are wrapping up our month of exploring the terrific skills you can take from your teaching into your leadership. Today's guest is Stephanie Cawthon, a professor in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin, in the Educational Psychology Department, where she also has a courtesy appointment in special education. Stephanie has been at UT Austin since 2007 and she did give the university's first commencement address in ASL in 2020. Stephanie is a prolific researcher, writer and an in-demand professor and mentor. Interestingly, she's also an experienced stage manager, which influences how she teaches. What she and I really dig into in our conversation is all the ways we can build community and a sense of purpose, both for our students and for our colleagues. So in the classroom and in those darn meetings. And I'll be honest before we get started, just so you know, this is the first time I've interviewed someone deaf and I learned a ton about accommodations and access in my own practice. I have a lot of improvement to make To keep this episode accessible. We recorded our conversation with our cameras on and this way the ASL interpreter's work is visible and accessible to everyone. So if you're listening to this via a regular podcast channel, you're going to hear bits of audio silence when there's actually active communication happening on the screen. If you have the chance, then I encourage you to watch this podcast as well as listen to it, and I've put a link to the video version in the show notes. All right, my friends, let's go.
Carole Chabries:I've been exploring this idea that teaching and leadership, I think, are actually kind of the same thing. I don't think they're very different, and so what I wanted to do was talk to people who teach, who also have some experience and some kind of leadership. I'm going to say role because I'm going to let you explain to me why it should be opportunity. I'm looking forward to hearing that, but we're going to do some kind of leadership activities. I'm a mother, I've trained dogs. I devoted a whole podcast episode to why puppy training is like leadership or what I learned.
Carole Chabries:So I but I wanted sometimes I just get you know I'm spinning here and I love hearing other people's ideas. So I wanted to kind of start with this idea that they're similar and I'll kind of open with a little reminder of the two quotes that I put in the Google doc. But then, stephanie, I like this is much more about us hearing from you, so I'll shift to questions and then we'll, if we can go through why you are drawn to teaching and I love some of the things you shared in the Google doc and if we can talk about what leadership looks like in your classroom from anybody, that would be great to hear about. I would love to get to Priya Parker. I'm also a huge fan of that book and I'd like to save that for the end, if we can, and then I think that will take us to time.
Carole Chabries:Okay, perfect, okay. So we are totally warmed up, but let me start with a huge, excited welcome. We've been zooming for 53 minutes and I've already learned more in this 53 minutes than I've learned in maybe any single 53 minute bucket recently, but I'm really excited to have all of you here. I'm not even sure how to introduce you all, so let me welcome Stephanie and her interpreters, and then can I ask you to introduce yourselves quickly to the audience, and then we'll get into the meat of our conversation.
Stephanie Cawthon:Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you today. I'm super excited to be here. Podcasts are my favorite kind of quick learning opportunity, so to be with you is super fun today. My primary role is faculty staff at the University of Texas at Austin. I've been here for almost 18 years, which is kind of mind blowing. I can't believe it. It feels like just yesterday when I came on board.
Stephanie Cawthon:I'm a full professor. I have a lot of responsibilities, a lot of opportunities to impact students, learning and management. Both I have a few roles it's been nice for me later in my career to lead things and also roles in terms of service and serving the community. I've experienced with directing centers that are federally funded Typically is where the funding comes from, and that's a huge. They're all research based and evidence based for improving the lives of students with disabilities. That's typically where that focus lies and really integrating research and teaching administration, or three activities that I take on pretty regularly and those are the things that I do related to the topic, so we can dive into any of those later. As you see, fit.
Carole Chabries:Great Thank you. Can we also have the interpreters introduce themselves? Is that a thing?
Stephanie Cawthon:Well, what I'll say today is that we have two interpreters with us today Amanda Katz and Elizabeth Weston. They're here with us today and they're supporting communication access, so I'll take care of those intros.
Carole Chabries:Fantastic, thank you All right.
