Reframing – increase your ability to stay cool under pressure
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Attributed to Viktor Frankl
It’s not unusual to experience stressors at work – things such as high workloads, tensions with work colleagues, organisational re-structures, getting negative feedback, problematic staffing issues. These events and challenges can lead to you experiencing negative emotions – frustration, anger, annoyance, anxiety etc.
In the book Your Brian at Work by Dr David Rock, he explains that you can reduce arousal (heightened negative feelings), not by suppressing a feeling, but rather by changing the interpretation that creates the feeling in the first place. This is not a new idea – the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus stated that it is not events themselves that disturb us but the view we take of them – that has now been validated through brain science.
So how do we ‘change the interpretation of events’? There are 4 techniques described in the book under the fancy phrase of ‘cognitive re-appraisal’, which is probably better known as re-framing. In technical terms cognitive reappraisal a.k.a., re-framing is a cognitive change strategy for regulating emotions when we are experiencing over-arousal of the limbic system.
So, let’s think about a commonly experienced workplace situation and how these four different techniques might be applied. Imagine you are in a meeting presenting some recommendations to your colleagues. You and your team have undertaken thoughtful research and have discussed the issues with most people in the meeting. The concise and well-written recommendations paper has been circulated in advance of the meeting. You go into the meeting fully prepared and expect that it will be a straightforward discussion with the recommendations approved. After your brief remarks about the paper, several people are starting to offer alternative suggestions, and you start to feel irritated and slightly annoyed and are thinking to yourself: Why are they making these suggestions now? This is good quality, thoughtful work. They are challenging it unnecessarily. This is ridiculous. You can feel your blood rising.
So, here is your opportunity to re-frame this experience in the moment and bring your emotions down. Taking a moment to respond, not react, you could use any of these types of ‘reframing’ to change your interpretation of the situation to calm your emotions – instead of just trying to hold your anger or push it down, you can evoke different emotions by changing your interpretation of what is going on. You could use one of these four methods of reframing:
- Re-interpreting the event – this is where you decide that a perceived threatening event is no longer a threat. In this scenario you decide that, rather than this being an attack on the work, it is how intelligent people engage with content. OK, I’m now interpreting this as genuine engagement so that everyone can make and own a collective decision. I can now relax a bit.
- Normalising – having an explanation for an experience reduces uncertainty and increases perception of control. Perhaps saying to yourself ‘this is entirely normal – one of the key ways people at this level do ‘sense-making’ is through attempting to ‘add value’ by offering their own suggestions’. OK, I can now work with this. It’s not a critique of the paper – it’s how people make sense of the analysis we have provided. I can now relax a bit.
- Re-ordering – re-ordering the value you ascribe to situations. It might be important to you that you value getting things done – you’re a completer-finisher and this is just going to slow you down. Perhaps you are able find a way to value ‘buy-in’ from others. OK, I now recognise that their engagement is more important to the overall success of these recommendations – certainly more important than me ticking this off my list! I can now relax a bit.
- Repositioning – finding a new position from which to view an event – looking at things from another perspective. It can be helpful to view this through someone else’s eyes. Your colleagues they might be saying to themselves – it is important for me to show some interest in this topic, perhaps I can make some suggestions. OK, I can see that they are just trying to help and be interested. This is good – I can work with this! I can now relax a bit.
So, regardless of the re-framing you undertake, rather than defending the recommendations (and you know how that ends), you can start to genuinely inquire about their thinking behind these suggestions and find ways of demonstrating how the suggestions either align with the current recommendation, how they could be integrated into the current recommendations, or explain how they might not be appropriate in the context of the research you have undertaken. Importantly your emotions of anger and impatience have subsided, your mind has cleared, and you can facilitate a productive conversation to get a better result.
Sounds good in theory, right? So, how might these techniques be practically accessed when you meet the moment of an emerging emotional hijack? Perhaps by asking yourself these questions:
- Is there another interpretation I can make of what is going on here?
- Is this just something normal that I could have reasonably expected?
- Is there something more important than my needs that I should acknowledge?
- How might this look from someone else’s perspective?