3 Simple Strategies to Avoid Power Struggles

Today we are going to be talking all about power struggles. We’ve all been there, in the middle of a power struggle wondering how we got there in the first place.  

 I know we have all been there, but on the off chance you have never been in a power struggle, they are basically any instance in which you have an unproductive back and forth with a student. This can look like you asking a student to do something and them responding with no and you two go back and forth without any progress toward a desired outcome. They are not a great place to be. The best strategy is to avoid getting in a power struggle in the first place, and here are my three go to strategies to do this successfully. 

First, take a problem solving approach and invite the student to problem solve with you. For example, if you are asking the student to transition from area to another and they do not want to you might say “hey (insert student name) it is time for small group, what are your thoughts on how we can get there?” It might take a little while, and often does, but you can help guide the student through a problem solving approach and agreeing to a solution together. Basically you are helping the student by providing some structure and choice to engage in the appropriate/requested behavior. Let’s walk through another example, say you work with older students and you have to keep reminding them to put their phones away. You might say something like “hey everyone, I don’t want to have to keep reminding you to put your phones away, how can we solve this?” Listen to all of their ideas and come up with a collaborative plan together. You might be surprised with some of the ideas they come up with. I have seen this work on both the individual and group level. The key is, when you think you might enter a power struggle, invite the student to help problem solve a solution. 

Another strategy would be to provide a non verbal prompt. This can be a written prompt on a post it or maybe a gestural prompt or a signal to the student. Either way, if you are engage in nonverbal behavior, the student is less likely to produce a verbal response back. Therefore, avoiding a power struggle. This might look like putting a post it on a student’s desk that says “we are working on our math, you can play your game at lunch.” All too often when we give verbal prompts we invite that verbal response back and it might not lead us in a good direction.

The last strategy also involves how we deliver prompts as well. One strategy that can work well is to prompt around the behavior. What I mean by that is when you are prompting, avoid including the undesired behavior in the prompt. Often when we include the undesired behavior in the prompt students feel called out, criticized and become defensive. If we prompt around the behavior and include the behavior we want to see, this could help us avoid a power struggle. For example instead of saying stop talking across the room to your friend you might say “hey I don’t want you to miss this, let’s flip to this page so we can stay on track, you can talk to your friend later. This might not be the way you are used to prompting and whenever you can include the desired behavior you are much more likely to see success. I would give it a try and come up with some common prompts you give and reword them to prompt around the undesired behavior. This might help increase your use of the prompts in the future and avoid those power struggles. 

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
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