Carole Chabries:So, stephanie, let me start with two quick quotes, or two quick reminders of comments from other people as a way of leading into my first question for you. So in Joan Gallos and Lee Bowman's book reframing academic leadership, they talk about thinking and learning being at the heart of effective academic leadership, and in Ken Bain's book what the best college teachers do, he says that outstanding teachers are those who achieve remarkable success in helping their students learn in ways that make a sustained, substantial and positive influence on how those students think, act and feel. I've been an academic leader for more than 25 years and I think that statement is as true of classroom teaching as it is of leading teams, and so what I'm hoping we can do today is talk a little bit about how those two ideas that leadership is about teaching and learning, and that really effective teaching is about the learner on the other end and how they are changed by what they learn. I'd love to talk about that intersection for you, in both the classroom and in the leadership work you do at the University of Texas at Austin. So, if we can, let's start with questions about you as a teacher.
Carole Chabries:I know teaching runs in your family. Can you tell us a little bit about what it is that draws you to teaching?
Stephanie Cawthon:So I just turned 50 and so I have been reflecting and thinking about, kind of thinking through, why I do what I do, and teaching is part of that. So I started teaching really early on in my life. I think you know I had a lot of opportunities to try teaching through college. I was a TA in high school. I helped my parents they were both teachers so I went to their classrooms. They were post-secondary working in colleges. So I've been around teaching and learning and education. That was just the culture of my family. So my first opportunities to really try to figure out my role in life goes way back to training, teaching and education. It always was rooted there. It was very early on for me. I developed that and I think my family always really valued the identity as a teacher and so that was supported and encouraged. For people in my family who weren't official teachers, they were still teaching on the side, tutoring or training or what have you. So literally everyone was involved in that space and that process. Again, it was a culture of education from a very early age. I never felt like that wasn't available or it wasn't an opportunity for me, because it was a core value for my family.
Stephanie Cawthon:Now when I got into post-secondary and college, a lot of my experiences were within the theater realm. I did outside of classroom work, was always in the theater or in that space, developing people, helping people succeed in theater and on stage. I was behind the scenes. I wasn't on stage myself but my role was stage manager and so that was always providing structure, providing guidance and guidelines, timelines, really kind of helping manage the process and the people, giving stage cues Go, now it's time, get on, you're up and then giving feedback and thinking through and helping folks critically think about how to improve their work and working with the team and the directors. So I was always thinking through how to improve that and my experience of working with a group for the audience, for the group of the actors and the cast I was working with. So for me that really just kind of naturally developed my teaching identity and then it became more formalized. I wanted to understand how to better support people and so kind of the whole thing, just teaching. It sort of feels like a play to me.
Carole Chabries:That alone is like that's worth a conversation by itself. That's fascinating to me. I'm also curious about something that we didn't talk about ahead of time, but it's the idea that a lot of okay, I'll speak about the generation of faculty who taught me A lot of that teaching was lecture-based, and when there was a discussion, sometimes that was led by the TA. I went to big R1s, so discussions were kind of breakouts from the big lectures, but teaching was very much conveying knowledge or conveying information, and that is not what a stage manager does at all. And so I'm wondering if I'm wondering what your experience is, teaching from a place of orchestration and choreography in a culture where, most probably 18 years ago, most teaching wasn't like that. So I'm just curious about whether there's been how that's gone for you as somebody who's kind of grown into post-secondary teaching from a very different perspective than is typical.
Stephanie Cawthon:You know it's still different to this day. Most of my colleagues don't teach with a connection to the content mindset. It's still information dissemination to students. I'm the expert, I shall deliver you the information and it's not across the board. It's not a standard approach the way that I do it. I evaluate a lot of faculty. That's just part of my role now at the university and I'm still seeing that that's the primary identity, the primary comfort zone for the vast majority of faculty.
Stephanie Cawthon:So for me, I don't feel like I have a lot to say. I don't feel like I have a lot to tell you, but what I can do is provide the content, provide a framework, provide some evidence, some data based on research. I'm an R1 institution. We still care very much about evidence-based and data collection. What does it mean and make meaning of it? We very much care about that.
Stephanie Cawthon:But I don't feel like my role is to tell you things. Almost never when working with students like that's not my thing. However, I do have high expectations on the students and their learning, really high expectations for them, but for them to be self-driven. My role is to provide opportunity for self-development skills and such, really, the content is not that hard. To be honest with you, just be transparent. But linking it in terms of how to apply it to your world, to your life, your future career.
