Collapsing the Frame or are you Just Attacking?

Greetings Negotiators!

I took on a new client last night. She’s in a work situation that is intolerable to her. Her work-situation-pain was bad enough that a friend put her in contact with the Negotiator!

The basics of her situation are that she is the most seasoned professional in her field at her company by decades of experience to the next most experienced person. In fact all the other people that do what she does at the company are just a few years out of college at best, some are probably still in college studying to get a degree in what she does. The owner of her company (her boss) makes many snap decisions based on little or no information from any outside sources. Another way of describing that process is to say that her boss hallucinates the living picture of her own company instead of calibrating what she thinks she knows against what is presently occurring in the “real world”.

So as a result of one of her bosses hallucinations, she was demoted in status from “Project Manager” to “Blank”. She told she didn’t even know she was a “Project Manager” until she received the demotion (sounds like Enron Accounting practices). I asked her how this demotion occurred and she told me it was a result of her boss reframing her (this means the boss was “translating” what my new client had done and continuing her “translation” of the situation by telling her that she couldn’t be a “Project Manager”).

Do you let someone talk to you like a dog?

So I asked my client what she is doing now. She said “Exactly the same thing”. So as I understand my client’s translation of the situation, her boss demoted my client’s title and nothing else. Here was the homework assignment I gave my latest client:

Write down in the most precise way the message that you wish to deliver to your boss. Write it like you were giving instructions to a computer like “Stop demeaning me. Start supporting me. Respect my expertise.” very simple messages like this.
Think of all the things you want to say, all the feelings and attitudes and views that you have about the current situation. Get really clear on what all this is and don’t leave anything out.
For each thought from #2 find evidence to support your feeling or attitude or view. If you “Feel disrespected” then remember the 3 times she said “Your no better than these interns, get out of my sight!”
For ever scrap of evidence form a resourceful question. Example: evidence= “the 3 times she said ‘You’re no better than these interns, get out of my sight!’ question(s) = “How often do you think you can tell an adult with grown children “..get out of my sight!” before the consequences of your childish behavior fall back in your lap?” or “Which training seminar did you go to that led you to believe disrespecting your employees is an effective tool in maximizing their efficiency?” and so on.

After having spent about 30 minutes coaching my new client I asked her (calibrated) what all that meant to her. She said “I feel fantastic, this is really helpful and I’m scared to death!” I reassured her that taking back her power, standing up for herself, creating boundaries for people including her boss for the first time is scary. So I asked her how many more months she’d be willing to tolerate the demeaning experience before she burst. That was an arrow that hit the bullseye of her focus.

When someone starts to put you in a box (re-frame you) that you don’t fit in, you’ll look like you are in the box to everyone else that is mesmerized by the box-putting action, especially if it’s from an authority figure. The appropriate response immediately when this starts happening is to challenge the information. You must collapse any frame that doesn’t support you or help you experience your own best good. If you find that you’ve failed to do this in any relationship and suddenly you want to collapse the frame you’ve been shoved into by someone else then follow my 4 step technique above.

Collapsing a frame is called “de-framing”

My new client at times told me some of my information seem “mean” or didn’t “feel nice”. I asked her if she felt like the way she had been treated made her “feel nice”. She agreed immediately that it did not. The perception-in-error that standing up for yourself, getting firm, declaring your boundaries and being real with others “isn’t nice” is based on our fear of how people will react when we take these bold positions. The correction of this error is to shift the emphasis off of what other people feel long enough to take care of yourself and your own feelings first. You cannot give something to someone else before you first give it to yourself: respect, loyalty, honesty, validation, inspiration, etc.

If this post stirs up feelings in you or reminds you of a situation you h ave questions about feel free to write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com or you can leave a comment beneath this post in the comments section. If you are looking for more information about Negotiations then sign up for my newsletter to the right and receive your FREE Negotiator’s Checklist. For the rare individual that really wants to take his Negotiating Skills up a notch you might want to consider joining my (currently free) Apprenticeship Program.

What would you do now if you could discover every time you open your mouth you get exactly what you want?

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!