90 Days to Level Up Your Teamwork

Week 7Framing for Learning

Benchmark goal: Frame your team for success.

Teaming behavior is often at odds with the demands of formal organizational structures, which divide people by specialty and focus more of their attention on bosses than on peers. Natural cognitive biases can get in the way, too; for many kinds of knowledge work, effective teaming requires suspension of the spontaneous assumption that one’s own perspective is more accurate than those of others. In many workplaces, therefore, engaging in teaming may feel like an unnatural act; thus, leadership is needed to create an environment conducive to teaming.

Framing is a crucial leadership action for enrolling people in any substantial behavior change. It is especially important for promoting teaming and learning. Framing helps people interpret the ambiguous signals that accompany change in a positive and productive light, and facilitates understanding of new performance expectations. This week, I explore what leaders can do to frame a new initiative or project in a way that supports successful teaming and engages people in the learning and problem-solving challenges that lie ahead.

Cognitive Frames

A frame is a set of assumptions or beliefs about a situation. Most of the time, framing occurs automatically. We rarely recognize the power of the automatic frames we’ve superimposed on situations, because we take them for granted. Frames nearly always exist, shaped by past experiences. Without our realizing it, ...