Stephanie Cawthon:Listen, I can't do that for you. That's not something I can do for my student and I don't want to. Not my role, not my point, not my goal. What I wanna do is give them the skills and the tools to be able to learn the things and apply the things. That's what I find important. And people often say I learned so much in your class and I'm like the content, the amount of content that they read is minimal. The amount of teaching in the classical forum that's done limited. It's the activities that are linked back to that content. That's a lot. So really strategically helping people, helping those students really just encapsulate that information, not just a mind dump, is very different and I think it's more valuable for their time and investment, more bang for their buck, so to speak. That's my goal. Anyway, that's kinda how I view it.
Carole Chabries:I love that. It reminds me of Daniel Pink's autonomy, mastery and purpose, and I think that, for me, is the core connection between leadership and teaching. A command and control leader tends not to inspire people and get their team thinking creatively and problem solving. A command and control teacher is conveying information and grading people on their regurgitation of it. It's that other method that I think that I'm really drawn to when I try to connect teaching and leadership. So can you give us an example? Do you have any stories of what that that connection between leadership and teaching? That is really about giving people autonomy and helping them grow in ways that's meaningful to them. What does that look like in your classroom? What does that look like with your students?
Stephanie Cawthon:I think it's always about creating structure, creating buckets and helping people not feel so lost Students, staff, faculty, really, anyone on the team, leaderships, even all the way up through the university levels. I mean, clearly, you know, we want people to, people need an organized style and we want people to be like oh OK, I know where I'm at, I know where I'm going, I know where people with me are going, I can communicate that and articulate that. I think that's imperative. So the classroom activity, for example, that I might do is often try to give a balance between individual level and group level, so really those two kind of audiences, so it's not always just an individual like writing, independently thinking or being reflective. So we start with that right. We start with something that's very individualized on the individual level for an opportunity for reflection to, and there are different ways to approach that. And then we take what we've learned there and there's an opportunity for peer interaction surrounding that same content. So we take that and apply it and then each person's on an even playing field. It'll typically be a small group conversation and sometimes one person will take up the time in the space and do all the talking. It happens.
Stephanie Cawthon:So I really want to be mindful of how to structure that conversation. You know, and it's true for leadership as well who's quote unquote voice is being heard? How do we structure that space? We can't leave people to their own devices and wait and hope for it. It's not about hoping the conversation happens, it's creating structure and dialogue and opportunity in a safe space.
Stephanie Cawthon:So for me, it's really how I can bridge those gaps. So teaching and leadership, how to bring them together, make meaning for people on an individual level and also create that same meeting on a group level with structure in place in a safe space. Safe space with an opportunity for people to engage and knowing that people have different backgrounds, right? Different levels of feeling safe, different ways of communicating and articulating, different strengths. So that needs to be really clearly structured. You can't just let people go and hope that it works. You know there are different ways to manage this, right? Some people are like oh, get that student a chance, they can do it on their own. And I'm like well, I think administration is often afraid to apply a structure to a dialogue and that's where we kind of get into trouble sometimes.
Carole Chabries:Yes, and I know we both share an interest in well facilitated meetings, which is a place where that free flowing dialogue with no structure actually, I think, kind of kills creativity and can deaden the interaction instead of spark it. I had two questions came to mind as you were talking and I think they'll get us toward that structure conversation. But I'll put them out. I'll put them both out there and you can do what you want with them.
Carole Chabries:One is how do your students respond to this Right? So I'm curious about both how students are in the classroom, if they're in an active learning environment that might be very different from other places where they're learning on campus and sorry for my sirens. And then I'm also interested to know if you know at the end, not not just if students learn a lot, which you've said they tell you, but if they feel more autonomous, if they feel more purposeful, if they feel the things that I think both a good leader and a good teacher want for their, their people. So that's one question, sort of what's the student experience? And then the other question is can you share examples of that kind of concept of structure, facilitation and structure, deep learning and then shared learning In any kind of leadership setting like do you have a story or an example of a time when that worked really well, so that if people are listening and thinking about could I even do this on my own campus they can have a sense of what it might actually look like?
