Training Attention

Systemic Modelling - what is it?

Systemic modelling is a process designed by Caitlin Walker of Training Attention ltd following her award winning work within the Dalston Youth Project. It brings together the principles of social learning through; modelling, systems thinking and the therapeutic technique of Clean Language. This idea is that when you bring a group together to achieve personal or team based change, the most powerful resource in the room is the collective wisdom and diverse experience of the group itself. Instead of teaching or training group members new information passed down through a hierarchy of trainer to participant, the trainer (whom we refer to as facilitator) negotiates communication across the group to allow the required knowledge and wisdom to be shared between and to emerge from members.

For example: when someone has identified themselves as shy and can’t contribute – what can the group do to support them while still respecting their patterns? Someone who talks may be confident about sharing ideas, someone shy may be very observant but only be able to share in a small group. By ensuring that there is enough variation in structure for people with both these skills to shine, and inviting members to comment on what they’re noticing about each other we provide forum for the group to begin learning from each other.

We start with some engaging self-awareness exercises: how people think, how they memorise things, what allows them to learn easily, how they organise time etc. The facilitator first ‘models’ the experience of each individual in the group. Everyone does it slightly differently and then we can begin meta-commenting –Who’s different to you? Who seems similar? What are you noticing about yourself and others as you go through this process? People can then discover more about the range of possibilities for memory, rather be stuck in their own model. The group tries each others’ strategies on and learns new ideas from each other to enhance what they’re doing.

Learning is this way means that everyone in the room is an expert. As a result, the group is able to take ownership of their own behaviour and their reactions to others. They become more able to manage their own state and learn restraint (for the compulsive chatterers) and social confidence (for those that find group speaking hard). Whenever difficulties arise, we ask “what’s happening for you right now”? We invite reflection on what is happening and how others are responding in the same way or differently to you. We call this meta-commenting: it means the group can reflect on their own and each others’ behaviour and it very often diffuses conflict.

Systemic Modelling - why do it?

When working with socially excluded and disaffected groups, lack of resources is frequently a problem. In most support agencies courses are put together to deal with issues such as joblessness, lack of motivation, truancy, parenting skills etc. These courses are very often a sticking plaster, trying to compensate for huge gaps in peoples’ lives and resources. Most participants have multiple issues and cannot get what they need in the time available to them through funding restrictions and ‘silo’ support agencies. The courses are often therefore stretched, with most people seeking extra attention and time from facilitators and advisors or disengaging, realising that they’re not going to get what they need. We often find clients going from short course to short course, picking up titbits of good information but without the skills to bring it all together and move forwards in their lives.

Systemic modelling brings the group to life without dependency on the facilitator. Rather than 1 or 2 people trying to give advice and help to a group of 30, suddenly 30 people are peer coaching and supporting each other. This means that the opportunities for personal development and change are increased as is peoples’ confidence in their own wisdom and power to act. People leave the course able to carry on the work they’ve started without our input.

Systemic Modelling - some case studies and the kinds of results we get.

Skills4Success

Skills4 Success is a 6 day course for people of all backgrounds and ages who are looking for employment spread over 2-3 weeks.

We facilitate the group to become each others' coaches in setting outcomes for their work and career goals
They learn to communicate more clearly and with confidence, calling employers and visiting workplaces and more.
The aim is for people to leave the course with a clear sense of what they can do to improve their situation for themselves, without relying on the support of other agencies.
We provide the space and resources for them to get on with it - e.g. telephones, paper, business directories
These are practical sessions during which a surprising number usually find themselves a real job and leave!

Results

Over the last 4 years we have kept track of our participants at 4, 8 and 26 weeks.
Measuring job outcomes at 26 weeks, on average, 75% of past participants are still working, compared to 50% of our control group.
When we ran the course for college students, 100% of our participants also finished their courses, compared to 61% of our control group.

The Transition Project

The Transition Project is training for year 9 pupils to be peer mentors to year 7 students in their first term at secondary school.

We start with the idea of how you learn at your best. Firstly the group finds out their own structures for learning, such as what kind of environment works best for them, what kinds of teaching styles, information format and more.
They then find out about each others, and the group is set the task of learning to keep themselves and each other in a good learning state.
We use exercises and games to allow them to practise this and develop new skills.
Once they become adept at this we begin discussing what they can do for the year 7's to keep them in a good learning state when they might be frightened, lost, confused by moving from class to class, unsure of which friends are with them etc.
We then supervise 2 meetings for pairs of year 9s to meet groups of year 7s.

People who are part of the project say the following things:

Pupils Say:

What I used to do is...

“Mess about and not take it seriously”
“Start laughing and not take it seriously”
“Not put my hand up and get embarrassed”
“Just sit there and listen to other people”
“Say I couldn't do it but really I daren't”

What I do now is..

“Be part of the group without ruining it by laughing”
“Give my answer really quick”
“Answer questions”
“Join in with the whole group”
“I can work with my group and do it together”

Teachers say:

“After the project, transition became more pupil centred and more centred on the individual. I noticed the older pupils gaining in confidence for the quieter ones, an increase in maturity and willingness to talk. A notable change in attitude to adults and ability to listen to and take on board things these adults say”.

“I had vastly underestimated the pupils' ability to listen and learn without needing a very long settling in period at all”.

