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MEANING MAKER TASK TWO : FRAMING
“Framing provides a means of constructing a world, of characterizing its flow, of segmenting events within that world, and so on. If we were not able to do such framing, we would be lost in a murk of chaotic experience and
probably would not have survived as a species in any case.”
—JEROME BRUNER, ACTS OF MEANING

On December 10, 2001, four Americans were memorialized for their roles in the conflict in Afghanistan. All of them had given their lives in actions against the Taliban. One, a former marine and CIA operative, was to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The three others, Green Berets who were felled by “friendly fire,” were honored in a separate ceremony at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

One of the eulogies included these words: “They changed lives for the better and freed them from oppression. What more of a legacy could anyone hope to have?” Another concluded that “these warriors gave themselves for the pursuit of something greater than themselves because they knew it was the right thing to do. They gave themselves not just for a cause, but so that people beaten down by an oppressed authority might be liberated . . . to know the experience, the blessings of liberty of freedom that we citizens of this precious land know and cherish so deeply.”10

Eulogies are opportunities to talk about people in larger contexts, as distinguished and remembered by the causes they lived (and died) for, the people they helped, the callings they served. We use eulogies to commemorate the meaning of lives. They are occasions in which the things people do and did are linked to a significance that summons our respect and admiration. Eulogies, however, are not the only opportunities where we can cast deeds and actions in larger, more significant molds. We don’t have to wait so long.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

See you there!
Dave
Reprinted with permission.

My partner P. J. and I cofounded Manna Ministries 12 years ago with just a couple of cans of food. Nowadays, we feed 478 families a month. My employer, UPS, has been supportive through it all. Helping me balance delivering packages with volunteering 60 hours a week, stocking our pantries and donating money when I won the UPS Jim Casey Community Service Award.9

When an organization like UPS contributes to civic improvement, its reputation climbs with two audiences: the public (including clients) and its own workforce. Some companies might choose to avoid the spotlight for civic contributions, but they do not need to hide their philanthropic role from employees. By making this role “public” inside the organization, leadership is merely acknowledging that everyone in the organization should take credit for, and feel proud about, these contributions.

One final note on communication strategy in support of affiliation and building an identity around the organization. Sometimes the best way to build social cohesion and a strong group identity is to define the organization through its competitive situation. “We work together so as to triumph over our competitors. We’re a team whose identity is strengthened through contest and through the drama of contests that pit teams against one another.” Though the call to compete, to do battle, if you will, can be overused and overdone, it can still help develop employee affiliation. People often cohere as an organization simply by understanding what makes their
own organization different from the competition.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Taking Pride in Corporate Citizenship UPS is an example of a company that both maintains a strong philanthropic program and actively encourages its people to get involved as community volunteers. Managers and other employees are actually allowed to perform some volunteering on work time, and an unusually high proportion of UPS people serve on boards, committees, neighborhood improvement projects, etc. Imagine how you’d feel as a UPS employee when your company runs national full-page ads like the one picturing Dave Smith, UPS package car driver (in his brown uniform), and Elder P. J. Thomas—cofounders of Manna Ministries, Alabaster, Alabama—over this quote from Mr. Smith:

Figure 3-4. Fleishman-Hillard memo: getting the most from employee conferences.
Friends:
If you haven’t been to a worldwide conference before, you’re in for a real treat. The only problem is how fast the two-plus days fly by. Suddenly it’s Saturday, you’re on a bus to the airport, and you’re wondering where the time went. I wanted to share some thoughts gained fromWWC’s of the past, and hope you can add them to your own list of ideas.

1. Don’t let the conference just “happen to you.” It’s designed as a free-wheeling dialogue throughout, both in the structured times, and unstructured times. Mix it up, intellectually, ocially.                                    2. Have a plan. Many of you have worked across office lines on accounts and probably have at least a person or two for whom you would like to match a voice and face. Don’t leave without finding each person you’d like to meet. And that person you’re standing next to in the lunch buffet line? By all means introduce yourself.                             3. We have new partners. . . . they really want to know about FH. Be generous with your time, show them the say.                                               4. Avoid one another. OK, not really. But if you are exclusively “hangin’ with your home boys or girls” during this gathering, well, it will be a pity.                                                                                                                5. Believe it or not, there’s a certain mystique to being from the “corporate headquarters.” Some of the mystique is good; some ain’t. As ambassadors of all that is good and right with the world, not to mention FH, your neighborliness, humility and hospitality will go a long way to solidifyingg our role as intersection of all roads through FH.                                                                                                                                    6. You may never be surrounded again in your life by such a high concentration of intelligent, energetic, personable and kindred spirits as you will at this conference. It’s the global nation of FH. And it’s a feast. There is real joy in this event. Celebrate it. Add to it.

Taken from : The Leader As Communictor

When Kindred Spirits Come Together Fleishman-Hillard, one of the world’s biggest public relations/communications agencies, traditionally convenes a “worldwide conference” every two or three years, as much to expand and enhance relationships across far-flung offices as to share corporate goals, plans, and best practices. For a recent worldwide conference, Dave Senay, then general manager of Fleishman-Hillard’s headquarters office, sent the memo shown in Figure 3-4 to his troops to help them make the most of their conference attendance.

