Learning from the Persuasive Genius
of Great Leaders
“Mike, I know you are a star
player,” said the senior executive to his newest vice president. “But there’s
something I want you to think about.” He placed a single sheet of paper on the
table between them: a cartoon of two people in a boat. One is bailing furiously
as water pours in through a hole in the bottom, while the other sits high up on
the other end, saying, “Well, at least the hole isn’t in my end.” After a brief
pause, the CEO continued, “This is what is actually happening when your group
makes decisions without considering the impact on the company as a whole. I
know you trimmed customer support expenses significantly last year. But now I
hear we are losing customers because their experience is not up to par. Does
that make good business sense to you?”
The particulars of this conversation
are a composite of many examples I have seen of great leaders creating
“lightbulb” moments. The executive in this story did not rely on facts alone to
make his point. Instead, he offered a new frame for what those facts meant. In
my 20 years as an executive coach and advisor, I’ve found that such “framing”
is one of the common threads behind great leaders’ persuasive genius—both in
formal presentations and one-on-one conversations. Simply put, a frame is a
lens for interpreting events, a way of making sense of complex, messy
experiences, so we can communicate and take action. As Gail Fairhurst wrote in The Power of Framing (Jossey-Bass, 2010), framing is “defining the situation
here and now in ways that connect with others.” The good news is that it is a
technique that anyone can learn.
First described by linguists such as
George Lakoff, framing is referenced in a wide variety of contexts, such
as problem solving, negotiations, mass communications, and political theory. Clay Christensen, Matt
Marx, and Howard Stevenson wrote in
Harvard Business Review that when groups share common frames or mental
models, they are able to communicate and take action more quickly than those
who have to review every detail of a situation or strategy. For example, if a
team member says, “Let’s not get too academic about this,” the group is likely
to cut the conversation short and move to a decision. Even a short phrase or a
colorful image, such as, “Is the competition eating our lunch?” can activate an
entire world in the listener’s mind. As Eric Ries has said, when the CEO of a lean startup tells her team it is time
to “pivot,” the team recognizes a whole host of implied actions. Frame a
negotiation as “win-win” rather than “win-lose” and you are likely to improve
outcomes for all parties. Even more astonishing, the right frames can actually
prime us to be more intelligent. Malcolm Gladwell wrote in
Blink (Little, Brown, 2005) about Dutch
researchers who found that thinking about yourself as a college professor for
five minutes can improve your score in a game of Trivial Pursuit by 30 percent
compared with your score if you picture yourself as a soccer hooligan for the
same amount of time.
Frame a negotiation as “win-win” and
you are likely to improve outcomes for all parties.
Yet as powerful as frames are, they
can also create a box around our thinking—narrowing our options, limiting our
perspective, and ignoring critical aspects of the situation. Because they
simplify reality, frames inevitably highlight some factors and hide others. As
conditions shift, those hidden factors may contain important clues about risks
or new opportunities. For example, in my opening story, Mike was focused on
cutting expenses, and within the frame of being a “star player,” his actions
made perfect sense. But his boss recognized that Mike’s actions affected the
customer experience, the key driver of the company’s success, and within this
larger frame it became clear that Mike had to change course.
This is why great leaders look for
empowering frames and communicate them explicitly, to ensure others understand
their intent and interpret their actions through the new lens, rather than old
frames. For example, I met one leader whose collaborative efforts had been a
source of friction with his colleagues. According to their frames of “who owned
what,” he had been “encroaching” on their territory. But when he proactively
framed his actions as “sharing intelligence” about external competitive
threats, his outreach was viewed as a valuable aid.
Leaders also need to be inclusive in
their framing, describing a situation as neutrally as possible. If we ignore
others’ frames or try to replace them, we are likely to spark conflict.
Instead, a frame that describes our shared experience as a “third story” can be
liberating. For example, a leader whose team had been in a conflict related to
a change initiative opened a meeting by saying, “The way I see it, we are
working on our airplane while we fly it. Does anyone else feel that way?” The
entire team laughed in recognition, tensions were diffused, and real work could
begin.
Finally, an empowering frame calls
to mind the magnitude of a goal and gives it meaning. “I believe it will take
us 300 years to get to full sustainability as a society,” said one CEO. “Our
goal is to build a foundation for future generations.” This perspective gave
his team the staying power to persist on a very difficult goal.
Every conversation, every
communication, and every decision begins with a frame. When we provide a
context that expands our thinking, includes others, and gives meaning to our
efforts, we help spark creativity and insight in ourselves, our peers, and our
leaders. Perhaps that explains the old Disney company joke encouraging its
animators and designers to challenge a limiting frame:
“How many Imagineers does it take to
change a lightbulb?”
“Does it have to be a
lightbulb?”
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