Leadership talk moves: Meetings as setlists
Lessons from Taylor Swift on applying setlist strategy to leadership conversations
I just cleaned out my desk the other day, and at my wife’s advice I keep a “memory box.” It was special to find an old setlist from my band’s last gig—amongst the old coaching pictures, drawings from my children, and conference badges. I’ve been thinking a lot about setlists in the context of instructional leadership, and conversational talk moves.
Some of that congealed this summer when the sweet little children who live here were immersed in the three-plus hour Taylor Swift concert movie. That’s when I realized she was doing some setlist-type things that might be relevant to consider from a leadership talk perspective.
What’s a setlist?
If you’ve been to a concert with a die-hard fan, it’s that tattered piece of paper that was taped to the floor of the stage that helped the musicians know what songs they were playing when. Beyond that, sometimes it’s reminding the bass player what key that 12-bar blues will be in, or the guitar player which fret to put the capo. It was neat to watch Lucinda Williams (my fav living songwriter this side of Dylan) do this live.
What I noticed in the Taylor concert was this— She’s obviously an accomplished, trained, experienced and professional performer. Playing and singing for an hour is hard enough, so that’s a feat in itself. But it’s more interesting to think about some of my favorite dialogic concepts here: context and audience (the addressee in Bakhtinian sense).
We often think about conversational structures in schooling and instructional leadership as protocols or agendas or steps in a technocratic cycle. Imagine if Taylor talked about her “protocol hijinks.” What’s revealed by the example above is how her performance is always contingent upon the location and the audience—the context and the addressees.
What’s that mean for leadership talk?
An example I often use in work with educational leaders is the hypothetical: I know you have seen two different individuals take the same agenda and protocol to two diff teams and encounter varying results. Take PLCs for example— folks can be following the same framework, using the same template documents, and come not even close to one another in outcomes or results.
This suggests the dialogic autonomy of the leaders, and reveals the primacy of talk in the way work is done—something Fernando Flores work on Conversations for Action applies meaningfully. Think about some things leaders are recommended to cultivate that are beyond the agenda: trust, compassion, empathy, commitment, transparency, humility, etc. The reality of these educator talk events is that the agenda varies—depending upon the context and the audience.
This isn’t a new idea; folks do check-ins and greetings whether they’re formally called for (which is a weird, technocratic thing if you think about it), or informally as an aside. This is just like the musical performer you went to see when they say “Hello New Orleans!” and make a comment about something local to connect with the crowd. This happens all the time in educational talk—and we can refine our work by being more aware of it.
So, what does that mean for my practice?
Here’s what I do before meetings, and it’s the same thing I did when I’d prep to perform for an audience. Make a setlist; this is different from an agenda. I simply write out maybe five to ten words or phrases I’m intending to talk through with my interlocutor. They’re not in a set order; this has many benefits. A setlist does not have time allocations, is oftentimes not spoken about as a linear, necessary progression of discrete items, and allows for a different degree of adaptability, responsivity and flexibility.
Let’s return to the Taylor examples above: A setlist, unlike an agenda, is more focused on creating a cohesive and engaging experience for the audience. It allows for more flexibility and responsiveness to the audience's needs and reactions.
When creating a setlist, you can consider factors like:
Audience expectations and preferences
Pacing and flow of the "performance"
Incorporating a mix of different elements (e.g. technocratic and adaptive)
Leaving room for improvisation and audience interaction
Transitioning smoothly between different parts of the "set"
This approach can help you create a more dynamic and engaging experience, compared to a rigid agenda. It allows you to adapt and respond to the needs of the audience in the moment, rather than strictly adhering to a predetermined schedule.
Ditch the timers?
I’m not expecting everyone to toss out time allocations, but it totally is a pet peeve of mine when facilitators and teachers use obnoxious loud timers to help everybody remember that three minutes is up. That strikes me as something better accomplished through a teacherly talk move— “We’re coming back together in thirty seconds.”
But considering the ubiquitous talk environments of schools, educational leaders would be better served by applying a more realistic, responsive, adaptive and humane approach to conversational meetings with others. Next time you’re prepping a meeting, make a setlist and try to flex it around dependent upon context and audience.