Stephanie Cawthon:Okay, I'm going to start with your second question because I can remember it. I remember what you said, so I may ask you to repeat that first part again later after this. So example examples of activities, right? Um, many of my strategies are based on drama based instruction, and I'll give you a link for that. There's a lengthy list and it's through UT. There, the department here on campus, there's a program called drama for school, and I've worked with them for years probably 15 years or better and we've developed really specific activities of how to engage people with that idea of structure and inspiration plus learning and interaction. They just have in that mindset, and so I apply many of those strategies to both in meetings with staff and in addition to my students. I really apply them in both spaces. One example that I can give you is when you enter a space, a physical space, set the tone. I feel like that's super important, right, and so what I'll often do is early on in class.
Stephanie Cawthon:I'll put up posters like you know, white boards or posters on the wall and say what is disability? Well, the question mark after it and I'll leave that up there. Then I'll ask people as they come into the room, they set up their chairs, I'll have them kind of get them thinking about the answers to those questions that I've posted around the room. There's a variety of different questions that I asked that lead to the theme of that day when I'm teaching, and so then I can kind of see what people's initial thoughts are, where they're starting from. They can be transparent because they're writing them up there on those papers. They have different colors.
Stephanie Cawthon:Each person may have their own colored pen, and so you know people love that and so I love that. For them it's a quiet space. They're not meant to talk to other people, but they can still see the thinking that's coming from the other people in the room as those lists fill out. Then throughout my presentation or lecture two, three hours, whatever I have I'm able to respond to those thoughts or questions. Like, let's say, we're talking about disability, right? So I take a look at these posters that I've already hung around the room and I can see what they've said, I can see where they're at, but like, tell me what you see I get and I won't tell them what's up there.
Stephanie Cawthon:I ask them what are you seeing? What themes are coming up for you? What is giving you an aha moment? What emotions are coming up from you based on some of the comments that you're seeing around the room, what kind of attitudes are you seeing within the language? What kind of word choices are people using? And so that will spark some things.
Stephanie Cawthon:And you know, I already know my lectures about the language of disability and the language and how attitudes and bias shape people's thoughts about disability. So this though, I kind of pulled from there where they're coming from, and it's really kind of a way in for me to approach the topic. I kind of I give them theory, I give them a framework, I give them differing perspectives. What the content says, you know, and it doesn't come just from me, it comes from them and from evidence-based stuff. Students love it. They feel like their opinions and their experience matter and they're valued.
Stephanie Cawthon:And then, if someone is willing, I'll have them say why they wrote that. It's synonymous, as they write it Like people don't know who wrote what. But if someone's comfortable and they're willing to share, I invite them to do so Like hey, so you wrote that, why did you write that? And then I give a lot of time early on. So, like everything at the beginning, I give a lot of time and then we kind of get fast paced through it, as I built in this structure, as we kind of move through. It's one example of how I start that class mostly dialogue-based invitation to the content. There are hundreds of approaches, right, different ways and methods that I use, but the goal is always the same. Does that make sense?
Carole Chabries:It does and I want to see it in action now.
Carole Chabries:I want to.
Carole Chabries:So I was about to say I want to drive down to Austin and watch, except, of course, I know, because you shared with me offline, that most of your teaching is online these days, and so thinking both about well, thinking about space, setting the stage I love that metaphor from a drama-informed perspective.
Carole Chabries:We all were like crazy trying to figure this out in spring of 2020, how to do that online. As you were describing what you do, I was picturing a physical classroom where the students are in a building and you're present and realized that's possibly not at all what you're really describing. That you might be describing what you do in an online space, so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about even just this idea of setting the stage and kind of helping people navigate their way through something you've structured in an online space where I'm guessing you don't have students, or many students at least camera off, disengaged, multitasking, because the nature of your course requires them to be present in a different way. So somewhere and there was a question about can you help us understand what's how to do this in an online space? Both, or either from a meeting perspective or from a classroom perspective. Thank you.
