Many years ago, I was hiking with my family in the mountains. I began to suffer from hay fever, so I walked down to the valley to a convenience store to buy some allergy medicine.
After searching the store shelves, I found what I wanted and headed for the cash register.
Then I noticed something I’d never seen before. There was a large display of eyeglasses. Not sunglasses, but reading glasses. And beside the display there was a little lady. She looked to be about 90 years old.
The lady was standing in front of an eye test chart. She would put on a pair of glasses, then move back and forth—apparently testing to see which pair worked best. She did this with several pairs of the glasses.
She finally found a pair that she apparently liked because she had a very self-satisfied look on her face. She grabbed the glasses and headed for the cash register.
While she was making her purchase, I said to her: “Ma’am, I’ve never seen anyone buy eyeglasses in a convenience store. I bet it’s hard to find a pair that’s just right.”
She turned and looked up at me and said: “Yep, it sure is, mister. Especially since I’m buyin’ ‘em for my neighbor!”
Now, I wouldn’t want my optometry needs to be managed by that lady, but I certainly appreciated her desire to serve her neighbor.
So, you might ask yourself: What principles are illustrated here, and how do they apply to your role in your organization? How can this idea of frame of reference help you lead in a way that genuinely engages the heads, hearts, and hope of the people you lead?
Let’s dig a little deeper.
At every phase of your work life and personal relationships, you must acknowledge and manage the frames of reference people have in terms of their emotions, their experiences, their knowledge, and their values.
Of course, people sometimes use other terms to describe this: context, standpoint, perspective, point of view, or paradigm.
Effective communicators are not threatened by differing viewpoints, even when those viewpoints come across as resistance. For example, when someone has a divergent opinion, good leaders don’t try to impose their will on the dissenter. Instead, they may say something like, “Oh, you see it differently. I’d love to know how you reached that conclusion. What am I missing?”
When coupled with genuine respect and curiosity, such an approach tends to spawn truly productive conversation. And it typically results in superior decisions and go-ahead plans. Not to mention relationships of trust and genuine collaboration.