Barrack Obama’s speech at the opening of the Obama center calling on Americans to heal our divisions reminds me of a moment in my career as a consultant to independent schools when a very frustrated head of school called me for help. “Our English department is driving me and everybody else crazy,” he said. “They are  good teachers but they don’t agree on anything. It’s not just that the traditionalists can’t abide the progresives and vice versa. They argue about what being a progressive  or traditionalist  means.  Passions are high, teaching philosophies are religous creeds. There is no coherent approach. The kids are confused and so are their parents So I’ve rented a comfortable, capacious house in the Sierra foothills, for a weekend and hired a cook and told them to go there and ‘heal thyselves.'”

I designed a straightforward retreat that started Friday evening ( after a delicious dinner and good wine) with a warmup in which each of the six teachers would spend fifteen minutes talking about their lives when they were in high school. I promised we’d end at nine o’clock.  Saturday  morning we’d list and prioritizie the issues they needed to resolve. After lunch, we would resolve each issue. We’d close by each person saying whatever they wanted about “What happened this weekend.”

Lo and behold, on Friday night when the first person had talked for fifteen minutes,  none of her listeners wanted her to stop! I was just as surprised and happy as she was. I told her, “Go on, keep talking as long as you want.”  She did and when she was through, the teachers wanted to know more. They asked questions, talked about her answers and all of a sudden it was nine o’clock.

It took all but the last hour and a half of Saturday for the other five teachers to talk about their time as a kid in high school. “Oh my goodnes.” one of them said, looking at the clock. “We haven’t done any work yet!”

“Oh yes you have,” I said.

In the remaining time, they made a lot of headway toward resolving the issues, and agreed to keep going in future meetings to produce a document stating the department’s philosophy and its goals. The jist of the final  session was their surprise that now they enjoyed working together.

A few weeks later the head of school called me. “What did you with them?” he asked. “They actually like each other. They are working together.” 

“It must have been the wine,” I said. “Because I didn’t do anything. I just sat back and listened.”