One Surface Issue, Two Underlying Challenges: A Diagnostic for Every Instructional Leader

Your conversation with a teacher looked productive.

The teacher was engaged, asking good questions and leaving with a clear next step.

You sat with the notes after the conversation, feeling a disconnect between the productivity in the conversation and what would happen next. There was a pattern from the previous three times together – productive-looking conversations with clear next steps, but then no real change in the teacher’s practice.

You want the best for this teacher and the teacher wants to improve, so a question is gnawing at you: “We are committed and my feedback seems precise; what is happening?”

This piece follows from Philosophy, Learning, and AI Agents – The Structure Under Every AI Interaction, which introduced the philosophical structure for both AI agents and leadership; we are going deeper into leadership.

One of the main challenges as a leader is to figure out the thinking by the other person.

The way the other person is thinking comes from the conceptual models in their Personal World 2, which interact with the Physical World 1 and the Conceptual World 3 in their own unique way. (These are the arrows on the right side of the diagram.)

They notice some amount of information from the Physical World 1, using that information to test and refine their conceptual models.

They have also acquired knowledge and skills from the Conceptual World 3, applying those knowledge and skills to every situation.

By having conversations with the other person and seeing how they act in situations, you as the leader can understand the other person’s thinking.

Back to the self-conversation after the meeting with the teacher: “Maybe my feedback is pointed at the wrong place?”

“The next step was for the teacher to intervene earlier when students go off-task.”

“There are signals from body language and facial expressions when students change their focus. Does the teacher see these signals? What does the teacher notice about these signals? This is a challenge for the arrow between the teacher’s Personal World 2 and the Physical World 1, so I should check that this challenge is helped by my feedback.”

“Or, maybe they see the signals – but do not know how to intervene. What kind of intervention strategies have they learned through our conversations and their personal work? This could be a confidence issue for using those strategies or a need to learn about different strategies. This is the arrow between the teacher’s Personal World 2 and the Conceptual World 3; I should check that this challenge is helped by my feedback.”

By understanding how the teacher’s Personal World 2 interacts with the Physical World 1 and Conceptual World 3, the leader can diagnose the teacher’s challenge more clearly – improving both their leadership and the teacher’s work!

Want to analyze a challenge faced by your team? Take the Learning Breakdown Diagnostic, a scenario-based tool that helps you identify a breakdown and take steps to improve you and your team.