Читать книгу Reframing Academic Leadership - Lee G. Bolman - Страница 26

Albert Szent‐Gyorgyi, the Hungarian‐born, American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1937, got it right when he noted, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought” (Good, 1962, p. 15). Reframing is a step on the road to important discoveries for academic leaders. Expanding one's frame of reference requires knowledge about alternative perspectives, appreciation for their potential contribution, and opportunities to practice looking at situations through multiple lenses. It also takes personal courage to break frame – to step out of one's comfort zone and away from the crowd in seeking new options, proposing new explanations, or testing alternative responses. Frame‐breaking can move mountains, and at times leadership requires just that. Consider a news story about a home intrusion that flashed across the wires (Klein, 2007).

Imagine that you are with a group of friends enjoying dinner on the patio of a home. As you are finishing the jumbo shrimp and enjoying an excellent bottle of French wine, an armed, hooded intruder suddenly appears and points a gun at the head of a young female guest. “Give me your money,” he says, “or I'll start shooting.” If you're at that table, what do you do? Quietly hand over your wallet? Look for some way to resist? Something else?

You could try to break frame. That is exactly what one of the guests did when this happened on a warm July evening. As everyone around her froze, Cristina “Cha Cha” Rowan spoke up. “We were just finishing dinner,” she blurted out. “Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?”

The young intruder hesitated for a moment then grabbed the glass, took a sip of the Chateau Malescot St‐Exupéry, and said, “Damn, that's good.”

The father of the young woman being held at gunpoint encouraged the intruder to finish the whole glass, and Rowan offered him the bottle. The robber, with his hood down now, took another sip and then a piece of food from the table. He put his gun away in the pocket of his sweatpants.

“I may have come to the wrong house,” the intruder said before apologizing and backing away, carrying only the glass of wine.

“I was definitely expecting there would be some kind of casualty,” said the young girl's father. “He was very aggressive at first. Then it miraculously just changed. His whole emotional tone turned.”

In one stroke, Cha Cha Rowan broke frame, transforming the situation for herself and others from “We might all be killed” to “Let's offer our guest some wine.” Pretty dramatic. Sure. But there's learning here for us all. Sometimes we just need a new perspective – and an opportunity to step back, take stock, and know that we have options. With calm and renewed confidence, we may find a route that gets us to a better place than we were before. An occasional skeptic has asked if the story is really true. The news accounts and police reports say yes; but even if apocryphal, this tale still makes its point. When you see what everyone else sees but think differently about it, you're on the path to finding more interesting possibilities and becoming a better, more creative leader.