Stephanie Cawthon:So online, an online classroom, I will typically do an asynchronous setup For most activities. However, I do ask schedule time for group work, so I will have them book that and that will be synchronous same time and quote unquote live, where they're all logged in and together I have over 100 students, just so, as you know. So we do have to have a way to accommodate that. You know, those 100 students, 123 students ish. So it's a lot of people coming together online. So I've got to keep that in mind and accommodate that. And so there are steps. The first step, I would say, is intro video an intro video that comes from me, that's pre-recorded, with captioning, with access and everything all entailed, say, a five minute max intro video explaining the purpose of the activities, the purpose of the content and really giving them that structure surrounding my expectations. Then, secondly, I would say there's a brief reading, like a blog or possibly a more casual read, not a heavy academic, in depth reading. I want to make it accessible for all my students, especially early on. Then a second reading will be more academic, based, a little more in depth, and so the theme will be the same across my introduction about you know and me presenting it live or recorded. And then the blog, the more casual and personal experience story. Then again we move into the more academic piece. The theme is consistent and that's more traditional.
Stephanie Cawthon:That read one or two. Maybe I will not give five heavy articles like that, I just I don't limit one to two. Then there's a discussion post. That happens and what I ask them to do is find something out there a meme, a hashtag, a TikTok. It's something from their world that makes sense to them so that we can apply this concept to them. It's their world, not mine. So I want them to go out and find something that is meaningful to them and I want them to apply the concepts that we've done in those first three things I outlined and they explain how it applies. They do that once or twice. Then I ask for two responses and they have to respond twice to their colleagues or peers and really expand on that what they're feeling, why they disagree, why they agree why they felt attached to that.
Stephanie Cawthon:It's really surprising sometimes, and I give them some prompts, some possible ways to respond to this what was an aha, what did you disagree with, what was a surprise? And then explain why Now those are required. Then they meet in small groups and they kind of bring all that together from the first bit of contact and content and they do this via Google Doc or shared document of some sort. That is also synchronous. It is at the same time. I ask them to bring it all together and respond to questions and come up with a product that they have produced together and posted as a group, and it's usually integrates with their writing assignment that they'll also have, because I do assign papers, their brief weekly, and there's explanation for that, of course. Then at the end of the day, they have a quiz, a learning check let's call it for all of these things, just to make sure they understand where we're at, because so many students feel lost if they don't have something to show. Oh look, I understood this. We need to have some proof, not only for me but for them, to show that they're comfortable, that it's not big, they're able to communicate and dialogue. Creating and being in that space is great, but they also need something solid and concrete. So I give them something concrete learning check so they can be like, hey, I did all of this, this is great, this is how I integrate it into my understanding and they feel really good. This is my grade, this is my quiz, and I do. I give them that opportunity to have that for themselves.
Stephanie Cawthon:On that big chunk, the structure that I have for each unit is big, it's in depth, sometimes it's a month long. Typically I try to keep it two weeks, but I don't want to rush it. I want to make sure that they get into it and I hope that that clarifies the student perspective of the way that I manage things and the structure and the dialogue and everything. And then, just to be fair, I do the same thing for meetings. There are some brief introductions. What's the purpose? Here's the strategy we're going to plan.
Stephanie Cawthon:It's a lot of pre-work for me and that's the theater part of me. If you plan in advance, then when it's go time, you're good, you trust yourself, you trust the process, you know what you're doing, you've done the pre-work, the foundation's in place, we're good to go Once you set up that structure for meetings with a PowerPoint or slide deck or whatever you have. We keep questions. People know before time what the goal is, what they're doing. I'm not surprising or shocking anybody.
Stephanie Cawthon:I get folks equal access in equal time, a lot of advance time to think about it, and we start with something fun. I always like to start with something fun or funny or something creative to connect it to the content that will be discussed and then, at the end of the day, we've got structure for what we need to do moving forward. We got an action plan. It's concrete and we know what we're doing and how we're moving forward. And I always end on time. First of all, always plan to just fit it in the time allotted. That is 100% my preference. But that structure really sometimes it works the same face to face but you can modify it when you're online. But that's the basic structure of how I manage these things.
