The 1 Leadership Superpower You Need

Each of us has a vision of an ideal version of ourselves. Your ideal self may be an accomplished, respected leader -or- a difference maker for people in need -or- a CEO building a revolutionary company brick by brick. Yet there are days when you can’t fix a simple problem, or you feel more like an amateur than a fearless leader.?

We all have moments that highlight the duality of how we envision ourselves versus where we feel we are in the present.

For example, there are probably days when:

• You feel more like a failure than a success.
• You aspire to be cool under pressure, yet feel a lack of control.
• You envision being clear-headed, yet act indecisively.
• You are full of worry.

What’s the biggest roadblock preventing you from closing your duality gap? Most commonly, it’s?how you think.

We humans are fantastic at getting in our own way. We obsess over hypotheticals, conjure events and meaning that don’t exist, and worry about outcomes we can’t control. We allow our emotional state to rule (and overrule!) our rational selves. We ascribe meaning to others’ words and actions without regard for data, facts, or intent. The effects of this thinking can slow growth, damage careers, and cause capable team members to flee.

It’s not totally your fault.?A recent?Forbes? article ?reports that self-sabotage often occurs in small, almost undetectable moments. And no one is immune.?Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer once confessed he constantly suffered from creative paralysis due to his success. “It wasn’t just me sitting down to write,” Mailer said. “It was?Norman Mailer?sitting down to write. I had to live up to?him.”????

Wouldn’t it be great if there was one straightforward technique—a superpower of sorts—you could use to short-circuit your tendency to get in your own way? And wouldn’t it be even better if you could also use it to help your team do the same?

There is, and it’s called?reframing.

Reframing is a mindset and influence technique that you can use to help yourself and others. The real prize of reframing is what psychologists call?behavioral flexibility —increasing the breadth of your thinking and of your potential actions at any moment in time. This is the key to being able to “unstick” yourself and others when you (often unconsciously) fall prey to your thought-narrowing, option-limiting human defaults.?

After I learned how to do this for myself, I began helping my coaching clients employ it, enabling them to move past what often seemed like insurmountable obstacles. Reframing has become the most powerful tool in my leadership toolbox—and it’s one you need in yours, too.

Reframing Defined

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” -- Abraham Lincoln

Reframing changes the meaning of a person, place, thing, behavior, or event. Since all meaning is context-dependent, when you deliberately shift context, you can change the meaning of any statement or event. Reframing can also assign new meaning to old experiences. It’s a powerful mechanism to increase behavioral flexibility.

There are two types of reframing:

• Context Reframing—Context reframing changes the circumstances where a specific behavior would or wouldn’t be appropriate. For example, if you were irritated by a junior team member who constantly inundates you with questions, I could reframe your context of their behavior by saying: “Wow, what curiosity! It sounds like you should be grooming them for a role in sales. After all, most salespeople I know don’t ask nearly enough questions.” In this case, I’ve reframed your perspective of their annoying behavior (asking too many questions) as a valuable asset in another context (sales).
• Content (or Meaning) Reframing—With this reframing, you ask:?what else could this mean??and then list plausible alternatives. For example, many people struggle to bounce back from rejection or failure because their initial framing of the event results in a direct hit to their ego. I help my coaching clients reframe rejection or failure by pointing out that there is always something to learn. After all, our experiences of rejection and failure contain information and clues with the power to lead us to create future success. In other words,?there is no failure; only feedback!

Reframing can be used to change your own perspective relative to thoughts, experiences, or events that hinder your effectiveness as a leader (or as a partner, a spouse, a parent, a teacher, a coach, etc.). You can also use it to influence others by helping them see things in a new way and perhaps change their opinion or stance on an issue. It’s also a handy coaching tool as you?coach your team for growth .

How to Reframe Past Negative Events

“Everything can be taken from a man but the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

-- Viktor Frankl

The way we conceptualize the past, present, and future informs our beliefs—in turn influencing our decisions, choices, and actions. Psychologist and Stanford professor emeritus Philip Zimbardo conducted extensive research on the psychology of time and found that each of us has a unique “time perspective” that determines how we view events. Some of us obsess over the past, others live for the moment, many worry about the future—and each of us process our thoughts and emotions differently.?

For example, let’s consider two people who recently vacationed together at a beach resort. It would be reasonable to think that they experienced the same events as they traveled. But when you speak to each of them individually after the trip, they tell very different stories: one gushes about the beautiful beaches and elegant restaurants, and the other complains about the high winds and pricy drinks. We’ve all experienced some version of this—remembering something quite differently than another person who was right there with us at the time.

But how can this be?

