The success of your business and community engagement is directly tied to your ability to notice and grow your evidence of impact. When you show up for your community and your business, they tend to show up for you. You may be thinking, “Great…sounds good. Now what the heck is evidence of impact and how do I do that?” Don’t worry! I got you covered! We are going to dig deep into ways to present the importance of collecting evidence of impact, how to notice it, how to gather it, and then how to teach it to others. Sound good? Ok, let’s get started.
The first thing a leader should know when it comes to introducing the evidence of impact idea, is that everything we do must be so that we can impact others and extend our reach. Going deep with the time that we have will change everything. We are no longer wasting each other’s time. It is about learning from each other and about following a very specific structure so that we are always noticing how far we have come and where we are going next. It is about making decisions on one action step every time we step away from a meeting with each other with the intention to try it out multiple times before we meet again. It is about how to capture the residue of learning and extend the lifetime of it through sharing it with others. This whole evidence of impact thing is that important! In fact, it can change your whole culture and get your community to finally look away from their phones at your meetings and start to pivot to find solutions, traction, and momentum. They become the teachers and the experts alongside their leader. They now know what is in it for them!
As you present the purpose of why you want to collect evidence of impact, it is paramount to be intentional about the fact that it is not a show and share or a bring and brag. It is about learning from each other and extending our reach to align and grow. Present them with the intention and then give them a very specific structure with exactly how they will teach each other. This can all be done through modelling from you. At the end of every meeting, create a space for teachers to teach each other and share their evidence of impact. The leaders will walk around and notice the patterns and trends of the conversation while they teach each other. The process observers will gather the evidence to present the learning back to them at the end of the sharing of evidence time. Another way to capture the residue of the learning that just happened, is to have each teacher sit back down and write one action step they are going to take from the conversation that they just had and post it on a whole group google doc. As a leader, you may also give them a list of action steps that you had prepared that the learners may want to choose from as well to provide them with a direction and support. The point is, they must choose one action step to do multiple times before the next meeting. This will be what they present as their evidence of impact. This action may take many meetings depending on how it is going but the teacher will still present their progress as they figure it out.
Next, your community will need to know how to gather the evidence. Once again, the leader will model this. I always have a whole staff google classroom that runs throughout the year. I model the learning and noticings that see as I walk through the halls, teach my own class, team teach with others, or spend time in classrooms. I may post lesson plans, aha moments, pictures or videos of my action taking, student samples, my own writing, pd notes that I got from a pd day, etc. Think of it like a facebook for teachers! The teachers will see me post throughout the year. They can also post on it or invite me in to their work to post for them. Set up the expectation that this is exactly how you want teachers to notice and gather their own evidence of impact to teach others. They may not post on a google classroom and that is ok. They may just bring in that piece of evidence to teach others and leave their learner with the results they noticed and the action steps they took.
Noticing evidence of impact also needs to be taught by the leader to the community. You cannot just expect teachers are going to know your quality of expectations. Remember when I said, this is not a bring and brag. That will happen if you do not model how you want their learning conversations to go. Teach them how to notice what they did that made that action happen. This might be through trying a specific strategy, changing their messaging, including the students, team teaching, etc. Talk to your community about action taking vs. setting norms. Teach them how to gather the evidence and notice the results that came not from the student learning but from what they did as a teacher to make it happen.
Model the conversations so teachers can see how important noticing evidence of impact is and the importance of taking action and not just reiterating what we already know as adult learners. You may want to set up a co-constructed criteria list on what matters when teaching others about evidence of impact. I would create this list right in the staff meeting with the teachers (it is also a strategy or an action step that they can take back to their classrooms and do with their students using any question they want).
As you model the teaching conversation that you might have in order to teach another colleague about your evidence of impact, invite the teachers to write what they notice you doing on sticky notes. Have them write one idea per sticky note. After, you have completed your modelling, have the teachers work in groups to sort what they saw was important about the processes of learning that unfolded while you taught about evidence of impact. They would put headings on similar groups. Next, you would gather them back as a whole group and write the headings that the groups created.
This becomes your criteria checklist on what is important when teaching others about evidence of impact. It becomes a roadmap and a structure for them to follow to avoid the bring and brags. This list can be used over and over again to remind them of the results they want to get from the conversations, how to take action, and how to grow in their conversations through looking at specific strategies from the criteria that they need to grow. Later in the year, you could bring back that list and have them self assess themselves. They could put a pink sticky with their name on next to the criteria that they feel they are really having success with and a green sticky with their name on next to the criteria that they feel they need to grow. Again, this is another strategy they could use with their students in class as well.
The structure of your staff meetings should always have a space where evidence of impact is shared using this criteria structure. The structure never changes. The teachers are always expected to share a piece of evidence of impact at every meeting. The action that they are sharing was decided at the previous meeting. Once they have shared, they must decide on the next action using a shared google doc so it is documented. You may also have them write on aha idea that they had from the conversation. This documents the residue of the conversation. Next, they go back and practice that action with the intention to gather evidence to teach another colleague at the next meeting. The structure does not change but the actions do, so it will become more efficient and easier as time goes on. Download my FREE guide to show you exactly how to set up your meetings so that the learners are engaged by doing the work and you are always creating space for evidence of impact. The evidence will speak for itself!
Even If You Miss..... 