Welcome to the first Coaching Cultivate story. This is a particular favourite of mine, and the reason I have decided to kick off with "Houston - we have a problem to re-frame"
A common response leaders receive when they ask their team questions about workload and delivery of outcomes is the request for more people and resources. In today's climate, this response is quite possibly fair and accurate. What do you do however, when you know that the number of people is not the issue? This is the challenge a manager I worked with many years ago faced. For the purpose of this story, I will name them after NASA engineer John Aaron, which will make sense as you read on.
Workload was historically problematic within John's organsation. Teams were often dealing with a constant influx of work and a large backlog of tasks with little respite. In response, the organisation ran a project that completed an in depth assessment of workload and capacity to ensure each team had the right number of people and resources required for a balanced workload. Following these changes, when discussing delivery of outcomes, John's team continued to insist "we need more staff". John was clearly frustrated about this when discussing his challenge with me. He felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. The one thing his team were asking for is the exact thing he could not provide. As we worked through the challenge, John realised it was not a resourcing issue, rather, one of mindset. From years of being under staffed, his team had formed the habit of associating workload challenges with resourcing issues. This thinking was hardwired, making if very difficult for the team to consider other ways to effectively influence delivery of outcomes. With this realisation, John decided, if they were going to maintain control of their workload and deliverables, he would have to find a way to shift their mindset and encourage new thinking.
During their next team meeting, John used the example of Apollo 13, illustrating how NASA had the challenge of returning the command module safely to earth using only the resources available on the command and lunar module, and most importantly, how, through team work, creative thinking, and perseverance, they succeeded. Following this, John presented his team with the same challenge, to picture themselves in the same situation as Apollo 13 and brainstorm opportunities to deliver on agreed outcomes and deliverables using existing team members and resources.
I remember so fondly the excitement and energy John had when he sharing the ideas and options he team had come up with, and how motivated they were to give them a go.
By using this approach, John re-framed the team's workload challenge, shifting their perspective of the situation which enabled them to consider new options.
What is re-framing
In order to function in a world where we encounter a vast amount of information each day, we create mental models to understand life by developing thought processes to explain how something works in the real world. We use these mental models each day to guide our perceptions of a situation and inform our decisions, behaviours and actions in response. Though useful, mental models are not perfect. By helping us to make sense of situations, our mental models filter the information around us according to our values, experiences and view of the world. It can however, create blind spots. Because we have cut out a range of information with our certain view, we are missing information necessary to form different ideas, decisions and solutions for problems we encounter. Our mental model can keep us stuck in a particular unhelpful thought pattern that we can’t shift away from. This is where re-framing comes in.
Re-framing is a useful technique that encourages us to unlock new thinking by consciously changing our perspective and seeing something in a new way. It is most beneficial when we are stuck with negative thoughts and emotions which narrows our thinking and closes our minds to new ideas and opportunities. When we re-frame, we shift our view of the situation in a more positive light, which broadens our focus, opens our minds, enabling us to receive new information allowing us to form new ideas.
Let's look at how John's use of the Apollo 13 story helped to re-frame the team's workload problem.
From previous experiences, John's team had formed the perspective that workload and deliverable issues were caused by staff shortages. Given their previous struggles with resources, the team would most likely have formed negative emotions such as helplessness, frustration and anger, creating a defensive response when asked to about delivery of outcomes. They viewed this as a problem out of their direct control.
By sharing the success story of Apollo 13 who, despite the challenges they faced, remained focussed and determined to achieve their goal using the resources available, John re-framed the workload challenge from a resource issue, to an opportunity for the team to take responsibility, ownership and control of the way they work to influence output.
The success of NASA despite the challenges and adversity they faced, also triggered positive emotions by providing a sense of hope and achievement. Through the sense of hope and positive outlook , the team's mindset shifted from having to defend current performance, to embracing the challenge as an opportunity to work as a team, think creatively, and find new, better ways of working.
This is one of many approach to re-frame a situation. It does not always require to use of a story or example. You can re-frame a person's or you own current view on things through impactful questions, exercises, activities, visualisation, opposite thinking etc. The key is to identify and understand current thinking, ask how they are stuck, and what do they need to help shift their thinking. And finally, just try from a place of genuine care and compassion.
John W. Aaron - John was a NASA engineer and flight controller during the Apollo program. He was put in charge of the power supply and rationing budget for the rescue and recovery effort of Apollo 13, managing the rationing of the spacecraft's power during the return flight. John devised the an innovative power up sequence that allowed the command module to re-enter safely while operating on limited battery power.
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