The Power of Framing (2010) by Gail Fairhurst explores how leaders shape meaning through deliberate language and messaging. Drawing on communication theory and real-world leadership, the book teaches how to use framing to influence perception, drive change, and inspire action.

Key Takeaways

• Become a strategic communicator, calibrating your message to the audience and goal
• Frame your mind well first, with empowered thoughts, and then let good communication follow

Notes

About the Author:
Gail T. Fairhurst, Ph.D., is a professor of communication at the University of Cincinnati, specializing in leadership and organizational communication. An award-winning scholar and International Communication Association Fellow, she’s authored Discursive Leadership and consulted for Procter & Gamble, Boeing, and others.

The Reality of Framing

Leaders don’t just report facts; they craft perceptions.

The author proposes six Reality‐Construction Rules you can use immediately:

1. Control the context — choose which facts and metaphors to highlight.
2. Define the situation — name it (e.g. “crisis,” “turnaround”), and you shape how people will react.
3. Apply ethics — own your moral positioning; avoid misleading framing that erodes credibility.
4. Interpret uncertainty — in ambiguous moments, step in to make sense of events.
5. Design the response — figure out what “leadership” means in your role (Framing Tool 1.1) and persuade others you’re delivering it.
6. Control spontaneity — prime your unconscious so that your in‑the‑moment reactions align with your intended message.

Practical Takeaways and Exercises

• Map a past “critical incident” in your own leadership to see where you could reframe more effectively.
• Communications Style Inventory: Assess your communication style—Expressive (emotion-driven), Conventional (rule-bound), or Strategic (context-savvy)—to pinpoint your framing strengths and blind spots.
• Framing Tool 1.1: Designing Leadership: Answer reflective questions about stakeholders, admired leaders, and personal experiences to define leadership in your context, sharpening your framing focus.
• Framing Tool 1.2: Critical Incident Framing: Analyze a past leadership challenge—how did you frame it, and was it effective? This exercise reveals how your words shape outcomes.

The 3 Communication Styles

Based on Barbara J. O ’Keefe’s research on Message Design Logic:

1. Expressive Communication

The Expressive says, “ Because that ’ s what I was thinking! ” Expressives say what they are thinking with very little editing.

• Goal: To express personal feelings or thoughts honestly and spontaneously.
• Style: Raw, emotional, unfiltered.
• When used: In moments of authenticity, vulnerability, or emotional connection.
• Strengths: Builds trust, shows passion, humanizes the leader.
• Risks: Can backfire if off-message, impulsive, or perceived as inappropriate for the context.

👉 Use it when you need to build emotional credibility or rally others with genuine conviction.

2. Conventional Communication

The Conventional says, “ Because that is the appropriate thing to say for this situation. ” Conventionals follow social norms for communicating with others

• Goal: To conform to social or organizational norms and expectations.
• Style: Safe, neutral, expected.
• When used: In formal settings (e.g. meetings, protocols, reports).
• Strengths: Maintains professionalism, reduces risk, supports stability.
• Risks: Can be bland, forgettable, or fail to inspire action.

👉 Use it when protocol matters, but be cautious if your message needs to stand out or move people.

3. Strategic Communication

The Strategic says, “ Because that is the best course of action given my strategic goals. ” Strategics see situations as mutable, thus they understand that they play a major role in shaping the context.

This is the “framing” style central to the book, and it felt to me overlapping with the strategic predisposition of Machiavellians, while also adding an ethical layer (exactly what we do here at TPM):

• Goal: To achieve specific effects—influence perception, shape behavior, or guide decisions.
• Style: Purposeful, framed, audience-focused.
• When used: In leadership moments—change efforts, crises, major decisions.
• Strengths: Highly effective, persuasive, adaptable.
• Risks: May seem manipulative if overused or inauthentic.

👉 choose your words, symbols, and metaphors deliberately to lead people toward your goals.

Strategics find opportunities:

that’s what Strategics do. They make or find opportunities when the rest of us are usually rule or role-bound.

