Intro to Reframing 2002-2

The Major Goals in The Major Goals in Learning about Learning about ReframingReframing

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 Organizations Are By Their Very Nature, Very Very Nature, Very Ambiguous PlacesAmbiguous 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

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

It’s Often Hard to Actually Know What’s Happening in

Organizations

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 Organizations Are Filled With Filled With Paradox (Socrates: “(Socrates: “One thing I know is that I know One thing I know is that I know nothing.”)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. disciplineSo 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..

What Is What Is Really Going On? Really Going On?

Reflecting and Observing: Leadership as Diagnosis, Standing Back and Collecting Valid Info

Using Frames: Leadership as Organizing and Analysis

Choosing Appropriate Actions: Leadership as Making Choices Among Alternatives

Behaving Effectively: Leadershipas Skillful Action

Choosing and Acting

Understanding and Explaining

What’s What’s Really Really

Happening?Happening?

ReframingReframing

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 Frames That Managers UseUseand the Assumptions of and the Assumptions of Each FrameEach 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 Multiple Frame Analysis Is Is GoodnessGoodness

Leaders who use multiple frame perspectives are more effective than those who use few.

Metaphor for organization

Machine,network,factory

Family,livingorganism

J ungle,zoo

Theater,carnival

Key concepts

Rules,goals,policies

Needs,relation-ships,skills

Compe-titionpower,“offi cepolitics”

Meaningritual,heroes,cere-mony

Leadership idea

Director,producer

Develop-er,mentor,empower-er

Broker,advocate

Inspirer

Leadership challenge

Attuneanddesignstructure

Align organdhumanneeds

Developpowerbase

Create:faithsoulmeaning

Overview of the Four Frames

Structural Human Political Symbolic Resource