Relieve Pressure for Your Team with this Simple Reframing Technique

A Powerful Way for Leaders to Alleviate angst in the workplace ASAP.

Your team won't admit it, but you see it in their eyes and hear it in their conversations: your team is drowning in stress. While they are on the brink of burnout, you're stuck in the messy middle of corporate hierarchy, absorbing pressure from above while shielding your team below.

You’ve tried to reduce the stress for your team, but so far, nothing has worked. The C-Suite or Board of Directors keep sending changes, and the workload is overflowing. It’s exhausting. You’ll endure, but your top talent? They have options. What can you do to relieve the pressure so you can retain team members, inspire a resilient workplace culture, and engage their full potential?

Well, the answer is not another team-building exercise to boost morale. Nor is the answer to turn your team members into stress-proofed superheroes; stress has a valuable role in the workplace. But there is hope, the answer is to lead resilience by using a technique called reframing.

Reframing is a powerful approach to problem solving. It’s the art of intentionally looking at a situation from alternative angles to create a more empowering, empathetic, and objective interpretation of reality. It’s a skill that can easily be learned and implemented to reduce destructive stress in minutes.

Reframing is not an attempt to swap your title of VP, director, or senior manager with ‘therapist.’ Nor is reframing about wearing rose-colored glasses and pretending everything is wonderful when a situation truly sucks.

Rather, the point is to approach conversations in a way that reveals the truth of the core issue at hand, free of the angst that typically swirls around frustrating situations. There are many reframing techniques available, most of which are simple to learn and implement.

The most powerful, and easiest to use when leading others, is simply to zoom in and zoom out.

Zooming in is the fastest way to stop spinning in a storm of overwhelm. It's a matter of taking the big project and breaking it into bite sized pieces, putting blinders on and focusing on one part of the issue at a time.

Zooming out is the easiest way to add context to a situation, avoid misunderstandings, and inspire your team to do their best work.

Regardless of which reframing technique you use, the key is to understand what you’re trying to achieve by reframing. This enables you to reach into your vast arsenal of leadership techniques to choose the right tool at the right time for the right situation with the right person.

In this online De-Stress Your Success Masterclass, I offer a more in-depth explanation of reframing. You can watch the full masterclass, complete with techniques, examples, and stories, by clicking here.

To get started right away, consider this:

Each employee sees an issue through a unique four-sided frame. Sometimes the frame is empowering and works to their advantage, but when there is a problem with stress-related performance, guaranteed they are stuck in the disempowering, inner frame. This is the red zone of destructive stress.

At the base of the frame is unrealistic expectations. Failing to achieve their impossible standards fuels harsh-judgment. No one does their best work when they are looping in negative commentary about themselves, others, and the company, which is why this leads to diminished performance. This, in turn, leads to unmet potential.

This inner red zone is a breeding ground for negativity, self-doubt, and burnout. It can lead to decreased productivity, increased conflict, and even loss of valuable talent.

A person who is stuck in the red zone doesn’t have the experience or relative perception needed to successfully adjust their current frame to see a situation through an alternative perspective.

As a leader, you have the power to guide your team out of the red zone and into a more empowered and resilient state by embracing the art of reframing. Your role is to help them zoom out to see the issue through a wider-angle green zone. This outer frame favors objectivity over unrealistic expectations, compassionate curiosity over harsh judgment, effective problem solving over diminished performance, and continuous growth over unmet potential.

You can’t force your team to be more resilient, but you can inspire them to activate their resilience. Every coaching, mentoring, and leadership conversation is about helping them adjust their frame to view difficult situations through a more empowering, empathetic, and reality-based perspective. Do this by helping them be more objective, compassionately-curious problem-solvers, and providing a safe experimental learning environment. ?

No, reframing won’t remove the reality of the messy middle of corporate hierarchy (although reframing can help you navigate that, too.) But, when you coach your entire team to zoom out from the red frame to bask in the objectivity of the green frame, and zoom in to focus on the work priorities step-by-step, you will alleviate pressure and minimize angst that drains professionals and leads to burnout. This enables each member of your team to do their best work and be happier while they are doing it.

To explore working with me to implement reframing strategies, I invite you to visit my website to review my services such as inspirational keynotes, internal training programs and coaching, or send me a DM.