Framing in Leadership

At every point in Leadership, leaders are faced with challenges and setbacks.


However, its left for them to turn the challenges into lessons or bitterness.
Framing in leadership is the ability to turn negative situations into positive ones and it starts with us.



On a personal level, we must have engaged in dealings that failed us. We must have applied for programs and got rejected. We must have applied for a job position or internship but we were informed about we not being good enough.

Some of us have even been through the worse, some of us most have lost everything and left with just a cloth and no home to return to.


So, what do we do when we are faced with this challenges is the question?
Do we cry and bitter around? Or do we push the blame on somebody else?
Leaders often take this opportunity to reflect and use it as motivation to achieve greatness.


I could recalled late last year, I was rejected for a particular fellowship. I reapplied again for the fellowship twice this year, still, I was rejected. Then, I saw an application around October asking me to explain the setback I have faced and how I coped with it.

So, I mentioned my ordeals of getting rejected twice and how I used the rejection as an opportunity to create a revenue model for my organization. How?

One of the questions in the interview was: do you have a revenue plan? And I flawed.

Well, to cut the story short, I got selected to the program. Why? Because I used the framing method. Converting negative situation into positive ones. I have done that many times.


More so, on an organizational note, framing enhance profitability and good Human Resources.

Probably, you make the mistake of hiring the wrong hands and that led to low profitability.

Will you fire the employee's? Or use that as an opportunity to train them and increase employee's loyalty which will in turn yield positive results?

For me, I will choose the latter.

A leader must suffer defeats and learn how to turn defeats into victory.

This confirms the words of Martin Luther King Jr., He said, "No one can know the true taste of victory if he has never swallowed defeat. And, you don't get to the promise land without going through wilderness."

He furthered his statement by saying, "As my suffering mounted, I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation. Either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. Recognizing the necessity for suffering, I have tried to make of it a virtue. I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself...."


We have to recognize that after every failure or setback, we get better and we need to ask the right questions.

What have I done wrong?

What did I do right?

Where have I missed it?

These questions will help you to gain insight into solving the problem...

Thank you for reading!

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