Amplify Your Influence

5Frames: Window into Your World

“You are either adding to or subtracting from your influence. There is no middle ground.”

—René Rodriguez

Frames are constructs of reality that provide psychological context to help us understand our world. The more familiar terminology is frame of reference—the concept of drawing on past experience or knowledge to help understand something in our current reality.

For example, someone could have snow skied as a child and wiped out doing so. From then on, that wipeout is how they frame the experience of skiing and their behavioral responses to it. Their frame of that experience could include:

• trauma;
• fun;
• humiliation;
• what always happens to me;
• a natural part of life;
• feedback on how to improve.

The list of possible frames is endless. Someone who frames the experience as fun will respond much differently from someone who frames it as humiliating.

In communication, either the speaker provides the frame or the listener will provide one subconsciously. The listener have to since it's the only way we know how to perceive the world.

A Different Approach

To truly master the art and science of influence requires us to unlearn old habits. That includes ceasing to answer questions and deliver messages without first proper framing.

To better understand these changes, let's again think about sequence and how the brain processes information. Picture communication in the form of a timeline with past, present, and future. Most miscommunication happens ...