To effectively reframe past negative events, it’s important to acknowledge that emotionally-charged memories contain no facts. Rather, our recollections are literally stories we tell ourselves. This is why two people who were vacationing together can have totally different recollections of what happened! As soon as you recognize this, you gain the power to begin reframing the way you tell these recalled stories to yourself and to others, and transform your perspective on the past into an asset leading to your future.

As a leader, how do you frame past events? Do you tend to think about them positively or in a more negative light? Leveraging your past experiences—even highly negative ones—to create your future provides an incredible advantage. In fact, bestselling humorist David Sedaris has based his entire career around positively reframing past negative events. “If somebody treats me poorly, I write about it, and I’m so glad I was there in that moment,”?Sedaris told?The New York Times .?“It’s like they’re handing me money.”

My friend?David Rendall?realized the value of reframing when he began his career. As a child, David exhibited classic symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). He couldn’t sit still in class and was in trouble constantly. As he likes to say, he was every school principal’s worst nightmare! Though very smart, David grew up believing that his ADD was a weakness that would prevent him from achieving any real success in life—sadly, a notion that was continually reinforced by most of his teachers and administrators. When he eventually entered the business world, he found his troublesome traits from childhood were a liability there as well.?

One day, David realized that though his ADD made him unhappy in an office setting, it made him well-suited for public speaking where he would be able to talk freely as the center of others’ attention. That’s exactly what he decided to pursue. He began researching how others overcame their ADD and discovered that our greatest weaknesses can also be our greatest strengths. The result? His book,?The Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness .?David’s become highly regarded speaker with engagements around the world—all because he reframed his past and leveraged it to build the future he wanted.

To transform your thinking about the past, ask yourself these reframing questions:

• What if I’m wrong about a particular belief I have about myself?
• What was the good that came from a bad prior experience?
• Are there alternative explanations for events or different ways to look at what happened in my past?

Just like David, exploring the answers to these questions can be the key to your future success!

How to Help Others Reframe Their Perspective

“It’s only a thought, and a thought can be changed.” -- Louise Hay

My client, Daniel, was stuck. Although he was recently promoted to be the CEO of a successful $100m firm, he struggled to make decisions that were required to scale the business. His indecision was so profound, he felt guilty even?considering?an executive assistant to support him and two other senior leaders! As we spoke about his situation, Daniel labeled himself a “doer,” referencing his work ethic as the factor that he believed made him successful at building the business. He then said something that ultimately helped unlock more behavioral flexibility: “Mark, everyone I know who’s successful is a?doer. And now I’m supposed to be a?leader?and not a?doer.?I don’t understand how that can work!”

Daniel had opened the door for me to contextually reframe his perspective. “Who exactly are you comparing yourself to?” I asked. “I bet none of the successful doers you know are the CEOs of Fortune 1,000 firms.” I went on to suggest that he was using the wrong comparison set of people to benchmark his behavior as the leader of a $100m firm.

Daniel thought for a moment, then said: “You know what, Mark? You’re absolutely right! The doers I know are successful project and program managers, not CEOs” And, just like that, Daniel reframed the context of his comparison set and increased his behavioral flexibility.

You can help your team increase their behavioral flexibility this way, too. As you?coach your team members for growth , try to identify patterns of thinking and behavior that hold them back—the same way I identified Daniel’s unproductive pattern of comparing his performance as a CEO to other individuals in vastly different roles.?

To help someone else reframe their perspective, ask yourself these questions:

• How is their definition of the [problem] situation restricting their behavioral flexibility?
• What perspective can I add through context or content reframing?
• What examples and/or analogies can I use to make the reframing more concrete?

Before long, your newfound leadership superpower will help your team move past their current patterns, get “un-stuck” more readily, and accelerate their growth.

Conclusion

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.”

-- William James

Reframing increases behavioral flexibility.

Whether you’re a CEO at the top of your game, an entrepreneur just getting started or anywhere in-between, your behavioral flexibility as a leader correlates to your ability to get out of your own way and to help others do the same.?

Begin your journey to mastery by acting on yourself. Become more aware of situations where reframing the content or context of an event can help you discover a new perspective.?

Use my?Reframe Your Past Tool ??to accelerate your progress. This free, easy-to-use tool walks you through the reframing process for a past event in your life that you remember more negatively than positively. Leverage Your Past is one of eight Activators from my book,?Activators: A CEO’s Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done .??Check it out for?a deeper dive.

As you become adept at reframing, your duality gap will decrease. This is because, more and more often, your feelings and actions will be in better alignment with your vision of your ideal self. With mastery, it truly feels like a superpower!

From there, use the same techniques to help your team accelerate their growth.

Your experiences of success, failure, triumph, and trauma don’t define you. Rather—and reframed—it’s what you?do?with those experiences that makes the difference.

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