Carole Chabries:I love that and thank you for ending on time, which we will also try and do today as we were talking. I want to continue with a structure question, but before we go there, I want to go back to the setting the stage idea. What I would love to hear from you is what setting the stage looks like if you're not all in a shared physical, simultaneous space. So I can easily imagine you hanging posters around a classroom on campus. It's harder for me. I start to guess what you might do in an LMS or in a Zoom room to set that stage in a way, and maybe you don't. But I'm kind of wondering, like is there a translation of creating a shared physical stage for everyone when you're working online?
Stephanie Cawthon:Sure, there are common resources that I typically use a Google Doc or a shared document that is always available. Zoom on video so we're sort of face to face and then maybe having a second space to put your thoughts and ideas in that shared document. This thing is give images, say, describe this image, put it in the chat box. That's an amazing thing Having chat available in a video space. Some people feel very confident in raising their hand and coming up on screen, some people don't. So to really make it equitable, I think that's valuable, both to allow folks to raise their hand and also to let them chat in the chat box. Again, structure is very helpful. Start with the description Describe what you see, just describing. You don't have to analyze anything or apply it. That's later. That's a higher level thinking. Let's start basic with describe what you see, describe what you know. Then we can maybe move into, or maybe what you don't know about a thing, the thing that picture, what does it make you think of? I want to start there. Often we don't dive all the way in. Then we move into analyzing. How does that get to your goal? I said goals. I know where we're headed. I like to ask how does that relate to the thing, the goal for the meeting or the class that I'm teaching? Then relating it kind of more, how does that concept relate to what we talked about yesterday? Let's link it yesterday to today. You watched the video, we showed a video. How does that idea relate to the things that we already know, that we've already gone through or that I want them to think through? So kind of that chain and kind of linking things together. That often sparks a dialogue.
Stephanie Cawthon:We do break out rooms. Zoom is good for that. Again, we need and I want to create a safe space. If it's a big Zoom meeting, we do need to break it down into smaller spaces. Those breakout rooms are good. 25 people is not going to do it. We need smaller spaces. It's kind of funny. Last year I started with a small group of 10. That felt too much. People were complaining 10 is too much, can't do it. I said, all right, fine, I'll drop it down to six folks. They said that's too much. Scheduling was just a real pain for everyone trying to coordinate six folks. I have dropped it down to four for a small group. That seems doable. We're going to test it in the fall. Excuse me.
Carole Chabries:I tested out in the fall.
Stephanie Cawthon:I've got a summer class I'm teaching starting in July, so I'm going to see again if four works. We tested that in the fall so we brought it all the way down and my point of mentioning that is that relating it really is very personal and it's a new step for folks, often new ground. They need to feel very safe and describing most people are good in that space. But self-disclosure that is up to people. It's not required in that first step that I mentioned. Getting into the analytics or analyzing things, showing people how you're able to think through information from a researcher, so how people ask questions and what types of questions they're asking, is really important to me. Now in the relationship piece and relating to the outside world and audiences, that is where it becomes very personal and I really feel very strongly about making sure that people feel safe in that space and with the number of people in that space.
Carole Chabries:I love all of that and I feel like now I want a second conversation with you. That's just about teaching, teaching strategies. I'm really taken by this idea of opening a meeting by having people talk about an image. When my kids were little, I was a volunteer at our local art museum for this program that took kids, taught kids how to look at art, and the thing that you were taught to do with the classes you took around was to teach the kids to describe what they saw. And they're little. I think that's all they can do. No, they immediately interpret it.
Carole Chabries:So what do you see? I see a family celebrating a birthday. No, literally. What do you see? You see a man and a woman and a child at a table. But what it does for those kids is it puts them all in that space where their imaginations are engaged and they're processing what other people are seeing and experiencing. And it's really bonding, and it literally never occurred to me to do that to start a meeting. But what a great way to pull everybody in to a shared activity.
Carole Chabries:That's not the agenda, which is, you know, yawn, boring. But since we're going to run up against time, let's shift really quickly, if we can, to the whole issue of Priya Parker and her ideas about gathering there. Okay, we need a third conversation. I want a third conversation just to explore this with you. But one thing that struck me in what you said was the amount of pre-work you put into a meeting in order to make that meeting effective but also engaging and interesting for folks and I think one of the things I've heard and personally experienced in terms of burnout is people's lack of time even running between meetings but also to plan a meeting so that it can be effective and purposeful the way you described. So I wonder if, as a way of closing, you can give us any guidance, ideas, tips for leading meetings with purpose, even when it takes work on the front end from the facilitator.
