Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. When we see or hear or experience something from which we can learn, it is that example and experience that often helps us remember the lesson. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. And so I am sharing examples of circumstances and stories that I have experienced in my everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those stories, and it helps to illustrate that we all have a frame of reference.
We were blessed recently to travel in our little camper to an RV campground on the Gulf Coast. We were in a spot right on the shore, with a fire pit and a view that looked out over the water. It was a beautiful place to be, and a wonderful time of relaxation and refreshment. Our grandkids were there with us, and the second night that we were there, as we were sitting in chairs around the fire pit, my three-year-old granddaughter suddenly exclaimed, with great enthusiasm, “I’m living my best life!” Of course we laughed, but also loved the joy she was experiencing. In that particular moment of time, she truly believed that life couldn’t get any better than what she was experiencing.
However, as adults, we knew that her perspective was only relative to her 3 short years of life and to her specific experiences. In her mind, three years had been her whole life, so relative to that frame of reference, she really was experiencing her best life. From our frame of reference, though, we knew that she is expected to have many more years of life, with many more joyful experiences. But in that moment, and in relation to her frame of reference, she had a particular perspective on the world that shaped how she was viewing her circumstances.
That’s a great illustration for us, because we each have been and continue to be shaped by our own past experiences and current context, which then becomes our frame of reference through which we perceive and respond to the world around us. For example, if you have been greatly wounded by others in the past, that will affect how you view your interactions with others in the present. From your frame of reference, people can be hurtful, and so you need to guard yourself. But if you have experienced trusting relationships, then from that frame of reference, you want to believe that you can trust people. So no matter what your experiences have been, in the range from terrible to great, you tend to view life, and life circumstances, through your own frame of reference.
What does that mean for your leadership? While am sure that there are other significant lessons that you can draw from this, the two that jump out to me immediately are these:
- You need to recognize that you have a frame of reference. Your experiences and context will shape your perspective, which will lead to your perspective being just that – a perspective. From that perspective, or frame of reference, you will interpret the world around you as it happens.
- You also need to recognize that everyone else has a frame of reference. They have been shaped by their own experiences and context, which may lead to giving them a different perspective than the one you have. You may both see the same thing, but see it differently, as a byproduct of having a different frame of reference.
That’s the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from my 3-year-old granddaughter‘s announcement that she was living her best life. We all have a frame of reference that has been shaped by our experiences, through which we view our circumstances and our lives. We need to know that we do, and we need to know what it is, so that we can be self-aware that we have the perspective that we do. Yours may be different than mine, so you and I might see the same thing differently, but knowing that will help us to understand each other better. Because we all have a frame of reference.