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.

Don’t start negatively, and don’t start small. People will often focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty.

Facing a complex situation like this makes most people uncomfortable. The more seriously you take it, the more you will see it as a real and difficult challenge that requires a coherent response. And that realization will, in turn, make you even more uncomfortable.

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.

He’s also wise enough to call attention to the context variability that lies ahead in any air

journey. To do that in the commercial flights he led, Captain Berman would routinely tell the cockpit crew members with whom he was newly paired, “I’ve never done a perfect flight.” What this tells us is that Berman understands that even the best and most experienced pilot may face unexpected challenges and cannot be counted on to respond perfectly. In my research, I’ve called this a framing statement. Framing is something experienced leaders do naturally because they recognize that people need help to diagnose and recode the context to be most effective. Berman recalled, when I spoke with him in early May 2022, how he thought about those early moments with each new team: