The Vindicators' Blog

Frames of Reference, Part 3 - Triggering and Replacing Frames

Frames of reference are triggered - by words, visuals, actions and messages.  They can be triggered intentionally and unintentionally.

They cannot be turned off once they are triggered.  Everything is framed and an experience or message can't be unframed.

Frames can, however, be replaced by other frames.

If the audience and speaker are using different frames, messages will inevitably be misunderstood.  So to help avoid miscommunicating , you have to avoid triggering the wrong frame for your audience.

Think of it this way:  Frames are like gel filters for lights.  You snap them into place and they change how things look. 

Only, there is always a filter in place - you can switch them out, but you can't turn them off.

Frames of Reference, Part 2 - The Three Fs of Framing

When it come to what frames of reference do, there are "Three Fs" worth remembering. 

Frames of reference:

• FOCUS attention on what information is important. The frame acts like a lens, showing the audience what's crucial and what's not.

• FILTER out information that is either unimportant or does not fit the frame of reference.  The is like a polarizing lens, only letting through the light that fits the angle of polarization.  When facts don't fit the frame, those facts are discarded or reinterpreted to fit the frame.

• FILL-IN the meaning of the facts that fit the frame.  Frames of reference provide additional information to the audience that is not explicitly stated in the messages the audience receives.  The information implied by the frame of reference the audience is using often becomes more important than the messages themselves in determining how the audience understands what it hears.

So, when you're thinking about framing, remember the Three Fs - focus, filter and fill-in.

What are Frames of Reference?

Persuasive communication must be about what is heard, not jut about what is said.

As communicators, we tend to focus on what is said, because most everyone thinks that's what we do - we say things or help others say things.  But the real value we should be offering is that we help other be heard, in the way they intended, by the people they are trying to reach.

And the starting point for figuring out what and how our audiences hear what is said to them is with frames of reference, an idea that has been around at least since Descartes put X and Y axes at right angles.

To understand anything, we need to relate it to something else we already know.  These patterns of relationships between things are frames of reference.  They are the schemes we use for organizing and interpreting our experiences.  Frames of reference are the tools we use to figure out where each new experience fit and what each new experience means.

Frames are the patterns we use to understand the world - they are networks of definitions and connotation that are part of every experience. 

We use them constantly, without consciously thinking about them.  Frame of reference are embedded in everything we say and determine everything that our audiences hear.

Think of it this way:  if I said to you "Here's the novel you're looking for," and hand you a book, the word "novel" begins to frame the way you think about the book and implies a huge amount of information - about the book's contents, the fact it is fiction, what you should expect from its characters, its length, etc.  But if I said "play" or "dictionary," the connotations about the book would change.  Your frame of reference would change.

Some of the relationships between the words "novel" and "book."

Strategic Dumbfounding - Part 2

I just wanted to add a couple of more things about why I've started writing this blog:

1. I want to address how we make recommendations about how to be more persuasive.
2. I want to share my approach to these issues.  I've tested these ideas over the last five years and I've come to believe:

• That they work.
• That they are different from how I see most others approaching how we persuade.
• And that they can be improved by scrutiny and input.

It's the last point in particular that has motivated me to start blogging.

Strategic Dumbfounding and the Question "Why?"

"Why?" is a good question to keep in your arsenal. It's a weapon you can draw out every so often to attack your own reasoning. The trick to using "Why?" is not just to use it once or twice but to keep asking it until you are five, six, seven or more layers into your assumptions. (Toyota developed a formal process for this called The Five Whys.) The problem with "Why?" is that sometimes you run out of answers.

A while back, I started asking myself "Why?" I had spent fifteen years counseling people about how to win political campaigns and solve public relations and marketing problems, so I obviously thought clients should take my advice. But I wanted to be able to answer the question if they were to ask me "Why? What makes your advice right or even better than someone else's?" Turns out, I didn't care for my own answers.

No matter how I answered each round of "Why?" I wound up at the same place. The penultimate answer was "Because I have a poll (or a focus group or other form of market research) that says I'm right and backs up my conclusions." But in the face of another round of "Why?" this answer started to fall apart. After all, in every political campaign there are two sides with polls conducted with equal rigor that come to conclusions that are both statistically accurate and often COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. And on any given day, thanks to priming, framing and quirks of question order and wording, you can get entirely different poll results out of the same sample of people. So, I needed an answer for another level of "Why?"

What I was left with, no matter how I tried to dress it up, boiled down to "Because I'm an expert and I said so," which in my view was pretty much no answer at all. I've taken to calling this place I found myself in "strategic dumbfounding" because after all your rationalizing about why your advice should be heeded, you realize that when you get down to the final"Why?" you have nothing left to say.

This blog is about how I've tried to answer the final strategic "Why?" for communication problems, what I've found and how it can be put to use. It's also meant to be a work-in-progress, where I can ask what others think and put these ideas to the test.

So here's my first question in that regard: "Would you have answered the question about why your advice should be followed differently?" (It doesn't matter what your job is - everyone gives advice.) And then, of course, the follow up question: "Why?"