Stephanie Cawthon:Well, sure, I mean, you know, I think for me always planning for access. Access is a huge concept Access to information. People should not be surprised by the purpose of a meeting when they arrive, and so it's more than just sending the agenda at. You know, six o'clock the night before, six in the evening the day before is not okay, especially if the meeting's at 8 am the very next day. I think giving people enough time to really think through that content and what's coming in that, meeting their personal goals you know, people also have personal agenda so being able to think through their personal agenda and how that meshes with the official agenda, the second thing I think about in terms of access of information is literally accessing the information. So thinking about accommodations, visually accommodating, auditorly accommodating, guidelines for communication, not overlapping and interrupting each other. That is part of the safe space and building those expectations. Now, that takes time. People are experiencing more and having some awareness, but we often, but people need reminders and so really thinking through what kind of fun thing or image emoji we're going to talk about, just how to set it up at the beginning, on the front side of things, but make everybody smile. People need to smile, you know if they're bored or frustrated, it's not going to happen Yet, like that's a mental barrier. Right, that's a mental block. So how can we break through that barrier right off the bat and shift into a different mindset? And I think also PowerPoint, one pager, some sort of visual, something for people to follow, I think is key.
Stephanie Cawthon:I do think that when planning for a meeting, we also need to think about who's going to be in attendance. If I'm there and I'm the manager, my pre-work might be different. If it's my manager or my upline, it's different than if I'm just hosting a meeting with my peers versus being in a meeting with my supervisor. So I think all of those things I handle it very differently. I always try to prep questions for myself.
Stephanie Cawthon:What am I curious about, what do I want to know? And if I'm curious, I feel like that's a problem. I would be curious about something, and so I'm curious about their response to if there's time available for that activity, what might that look like? Or where does this align with their goals? I really try to think through my curiosities and make sure that there's space for them also to be curious, gosh, other than that, I feel like asking later does there need to be a meeting. Could it have been an email, like they get it with that right? Could it have been in Slack, because is there always a value to a meeting? And then be honest with yourself about that when you think that stuff through on the front side.
Carole Chabries:The last time I taught first year students in writing, I taught the course about curiosity, like if you can teach college students to be curious, that will get them through everything they need to get through. It has been such a delight to get to know the three of you and Stephanie, to hear your ideas. I'm wondering if, as we exit so I know you and I would both recommend Priya Parker and you're going to share some links with us for drama based teaching Is there anything else you would recommend that people read? And then we can end on that note.
Stephanie Cawthon:Well, my favorite right now is James Clear Atomic habits. That taught me a lot about setting up timelines, setting expectations, making progress for myself on a personal level, and so I feel like that can apply to teaching and leadership as well, so that's my favorite.
Carole Chabries:It's a great book. It's a great recommendation. Thank you so much for spending your morning with me, and thank you for everything you've taught me, not just about teaching and leadership, but about hosting a meeting that has a broader approach to accessibility than I typically think about. I'm grateful to all of you.
Stephanie Cawthon:Well, thank you so much for having us. I hope to see you again.
Carole Chabries:All right, my friend, now that we're done, I want you to do two things for me. First, choose one thing that came to mind while you were listening. Maybe it was something we talked about, or maybe it was something that occurred to you while you were listening, it doesn't matter. Just put it into practice this week and want you to take action. It can be imperfect action, inspired action, scared to do this new thing. Action I don't care. Just take action. Don't overthink it, don't talk yourself out of it, just do it. And then, second, tell me how it goes. Dm me on LinkedIn or Instagram or shoot me an old fashioned email at carolattheclariogroupcom, and once you tell me what you've tried, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a $20 gift certificate to bookshoporg. You'll get to expand your learning and I'll get to help you build your library. It's a win for both of us. So that's it. Try something out and then tell me how it went. I can't wait to hear from you.