The Power of Reframing

The Power of Reframing Intro to Reframing 2002-2

The Major Goals in Learning about Reframing • TO HELP YOU BECOME A BETTER DIAGNOISTIAN ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: • By encouraging you to appreciate the diagnostic value of frame analysis • TO HELP YOU BECOME A MORE COMPETENT LEADER: • By providing insights--by frame--into skillful leadership action by frames

Organizations Are By Their Very Nature, Very Ambiguous Places • We confuse the formal with the informal • Political behavior often obfuscates • Feelings are often not shared so important affective information is often unknown or misconstrued • Things change while we try to understand them

It’s Often Hard to Actually Know What’s Happening in Organizations THE FOLKS AT THE TOP ARE OFTEN THE LAST TO KNOW WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON • Organizations are confusing places, filled with ambiguity and uncertainty Yet managers value certainty, rationality, and control while fearing & avoiding ambiguity. Most managers assume their organizations are rational places. • Organizations are filled with paradox Yet managers often rely on one “best answer” and are often rendered unconscious by the turmoil and resistances they themselves create. Most managers do not know how to think paradoxically

F. Scott Fitzgerald on Paradox “ The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two or more opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” ATTRIBUTION:F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), U.S. author. first published in Esquire (New York, Feb. 1936). The Crack-Up, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (1945).

Organizations Are Filled With Paradox(Socrates: “One thing I know is that I know nothing.”) We get mixed signals from our bosses: • They want flexibility, change, and adaptation but measure effectiveness by predetermined goals. • They want teamwork but reward individual effort. • They profess quality but really want efficiency. There is always creative tension between: • Innovation vs. control • Freedom vs. discipline So we have the greatest paradox of all: • Leaders are necessary for teamwork but their very existence threatens the teamwork leaders desire (and vice versa). Etc..

Frames As Tools of Diagnosis As Skill Sets for Action Useable Knowledge

Leader as Doer Leader as Observer

What Is Really Going On? Behaving Effectively: Leadership as Skillful Action Reflecting and Observing: Leadership as Diagnosis, Standing Back and Collecting Valid Info What’s Really Happening? Choosing Appropriate Actions: Leadership as Making Choices Among Alternatives Using Frames: Leadership as Organizing and Analysis Understanding and Explaining Choosing and Acting

Reframing • We frame our experience. • When our frames fit the circumstances we face, we believe we can understand and shape human experience. • When the frames don’t fit, we freeze our experience into distorted pictures that trap us in our misconceptions. • Four Frames of Leadership • Open Ended Questions to Ask by Frame • OFS Student Survey Questionnaire • Criteria for Frame Analysis • Assumptions of the Four Frames • Leadership Identified as a "Framed" Set of Competencies • Here is a statement about reframing as I understand it.

Frames That Managers Useand the Assumptions of Each Frame • Structural “The world is orderly” • Political “Conflict is inevitable” • Human resource “We are social animals” • Symbolic “What matters is what is meaningful” http://bloch.umkc.edu/classes/heimovicsr/Frames/four_frameworks_for_leadership.htm

Multiple Frame Analysis Is Goodness • Leaders who use multiple frame perspectives are more effective than those who use few.

Overview of the Four Frames Structural Human Political Symbolic Resource

The Power of Reframing