How Aspirational Framing Can Inspire Your Communications
These days it can be tough to communicate in positive ways.
After all, we’re living through an era of crisis with daunting challenges facing the world, our nation, and our communities.
The Pollyanna approach can come off as insincere or out-of-touch.
Conversely, a drumbeat of doom-and-gloom does little to advance your cause or engage or inspire your audience.
Fortunately there is a middle path: Aspirational framing.
Aspirational framing doesn’t sugarcoat solutions, and it doesn’t dwell on problems. Instead, it prioritizes authenticity and honesty, while emphasizing possibilities and potential.
This framing can spark a powerful shift, by giving a jolt to the human default to often dwell on the negative — a tendency that has been amplified by the ready access to doom scrolling across social media channels.
Not every communication can use aspirational framing. Sometimes the moment calls for unabashed enthusiasm. Conversely, there are times when bad news simply needs to be reported for what it is.
But aspirational framing can prove useful in many instances. We’ve found there are a few prompts to help make it happen.
Remind yourself that things could be – and have been – worse: Reminding yourself that significant progress has been made on a wide range of issues can help you focus on possibilities for even greater progress moving forward. The Cuyahoga River famously caught on fire in 1969. Those flames ultimately sparked creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, passage of the Clean Water Act, and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.
Find the silver lining: Often, there is an opportunity for some good to come out of any situation. COVID-19 has provided steady reminders of this. Of course, first and foremost, the pandemic has been a once-in-a-generation tragedy. Yet it has also accelerated medical breakthroughs, forever altered the workplace, and, in some instances, drawn people together. Finding the silver linings can help you balance your communications between addressing the problem but also finding ways to inspire hope.
Pivot to solutions: In the midst of a crisis or significant challenge there is often little time to consider what comes next. Yet once you get some breathing room there can be real value in brainstorming how to create some solution and action oriented communications that can build trust and get your audience focused on the possibilities moving forward. This process can unearth some ideas and messaging that you may have missed by simply focusing on problems.
Imagine if: As you spotlight solutions, focus on what’s possible. It’s important not to not only describe the possible solution, but provide a vision for what the world would look like if the solution was adopted. Often, a simple framing like “Imagine if …” can help set up this scenario.
Pollyanna shouldn’t dominate your communications. But neither should Debbie Downer.
By reminding yourself to consider the possibilities and potential, you can forge a path of consistently creating communications that acknowledge challenges while also inspiring hope, and igniting action.