Welcome to FrameBreaking Leadership Development.
My name is Mark Kizilos.
I’m the founder of Experience-Based Development Associates
and the creator of the FrameBreaking Model.
So, what is FrameBreaking?
FrameBreaking Leadership Development is a new approach
for helping you to get on an accelerated development path.
The best leaders are on a "steeper trajectory."
They make more significant contributions at a faster rate than others.
To do that, you need to learn more, faster from your experiences.
There are three ways that you can learn
what you need to be a more successful leader.
The first is through formal learning--
training programs and books, for example.
But it turns out that you can only get about 10%
of what you need to be successful through formal learning.
You can learn more from other people--
coaches, mentors, colleagues, peers. But that only accounts
for about 20% of what you need.
By far the most important source of learning
is your work experience.
But most people are not usually that tuned in to learning
from their work. Instead, the focus is solely on performance.
While getting results is critical, if you want to be ready
for larger and more significant challenges,
you also need to be consciously learning from what you are doing.
FrameBreaking provides a tool for accelerating your development
by looking at experiences along two critical dimensions:
The first dimension is Intensity.
More intense experiences have higher learning potential.
You can think of Intensity as describing experiences
with “more performance demands” than you have had in the past.
The intensity of an experience comes from diverse sources:
Needing to work on tight timelines,
Having responsibility for bigger, whole pieces of work,
Taking risks that put financial resources or
your own reputation at stake,
Doing work that has the potential for significant impact
on the organization versus work that may result only in
“nice-to-have” outcomes,
Doing work that is visible to large and important audience,
And knowing that others have high expectations.
The dimensions of Intensity form the acronym THRIVE
to make the point that in highly intense experiences,
you need to THRIVE in order to survive.
You need to be fully engaged and committed--
you can’t go through the motions
or fake your way through and be successful.
As the intensity of an experience increases,
the learning potential increases as well.
The second dimension is Stretch.
Experiences that involve doing things you haven’t done before
have higher learning potential.
If Intensity is “more performance demands”
you can think of Stretch as “different performance demands”
As with Intensity, the stretch of an experience comes from diverse sources:
Needing to work with others who are different from you,
who hold different perspectives or think differently,
Needing to develop new expertise or learn new knowledge,
Doing work that requires you to be more adaptable or flexible
than you have had to be previously,
Working in a different context--in another country or geography,
another function, market or type of business,
Or, simply needing to do things that you haven’t done before…
for example, giving speeches, making budget decisions,
or, representing the company in public forums.
The dimensions of Stretch combine to form the acronym REACH
to emphasize extending yourself into new areas beyond the familiar.
Combining the Intensity and Stretch dimensions together
creates the FrameBreaking model and four distinct types of experience.
Before describing the four types of experience,
there are a few points about the model that are good to keep in mind.
First, the model is subjective.
For example, work that you describe as low in Intensity or Stretch,
someone else might describe as high on both dimensions.
Your response to the situation will depend upon the experiences
that you’ve had previously and the capabilities that you’ve developed.
Second, the model is descriptive.
Although I refer to the model as the FrameBreaking Model,
that’s not because you should be always looking for FrameBreaking opportunities.
FrameBreaking is the most transformational type of experience,
but it also comes with the most significant risks.
The point here is that no one type of experience is better than another.
You can learn and get value from all of the four experiences.
The question is, “which will give you what you need, given where you are trying to go?”
Third, the model is dynamic.
The flow of activities and challenges that you face on a regular basis
probably presents you with all of four different experience types at different times.
Within a given day, week, or month, you can dynamically
from one experience type to another.
So, don’t think of the model as providing a static view of where you are.
Finally, the model is developmental.
What is at first high in Intensity or Stretch,
over time becomes low or moderate as you develop new capabilities.
Early in your career, before you had much experience,
the challenges you saw as significant probably now seem trivial.
As your capabilities grow, it takes larger and different
challenges to move you out of the Delivering zone.
Delivering involves “doing things you’ve done before”
or things that involve proven abilities.
These situations are low to moderate on both Intensity and Stretch.
In Delivering experiences you have the chance to:
apply well-developed skills,
leverage your strengths,
gain a feeling of accomplishment from meeting expectations,
and build confidence in your abilities by doing work on which
you know you can succeed
The learning from Delivering-- less dramatic than with
the other experience types--is sometimes referred to as
“seasoning” or “getting more time in the job.”
Mastering involves taking on a greater challenge
within your area of expertise. These situations are
high in Intensity but only low to moderate in Stretch.
In Mastering experiences you have the chance to:
develop more advanced skills,
build on your established strengths,
achieve higher levels of excellence.
Mastering experiences often develop expertise that is critical
to making a significant impact on your organization.
Broadening involves working in an area with little or no prior experience.
While these situations are high in Stretch,
they are only low to moderate in Intensity.
In Broadening experiences, you can:
develop new and different skills,
learn outside of your own area,
expand your perspective through new knowledge and experience
Broadening provides the benefit of seeing and doing
new things without the additional pressure that comes with a high level of Intensity.
FrameBreaking involves doing intense work that is
outside your area of expertise.
These situations are high in Intensity and Stretch.
The term FrameBreaking is used because you need to
break the frame on what got you to where you are today.
You will likely need to:
change past ways of thinking,
challenge some deeply-rooted assumptions about how to be successful,
develop new and different skills.
While FrameBreaking presents a transformational
growth opportunity, it also involves a high level of risk.
Leaders who fail in FrameBreaking experiences can face
major career setbacks or derailment.
This brief overview should give you enough of an orientation
to the FrameBreaking model to start applying it to your own experiences--
past, present and future. I hope you take the next step
and start using the FrameBreaking tools to
think differently about your work experiences to achieve more, faster.