It’s also worth saying that efforts to build on the sense of community within the organization don’t have to be major productions. While the annual conference, company picnic, or holiday party might be a great way to support affiliation, there are many other informal occasions for bringing people together for conversation: luncheons for honorees, brown baggers, golf and bowling events, and so on. Never underestimate the value of these gatherings in helping to define continually for employees just what it means to be a member of the organization.

Publicizing the Organization’s Role as a Corporate Citizen
An important dimension of one’s identity as an organizational employee is how that organization connects with the larger society, especially with the communities where employees live. Membership in an organization is strengthened when that organization is known to be a responsible, if not generous, corporate citizen. Unfortunately, many leaders ignore this dimension of organizational life, even when their company might be actively engaged in philanthropic or other civic activity.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Holding Group Gatherings to Build Relationships
Finding positive occasions to bring people together is another easy way to reinforce the sense of community most employees desire. Many organizations have a knack for holding large gatherings that are both fun and effective at building solidarity. Southwest Airlines has long been known for the frequency and liveliness of its group celebrations (“The party never ends”8). These routinely festive occasions strengthen affiliation in several ways, from simply allowing employees to have fun together, to celebrating group and organizational accomplishments, to envisioning the future together.

In fact, any group celebration creates a forum for leaders to reinforce the ties that link employees to one another and to the organization. Leaders might focus on any or all of the following topics to highlight the benefits of organizational membership:
? Group or team contributions to the organization’s success
? Organizational accomplishments brought about by great effort
? The organization’s history and the continuance of strong traditions
? A positive, healthy future for the organization and its people

There are of course other occasions besides “celebrations” for assembling large groups of organization members. Educational meetings, planning retreats, and conferences can do double duty: Accomplish the primary objectives of the gathering and strengthen the positive feelings that people have for the organization and for their membership in it, as well.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Advocates and Ambassadors A variation of this strategy involves asking employees to play the role of organization ambassador or (increasingly) of “brand ambassador.” When employees assume the responsibility of speaking for the organization to outside audiences, they often internalize their speeches and their message points and wind up feeling more strongly affiliated with the organization. We all tend to feel more strongly about something when we actually speak out for it: in effect, we become what we say. Leaders are often mystified by the lack of commitment shown by their reports, when in fact these people might readily ratchet up their commitment levels considerably simply by having opportunities to “testify,” as leaders
more routinely have to do.

There are many opportunities for employees to affiliate by becoming advocates and spokespersons both inside and outside the organization. Invitations to describe work team successes at staff meetings allow people to feel good about themselves as team mem-

Figure 3-3. Making commitment public.
Leaders should consider when and how it might be appropriate to invite their people to register a commitment in some public way. We suggest a three-step communication routine to maximize effectiveness:
1. On a voluntary basis, ask people to “sign on” or to “make a pledge” or to verbally commit in some way to an objective or a cause.
2. Share the commitments with a larger audience (people want to appear consistent with what they’ve said). This can be done simply by announcing the number of people who have signed on or, more ambitiously (if appropriate), by actually listing names of pledgers, publishing pledge statements, etc.
3. Respond both privately and publicly to public commitments: “I think Tom and his team’s plan is right on target and begs our support. Let me know how I can help.”

bers, without the awkwardness of seeming to brag about themselves as individuals. And being asked to speak before community groups and associations as a representative of the company or even to generate sales referrals for products they feel proud of has the potential to strengthen their feelings and loyalties toward the organization.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

A discussion of each of these strategies follows.
Encouraging People to Make Public Their Commitments to the Organization, Its Goals, and Its Objectives
Psychologist Robert Cialdini reports that “there’s strong evidence to show that a choice made actively—one that’s spoken out loud or written down or otherwise made explicit—is considerably more likely to direct someone’s future conduct than the same choice left unspoken.”7 We’ve observed this behavior on many occasions, as in the following example.

Testifying for Quality A group of team leaders was being challenged to raise quality indicators at a “Big Three” American automotive components plant. The group was generally cynical about such initiatives and collectively did not express much enthusiasm for the effort.

Company management took an unusual step and invited team leaders to do two things: write a paragraph or two about what they thought quality meant to them and what kinds of quality they could commit to; then forward the paragraph to headquarters and receive a jacket with the company logo and a statement of quality commitment prominently displayed on it. To most people’s surprise, the invitation was widely taken up, and the written statements conveyed genuine, if not eloquent, expressions of the importance of quality work. On a personal level, the subject of quality struck a responsive chord. The initiative was in turn much better supported than management had expected. Team leaders stuck by their words and wore their jackets proudly. Figure 3-3 suggests how leaders might initiate a public commitment of this nature.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Community Dialogue
In an obvious way, we affiliate with an organization when we can freely converse with its members. The more dialogue we have, and the more people we talk with, the more affiliative ties we tend to make within the organization. As a leader you want to have conversations, in myriad forms, with everyone. You also want to make it easy for everyone to hold their own conversations, share information, ask and answer questions, and speak their mind. For an organization to take on the feel of a community for its members, the communication role of leadership needs to promote inclusion
and shared responsibility: “We’re all in this together.”

