by Barbara Barron | Posted April 2nd, 2025 | Subscribe to this newsletter
If you’re anything like me, you’re struggling to stay positive and sturdy during these tumultuous times. It feels like the “fight, flight, or freeze” response is everywhere. Sometimes within me, all during the same 20 minutes!
Recently, I joined a webinar featuring Deb Dowling, the Executive Director of the California Association of Independent Schools.
She used the term “flocking” as a helpful alternative to the familiar fight, flight , or freeze response we often have when we experience perceived or real threats. She was making the point that independent schools, by their very natures, have the potential to provide us with that option. I loved that and went looking for more information
I found the following article:
What If Instead of Flight, Freeze, Fawn or Fight, We “Flock”?
The author also includes the notion of “fawn.” Her definition: to people-please in ways where we overextend ourselves. We forget to hold our boundaries, and rely on codependency to get us through the rough times.
Okay, so not an ideal response.
I’ve also heard “faint” as another response. Think of those goats who, counterintuitively, stiffen like a board and fall over when approached by a coyote.
Flocking, is, instead, a coming together. Our author’s definition:
“the use of solidarity, allyship, connection, and community to resource ourselves and to create positive experiences. It is through kinship and collectivism where we are able to find support, share resources, generate thrivability.”
Our schools, in their best moments, are places of connection and community. As I’ve written before, culture is community; our communities are expressions of our culture. Hand in hand. If we create spaces of kinship, where support and shared resources are available, there is the possibility of “thrivability.”
I want that! Don’t you?
Have you subscribed to this newsletter yet? It only takes a minute.
In my consulting with schools, regardless of the project details, the effort to build a strong and joyful culture is at the heart of our work. That is what I believe and have seen good advancement programs accomplish. Everyday, it is those of us in advancement who are on the lookout for examples of gifts in action, volunteers joyfully engaged in the work of caring for our schools, students dug in and locked on with teachers who are passionate about their discipline.
This is all evidence of what we might deem to be “thrivability”. That’s what we want to be able to report on to our donors, since it is their generosity that makes so much of that possible.
What else might “flocking” look like?
Our author says:
1. Noticing and aligning
2. Providing safety, security, and support
3. Promoting cohesion
Again, good school cultures do all of these. New families find their way because they are noticed and offered a space and a seat. Faculty and staff offer students safety, security, and support. And the school community promotes connection and even cohesion.
The most beautiful visual for this is the phenomenon called murmuration. It’s breathtaking. And brilliant.
“Starlings’ murmuration consists of a flock moving in sync with one another, engaging in clear, consistent communication and exhibiting collective leadership and deep, deep trust. Every individual bird focuses attention on their seven closest neighbors and thus manage a larger flock cohesiveness and synchronicity (and times upwards of over a million birds).”
– Sierre Pickett
Stunning.
Opportunities to flock
As you work your way through the very busy spring calendars, amid a seemingly endless barrage of confusing or worrying news, I wish for you opportunities to witness and experience flocking.
Our first stop can be our school’s mission. That statement is (or should be) the unifying concept that brings families, faculty, and staff to want to be part of your school. Within it lies some of the values you share. Find the words or phrases that inspire you most. Reflect on them. Talk about with it others to find the common threads that animate it – and you.
Whenever I feel lost, returning to the values I strive to live by centers me.
Look for other flocking opportunities. Do it with your teams (do they need a chance to blow off some steam together?). Do it with your colleagues in other departments – even if it’s a stolen moment to walk around the block. Maybe you’ll find it if you slip into the dark theater during play rehearsal or at the back of a music class. Or by joining others in this fine profession to share what’s working for you and them.
I’m better for knowing this response could be my choice in stressful moments. I can choose to look for and create flocking. Join me!
Thanks for all you’re doing.
Barbara Barron
[email protected]
Share this post:
BARBARA BARRON is one of the most respected and highly sought-after independent advancement professionals in the country, having worked with dozens of schools in every corner of the United States.
She has raised over $20 million for schools where she served as the Director of Development. Barbara is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and presenter who currently advises dozens of schools in various capacities. She is considered a thought leader in the world of advancement, with her writing widely shared by professionals in development offices worldwide.
More Advancement Articles
