The meeting was finished, and some teachers lingered. We had just completed grade-level revisions on writing rubrics. One teacher said, “I wish all collaboration could be this effective. We got so much done!” From a collaborative standpoint, the meeting had been a success. The group stayed focused, all teachers had had a voice, they had accomplished what was expected and learned more about writing through conversation with peers. Most importantly, they left renewed and excited about working to improve learning.

In contrast, leaders often have common complaints about managing meetings and feel thwarted by attempts to collaborate. The list of complaints is exhaustive. They complain about the intrusion of technology, lack of focus, rudeness, conflicts, low engagement, and more. When teachers report on collaborative experiences, the list becomes the flipside of the same problem. Teachers feel that time spent on collaboration is often wasted because of poor meeting management. Many times, the agendas contain topics of low interest, a few people dominate the conversation, some become emotional or defensive, and often colleagues are off task.

Because time is the educator’s most valuable asset, a moral imperative is that all leaders pay attention to and guarantee excellent facilitation (Garmston, 2012) and appropriate interventions (Garmston & Zimmerman, in press). When leaders know how to facilitate with elegance and intervene to maintain engagement, they teach by example and create smart collaborators. Accordingly, group members learn to be facilitative participants — to manage their own behavior and support their colleagues in thinking together. They are able to transfer these skills to collaboration with others in any context, including the classroom.

Leaders can accelerate collaboration by creating collaborative compacts. A collaborative compact is a set of accords about how a group will function. Collaborative compacts ought to focus on four areas of agreement: How we work together, how we think together, how we work with conflicts, and how we manage our own behavior. What follows here is an example of a collaborative compact that includes examples of what might be included. Leaders are encouraged to use this as a starting place and, over time, customize the compact based on issues that are pertinent to each group. This example includes a rationale and suggested interventions, but these would not be part of a final compact. A collaborative compact must be developed through collaboration, and we offer this extra information to start the dialogue.

Getting Started

Begin with a conversation about collaborative work — what pleases or discourages the group — and how participants would like to agree to improve their level of collaboration. Suggest the group consider a collaborative compact, not as a set of rules, but as principles that might guide their work. Have pairs read and comment to one another about the ideas. Talk about the ideas as a full group, and determine what they would like in their own compact that can be committed to print.

Collaboration is not something that just happens. Collaboration is worth striving for. It is built out of the experience of humankind in our day-to-day push for honest, authentic interactions and a commitment to be responsible collaborators. When groups find this space, they experience dignity, power, and renewal.