Reframing – Conflict Games 3/3

[This post is one of many sparked by Agile 2015.]

Whereas the first two games (click here for series start) are for teams to get to know each other, before conflict situations arise, “Reframing” is for the conflict situation itself.

Esther Derby and Mike Lowery introduced “Reframing” in their session on “Coaching Flow“. It aims to change attitudes before entering a crucial conversation.

sketchnote_coaching-flow

If you are about to have a difficult conversation with someone, it won’t help, if you think of the other person as a lazy idiot or other negative labels.

If you can enter the conversation with a mindset of respect, well, that will help a lot. Your whole attitude and willingness to listen will be better geared to resolve the conflict.

“Reframing” exercise

  1. Think of someone you don’t get along with and write down the adjectives you associate with that person.
  2. Write down a neutral version of that adjective. “Stubborn” can become “strong-willed”. “Lazy” can become “works at sustainable pace”.
  3. Take the neutral words and make them positive. “Strong-willed” can become “confident”. “Works at sustainable pace” can become “energy saving” or “gemütlich”.

I’ve always been good with words, so I expected it to be easy. It’s not. This exercise kind of backfired, because there were a number of attributes we didn’t manage to reframe. Not even when we pooled our brains and helped each other find words. Despite only modeate reframing success, we still had a lot of fun! And one participant in particular turned out to be quite the euphemistic wordsmith.

In the “stuck” cases, it would have helped us to have a list for inspiration. I don’t know of any such list, so I have started to collect reframing possibilities in this spreadsheet.

Please add your reframings and improve the existing ones! Right now, “confident” and “flexible” have to work much too heavy duty. Thank you in advance!

Disclaimer: Don’t use the list right away! Try to find neutral and positive words of your own! The list is only for when you’re stuck and think it’s “impossible”. Have fun reframing!

Thanks, Esther and Mike for “Coaching Flow“!

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