Bureaucracy, rank, and privilege work against a dynamic sense of community in an organization. They convey distance between bureaucratic levels and patronize, rather than engage, fellow workers. Not to “stand on ceremony” is one important tactic to use here. Examples range from Japanese auto executives eschewing perks and large corner offices and making themselves physically accessible to others, to GE’s emphasis on informality as a code of behavior, to Emerson’s constant flattening of its organization to minimize the distance between leaders and frontline workers. Wherever possible,
leadership communication must emphasize strong community affiliation
and membership by trading on concepts of solidarity, stewardship, and collaboration.

We have found three strategies in particular to be effective in leveraging communications that strengthen the sense of membership and affiliation:
1. Encouraging people to make public their commitments to the organization, its goals, and its objectives
2. Holding group gatherings to build relationships
3. Publicizing the organization’s role as a corporate citizen

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Welch is addressing here a special dimension of the affiliation strategy: the challenge to make organization members feel closer to the center of things, where their voice counts and can be heard. If we construe meaning-making as a shared activity between leaders and their people, then, as Drath and Palus point out, “People closer to the center naturally participate more fully in creating, nurturing, and evolving the meanings of the community.”5 Strengthening the opportunity to affiliate brings with it the opportunity to play a more active role in “co-constructing” meaning. Meaning-making becomes a collective endeavor that binds organization members more
tightly together in a cooperatively shaped future.

Phil Jackson and Leadership Communication At a ceremony honoring the achievements of NBA basketball coach Phil Jackson with the Chicago Bulls basketball club, a former player spoke about what made the experience with Jackson so rewarding for his teammates and himself, apart from winning six championships. Addressing his coach, the player shared these sentiments: “Phil, you gave all of us the love of this game back. . . . You let us embrace the game and see the beauty it can be on the floor. . . . But most important of all, you allowed us to believe in what team is all about.”6

So what might this ability to bind people together look like from the standpoint of specific communication strategies: things you might say, and ways to make your words well understood? Figure 3-2 lists four basic themes that can be played on in different ways, continuously.

For each theme, you’ll need anecdotes, examples, illustrations of how they play out in your organization. Moreover, talking about these themes heightens employee sensitivity to their presence, or the extent of their presence, in your organization. The best approach is to acknowledge that the organization is less than perfect

Figure 3-2. Communication themes to strengthen affiliation.
1. We share a common stake in serving a worthy purpose.
2. We share allegiance to commonly held values.
3. Everyone is important; everyone is part of a community.
4. We think and work as a team; we succeed when we’re united.

in each of these areas, but cite examples of where these themes are in evidence and where they need to be strengthened. Perhaps the best illustration of pulling together a large group of people by emphasizing all of these affiliation themes is the way in which the American government, together with public and private institutions and the media, rallied Americans in the months following the September 11 tragedies. As Americans, we often take our identity as citizens of a nation for granted. Our affiliations are focused on smaller associations and group identities. But we claimed our citizenship loudly and passionately as we responded to an unprecedented national crisis, and our leaders wove all of the themes
cited above into their speeches, as they sought to rally us around a new and uncertain future.

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator

Some organizations manage to communicate to their members a ready sense of belongingness, a status of membership with privileges. Others do not. How to deliver this communication successfully is a major issue we’ll want to address in this chapter. From a structural standpoint, the need to affiliate, to feel membership in a community, would seem to be better served by a smaller organization (a few hundred members or less) than by a larger one.

Larger organizations represent, in this sense, more of an abstraction of community that we must come to terms with in different, sometimes more artificial, ways. For one thing, the tendency of larger organizations to organize themselves bureaucratically presents the threat of dehumanizing relationships and compromising affiliations. Therefore, the ways in which leaders manage through their communications the natural human instinct toward group affiliation is critical in creating, or failing to create, opportunities for employees to secure satisfying and rewarding experiences from group membership.

A Sense of Inclusion Many organizations in fact solve this problem of heavily formal, bureaucratized communication by flattening the organization’s structure: creating work units and departments that maintain reasonable size limits. But more to our purpose, the challenge to create and sustain opportunities for satisfying affiliation needs is often best served by a variety of leadership communication strategies. At the top level, for example, leadership communication wants to emphasize a sense of inclusion in a close and supportive community. Leaders want to constantly affirm the rights of employees to “full membership status,” even while maintaining different levels of such status. Jack Welch came up with a folksy kind of metaphor to describe the GE environment: “We came to work everyday open to ideas from anywhere, trying to create the atmosphere of the informal corner grocery store in a large business—a family business that didn’t count where you came from or how many stripes you had on your sleeve.”4

Taken from : The Leader As Communicator