“The staff really aren’t happy…”

I looked around the SLT. My most trusted and candid colleagues.

They looked uneasy.

Luckily, I have/ had a team of leaders who have no problem voicing their thoughts.

“It’s just…well… a lot” chimed one.

“Morale has taken a hit for sure” added another.

I couldn’t deny it was hard – it was. The school improvement project was now several months old and the effort put in by the whole team was not matched by tangible results with which to pin both hope and future effort upon. The workload had ramped up; the necessary coaching had exposed holes in staff knowledge which were proving tricky to fill; and there was no money with which to pay for cover to address either. Our positivity and confidence in the wisdom of the whole project was beginning to wain. The easiest course of action would have been to pull the plug and retreat to past certainties.

Welcome to the ‘shit pit’

Like any leader who has done this job for a while, I have attended a number of such SLT meetings.

Like any leader, who has done this job for a while, I have sat in a number of staff meetings which were, at best, ‘a bit frosty’. Where gaunt faces exchanged glances betraying numerous conversations seen – but not heard – behind purposefully closed classroom doors. About the folly of the initiative. About the folly of the leaders who had instigated the change.

It is a moment eats away the confidence of even the most bombastic of leader.

Let me define this phrase, oft used in the NPQH of yesteryear, which Faye Kitchen, our Leaf Trust Director of Education, reminded me of the other day during a school improvement discussion.

The ‘shit pit’ is a moment which is experienced in all school improvement activity. The moment where, several months into an endeavour, staff loose heart. The novelty of the change has long since worn off and all that is left is the constant thorny realities which are the labour of any new and untested initiative. There are no tangible improvements to point towards. Just hard graft and a plethora of difficulties – both real and imagined – which lead staff at all levels to question the wisdom of the particular action. Minds fill with rose-tinted memories of the time before this Headteacher (or one of their acolytes) dreamed up a ‘better’ way of doing X or Y.

Minds turn to abandonment.

To returning to safe (if ineffective) shores.

The shit pit manifests itself in projects both big and small. It can be a new handwriting scheme, or a whole-scale battle to change the culture of a failing school through root and branch change.

If the school is already ‘winning’ and the perceived jeopardy is low, or the change project small, this might last just a couple of weeks or months and be the source of minor irritations and disquiet. The shit pit is still there, but it is shallow and merely messes with ones shoes… more a puddle which one can quickly step through.

If the school is struggling and in need of cultural revolution (as mine was in my first headship – and my second for that matter) then it can feel like wading through an ocean which takes, at best, terms, and sometimes, years to cross. A pit of sewage which is so deep and wide that to wade through it seems not just foolhardy, but potentially career ending. A sea which comes up to one’s neck and which requires every effort to keep one’s head from going under. This crossing tests the metal of even the most experienced leader.

The science of the shit pit

I can claim no intellectual rights over this phenomenon – it was defined 56 years ago. It is called the ‘kübler-ross change curve‘ – first coined in 1969 as a model for grief, which has been reinterpreted more recently as a model which explains the impact of any change on an organisation.

First comes the surge of excitement and expectation. Humans love novelty. That natty INSET training session you led which pumped up the staff for the journey ahead will have felt amazing. So too would their first foray into the doing of the thing. They aren’t very good at it – but they are blissfully unaware of their own incompetence. Morale increases as staff enjoy the novelty of something new and shiny. Around this time performance and effectiveness also increase. This may be the result of improved teaching but is as likely the result of staff focusing their best efforts on the area being developed, resulting in a host of improvements which may or may not be directly linked to the project. It is easy at this point to see this ‘implementation bump’ as a false dawn – as the sign that the new approach is working wonderfully and that all will be well. The foolish traveller takes their eye off the journey at this point, assuming they have already arrived at a successful destination.

Then it starts to feel hard. The implementation phase is entered into proper. There is suddenly a focus not just on ‘good vibes’ but competence. Leaders look at the detail and notice how much work is still to do. Staff start to feel less confident as feedback and data suggests that their practice hasn’t yet successfully embedded the new approach. And this is when morale starts to take a hit. Suddenly staff are no longer unconsciously incompetent, but consciously incompetent. The deeper the team get into the detail of what has to be done and achieved, the more the team realise how little they know.

Then we enter the shit pit.

After months of trying to master the new initiative, morale bottoms out. The team – tired of feeling incompetent – start to long for the certainties of past (ineffective / inefficient – but safe) strategies. At this point, rebellion will happen sometimes in the open (cue staff openly questioning the wisdom of the new approach). Others will chip away with little niggles and problems until the leader of the project – exhausted at the effort – simply gives in and wades back to the safe shore from which they originally departed. But most often the project dies as a result of loss of momentum. Staff quietly go back to their old ways. There is no open rebellion. In fact, the project is never officially abandoned. Instead, it simply withers and is quietly forgotten.

