Reframing: Better Problem Solving Through Better Communication

As you know, everyone has patterns of behavior, thought and speech that they follow. These patterns persist despite the fact they have negative impact on people's lives, despite their attempts to change them.

Teams and organizations have habitual patterns as well: collective agreements about "well this the way we've always done it," or "this is the way we think about that."

Common sense to you why it's so difficult to fundamentally change the collective culture of an organization, and why it's so important to establish a healthy culture for a new business or team from the start.

Patterns Are Part of Human Nature

If you're like me (and most people) you find yourself getting stuck in ruts. Maybe you started an exercise routine, stuck with it for a week, but come next Monday you find yourself gorging on Cheetos while drinking a Coke and watching reruns of M.A.S.H. (maybe that's just me). And you say to yourself "Hey exercise doesn't fit into my schedule."

You fall back to the thoughts, and behavior patterns that at some point in your life worked to solve your problems. But as you know, these thoughts and behaviors no longer get the job done. They don't solve your problems anymore.

You become a prisoner of your own thoughts and actions. You fall into the ruts of how you do things because that's the way you've always done them.

Surprisingly, this isn't a bad thing (if your thoughts and actions are positive and empowering). But if your thoughts and actions are detrimental to your health, obviously you should think about looking at them differently.

The human mind is an amazing computer, always interpreting our surroundings, you can't shut it off. But the roots of self-limiting thoughts and self-destructive behavior is important to take good look at.

As long as these default problematic patterns remain, the deeper they are embedded into your psyche or the culture of your team. The more embedded the harder your habits are to change. Obviously, these patterns can have detrimental consequences on your professional relationships and your career.

There is hope!

Rather than remaining a slave to your thoughts and actions, you can use this process and techniques to reinterpret the world around you, and help improve your response in highly-emotional or stressful situations where people's nerves are bubbling close to the surface.

As Anthony Robbins says: "A signal has meaning only in the frame or context which we perceive it."

So you're seeing how this process can help you personally, but how do we apply the reframing process to our team or organization?

To really get the core behavior and thought patterns of any group, you must take a close look at the context, the environment surrounding their thought and behaviors.

Reframing can be use to improve relationships, build teamwork, and develop more effective communication patterns.

You can look at the world around you differently, You can see opportunity where before all you saw was difficulty, liability, and hardship.

Reframing, when done well, is a tool that will allow you to add value to any individual, any team, any situation.

Reframing is the ultimate communication skill.

Great leaders are great at looking at situations from different angles. They can take any situation, extract the core meaning from it, and spin it into an opportunity for their team's success.

Great leaders take an emotionally charged audience, and use the energy to reframe people's perception to see how your plan in beneficial to them.

Reframing can change how you lead people. It gives you the ability to reconnect to your team by changing your perspective of the people around you.