Framing the work is not something that leaders do once, and then it's done. Framing is ongoing. Frequently calling attention to levels of uncertainty or interdependence helps people remember that they must be alert and candid to perform well.

Cognitive blindness: We simply do not see what we do not see. That is not to say that we don’t see shapes, colors, light and dark, etc. But we don’t see meaning and context unless living and learning has modified our structures. Maturana calls this structural coupling.

It starts with framing. Explicitly emphasizing the complexity or novelty of a situation helps put you in the right state of mind.

You didn’t have to suffer embarrassment or worse. Does this mean we’re able to look more dispassionately at near misses than at actual failures and are thus more able to learn from them? A growing body of research—some of which I’ve contributed to—explores this idea. What you can take away from this research is that framing matters. For instance, how did you think about that close call? Did you see it as a failure (a miss that almost happened) or as a success (a good catch)? If you’ve framed the close call as a success, you’re more likely to tell your colleagues or family about it, making all of you more able to learn from it.

By learning to pay attention to what’s happening in front of us, we gain more than the sensations of life; we also increase our ability to act. We’re not thinking about what’s already happened, about what might happen, about what we have to do later; we are alert to the moment, which is where any action must take place. If our intention is to connect with other people, being present is what makes that possible.