“It was a massive learning experience for myself and the other teachers. The feedback model and the use that Nancy and Zannie made of it helped me to develop what I already understood and to learn what I hadn't considered necessary”

Clean Feedback

A topic we train in most of our projects that has been the subject of a joint study with Liverpool John Moores University.
As part of our involvement in developing their sports development department as a learning organisation we trained 12 trainee teachers to give feedback that is clear, observable and based on reinforcing and developing elements of their practise.
The teachers used the model to coach each other and with their pupils and found the model vastly improved their ability to learn from each other and communicate with their pupils.
We published the initial results of the study the British Educational Research Association in September
You are welcome to read the full paper - for more information just contact nancy@trainingattention.co.uk

Working with a whole school system

We were invited to work at a school in a failing LEA which was achieving some of the lowest GCSE results in the country. We modelled the school culture, noticing within the system a lack of collaboration for positive ends.

Kids would collaborate in the classroom to 'bring the teacher down' but wouldn't support one another in any other ways.
Teachers would get together in breaks to discuss how all the problems in the school were the fault of others, but wouldn't turn up to meetings or training.
There was no mechanism to share good practice around the school.
The toilets were constantly locked due to vandalism meaning that the kids wouldn't drink water all day for fear of needing the loo.

We introduced systemic modelling across the school at different layers to instil collaborative learning - setting off about 10 different projects all with the same aim. For example:

We trained a group of staff (from different departments and seniority) to become peer coaches.
We worked with the leadership team on how to conduct collaborative meetings.
We worked with the kids during drama lessons to train them in helping each other to learn.

This system started to shift and when we returned, 1 year later, they had improved results, quieter corridors, less absenteeism and more fun in the classroom.

We measured the different types of language being used in the classroom before and after we arrived. Beforehand, 73% of questions asked by a teacher were closed, i.e. could only answered by yes or no. Most of the yes/no questions asked by the teacher were also answered by the teacher. This figure dropped dramatically by the time we left. A year afterwards, nearly 80% of questions were open - meaning that the teachers were asking questions that the pupils could give longer, more in depth responses. In addition, teachers used to direct their attention to the whole class together and afterwards they began reorganising the learning to happen in small groups or pair work. These example show the a shift from a purely top down, didactic style to a more collaborative group learning style. As a result behaviour in the school improved dramatically and all the staff and pupils that we interviewed said that the school was a much calmer place. Interestingly, his shift occurred even with teacher who had had no direct contact with us - indicating that the shift had occurred on a systemic level, through the whole school culture.

Bexley Care Trust

Bexley PCT wanted a course to improve the way its staff communicated across diverse boundaries. We ran 2 sessions of training for all members and insisted that they attend in diverse groups, with members from different seniorities and departments coming together for the day. In his way, we ensured that the delivery of the training was congruent with the outcomes. The participants we invited to pay attention to the diversity that existed in the training room and explore the different stereotypes they had for each other and themselves. We built rapport across the group so that participants could discuss prejudices that they had experienced and overcome both as the beholder and recipient. At every stage we used the different opinions of group members to illustrate how to overcome barriers in communication and as an example of the diversity in their teams.

Before the training, we distributed questionnaires which asked for peoples' opinions about the training. The respondents spoke mainly of categories such as race, gender and age.
In between each training a repeat of the same questionnaire elicited responses that were entirely self focused - how I am different from others, my style of thinking and responding. This shift indicated that participants were shifting their understanding of diversity from an external issue that was relevant only on an organisational level to an internal issue - something that was relevant to them.
After the second training, the same respondents were mentioning their work teams, how there was diversity between team members, people they thought they could never get along with but now they realised that they didn't now anything about them. This indicates a further shift from individual understanding to understanding others and knowing how to do something about differences in communication. People said:

“This is the first diversity course where I haven't walked away feeling discriminated against”

“This course made me accept that I personally do discriminate, to try to ask “why I do” in future, before I do it, in order to try and prevent it”

Systemic Modelling - how could a systemic project work?

In all our large projects we have a principle of sustainability. We won't do anything to a participant that we can't teach them to do for themselves and we won't run a project ongoing in a system without training members of the system to continue it in our absence. We prefer to use a cascade model of training:

We design and run the interventions ourselves
We identify people to train up to run the interventions, ideally a mix from previous participants and other organisational stakeholders including at least 1 senior member to champion the initiative and allocate resources once we've gone
Those trainees experience the process for themselves by being participants on the course if they haven't already
They co-facilitate with us until they are competent (up to 3 courses depending on experience)
They run a course with coaching and feedback from us
They continue to run the intervention but begin identifying trainees themselves to build up the capacity and cover the natural losses of turnover and promotion for the training team.
At this point we consider the system independent from us and look forward hearing what great ideas people come up with as they develop on their own.

The case studies above demonstrate our familiarity with training others to do what we're doing as part of the intervention. We've tried and tested this in a variety of settings and the above process has been honed by our success and failure. We can do it with specific, measureable outcome such as Skills4Success or as part of a wider culture change initiative.

It is essential to the process of systemic modelling that the 'models' (i.e. the people) in the room are sufficiently different in their thinking and behaviour to generate curiosity and new information. As such we always work with diverse groups of between 8 and 20 people at a time as these numbers provide the individuality we need.

The outcome for the groups can be varied, but essentially people come away from out projects with an enhanced ability to know themselves, communicate confidently with people who are different to them, manage their own behaviour and achieve the goals they set themselves.