This is where all those quotes about ‘giving up the moment before success’ come from.

Again, I can take no credit for articulating this phenomenon – the unconscious incompetent was first identified by Noel Burch in the 1970’s (although, in truth, he pinched it from Martin Broadwell who wrote a paper on it whilst at New York University in 1969).

It looks like this, when laid over the Kubler-Ross Curve:

And following the shit pit – if you are brave enough to cross it – is the inflection point.

If leaders and their teams can wade their way through the shit. Can live with the discomfort and doubt. Can be open to new learning and growth.

Then this is where impact starts to be seen. Where staff start to internalise and embed the new approach, which begins to yield genuine results. Despair gives way to openness and new learning and real results. Motivation surges and staff feel proud of their achievements.

And then they instantly forget the crossing through the shit pit. The team edit out the difficulties and draw a straight line of success from inception to completion. We become unconsciously competent – which is why when you visit really high performing schools they sometimes struggle to articulate how they got there, as the culture is now part of the brickwork. Just ‘how we do things here’. So if you are stood on that opposite bank, enjoying the sunny uplands of success, search back for those moments of doubt and fear. This will help you better narrate the journey to others.

Minimising the shit pit

Whilst the crossing of the shit pit can’t be avoided, it can be shortened, with its impact made shallower on the team, in the following ways.

Pre-planning lessens despair

The EEF’s well-known ‘guide to implementation’ contains many excellent tips for any leader planning any change. Most importantly, it shows how long leaders must prepare before embarking in on a change journey (about 50% of the total change period). Good preparation allow leaders to plan how they will manage the whole change: how the staff will be primed in advance of any change; what research is needed; how the professional development will be organised; how coaching will support people as they grapple with new and unfamiliar practices.

And whilst this planning time can feel like procrastination, it is time well spent.

Check that you are solving the right problem

Often, especially if a school is in difficulty, there is a temptation to act quickly. Sometimes this is necessary. But this comes with risks. All too often I have seen embattled leaders stride off in a particular direction before fully understanding the complex problem that they are trying to solve. The result? Wading through months of shit only to arrive on the far bank to discover you’ve chosen the wrong solution to the problem and so have wasted energy and morale for little benefit.

Again, while fully investigating the problem can feel like wasted time. It is better than solving the wrong problem or picking the wrong solution.

Plan professional development and coaching together

As the earlier diagram shows, the disruption caused by change (the shit pit) can be greatly reduced by a good programme of implementation.

Just as we space practice to ensure learning sticks for children, we must do the same for staff. One inspiring INSET may prime the staff for the coming change, but it does little to equip them with the skills and knowledge needed for long term change. This requires regular spaced training which clearly codifies the approaches agreed and which is followed by weeks and months of instructional coaching to make sure it sticks. In short – it is the training which gets your staff to the bank. It is the coaching which holds their hand as they cross the shit pit.

For example, my schools are currently developing a comprehensive writing strategy to address weaknesses in outcomes. We are three years into this endeavour. Approximately half of our staff meetings in the past three years have been on writing. Last week we looked at how to edit and redraft for GDS. This has allowed us to really, and I mean REALLY, get into the weeds of the problem. Every step has been followed by countless rounds of instructional coaching (currently focusing adaptive practice during explicit instruction).

Make it okay not to be good at something straight away

Our coaching and spaced training is accompanied by the Groucho Marx mantra ‘if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly’. In short, we understand that when we adopt any new practice, we are not likely to do it well straight away. This removes and sense of shame or blame – we are all learning together. We may be wading through shit – but we are doing it hand in hand.

Finally – point at the shit

As the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca noted ‘we suffer more in our imaginations than in reality’. Just as the normalisation of our limitations within the learning process makes it okay not to be spontaneously brilliant, Seneca reminds us that most of our worry is internal. Marcus Aurelius (another Stoic) noted that ‘what gets in the way, becomes the way’. As humans, we are actually pretty good at problem solving in the moment. We are not good with uncertainty. So acknowledging that there will be problems along the way as you embark upon the change journey helps to mentally prepare your team for them. And when you’re deep in the ship pit, articulating to the team that this was always a place you had to pass through greatly reduces anxiety.

So, whilst the crossing is inevitable, the means of so doing is in our hands

I imagine that, midway through the school year, in the dark of winter, a great many of you are currently stood in the shit pit.

And if that is you, don’t despair.

See it for what it is: a predictable element of the change process.

Rally your team by reminding them where they are; why they had to leave the safety of the familiar; and what successes await them on the far bank.

And if you are stood on the far bank, enjoying the fruit of your success: never forget the shit you had to trapse through to get there.

If you enjoyed this post, similar themes are explored in ‘Headteachering‘.