And they can use all styles to fit the situation:

One other key issue regarding Message Design Logic concerns a leader’s ability to use all three styles. Interestingly, O ’ Keefe ’ s work suggests that Expressives are usually Expressive most of the time. Conventionals can be either Conventional or Expressive, while Strategics can be all three given their chameleon-like language skills

Also read:

• How to be positively Machiavellian

A Frame Is Both Mind & Communication

Albeit seeming ‘simple’ after you read it, this was one of the deepest and most useful concepts:

Is it a structured way of thinking or an act of communicating?
In reality, it is both, because a frame is that mental picture, and framing is the process of communicating that picture to others.

The Art of Framing

Framing is a craft you can hone.
Four essential devices:

1. Metaphors (“turning the corner,” “tightening the screws”).
2. Master frames (overarching organizing ideas, e.g. “customer obsession” or “women helping women”).
3. Simplifying frames (tunnel your audience’s focus to one aspect, like “safety first”).
4. Believability frames (evidence, testimonials, narratives that build credibility).
   • Combining devices (metaphor + master frame + data) multiplies impact.
   • Practical exercise: rewrite one of your stale slide decks by adding a central metaphor and anchoring each point back to it.

master frames are more specific than ideologies, perhaps dealing only with one specific theme with broad appeal. But they have the potential to stir people to act. They are an ideology’s best advertisement — and they can do as much for a corporate philosophy. There is often sloganeering involved, but it is not only a matter of wordsmithing. It is the encapsulation of a key idea and turn of phrase all at once.

The Leadership Context of Framing

Of this chapter, I mostly enjoyed the examples.

The best one was probably Bush after 9/11:

Bush: (climbs on a fire truck next to a firefighter, when asked if he should leave, Bush puts his arm around him)
Random guy: I can’t hear you
Bush: I can hear you, the rest if the world hears you, and the people who knocked these builduings down will hear from us all soon
Crowd: USA, USA, USA

MORE WISDOM

Toxic people already know the power of framing

Something we agree with and it’s part of our philosophy and mission:

there is a large group of generally smart and articulate leaders out there who need to reflect on their communications and ethics a great deal more.
They need to not take their communications for granted quite so much. They need to understand how our financial realities (and those of others) are created through their communications. They need to understand that untrustworthy leaders already understand all of this — and are betting that most others don’t.

Strike a balance of power and warmth

Talking about Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush:

In his first debate, he was coached to be an alpha male and dominate the interaction, which he tried to do through frequent interruptions of then-candidate Bush and violations of his personal space.
When Gore was reviewed poorly for this, he was coached to be more affable for the next debate. Gore subsequently emphasized areas of agreement with Bush, but also adopted what many saw as an overly friendly demeanor.
(…) Ironically, many pundits believe that Gore’s best campaign performance was his concession speech, which is the only one he wrote himself.

QUOTES

On manipulative framing for marketing:

the captains of Wall Street have had a boundless energy for repackaging discredited financial products with new legit – sounding names like “ legacy loans,” “legacy securities,” “nonprime mortgages, ” “high-yield debt, ” and the like. Framing alone didn’t produce this crisis, but communications played a central role. To add insult to injury, Harry Truman’s maxim — “ If you can’t convince them, confuse them ” — appears to have become the modus operandi of leaders asked to account for their firm’s performance.

On strategics’ higher persuasiveness:

Because most leaders are Conventionals, they tend to underestimate the communications challenge of organizational change. By contrast, Strategics work the change into the very fabric of their organization by making the change relevant to the people and their job responsibilities, answering their questions, taking on their challenges, making connections, and getting them to feel a sense of enthusiasm for it.

CRITICISM

Tone Drift Towards Pop Psychology

The Mehrabian study on words being only 7% of meaning, the ‘use or it lose’ hyperplasticity from Norman Doidge, the mirror neurons… They felt a bit 2010’s self-helpy.

• Mehrabian’s 7% rule has been widely debunked when applied outside its narrow context (it was only about inconsistent verbal and nonverbal communication of feelings).

• Norman Doidge’s plasticity message has been influential, but the idea that the brain is hyperplastic and easily rewired with effort is overly simplistic. ‘Use it or lose it’ can also be easily misinterpreted.

• Mirror neurons have been vastly overhyped as the key to empathy or imitation—solid science, but not the magic empathy bullet they were once claimed to be.

I appreciate and recognise that the author’s goal with this book wasn’t an academic treatise, that my criticism is nitpicking, and that she accomplished her goal.

But I also can’t deny that, in my eyes, some respect and authority was lost on those passages.

Terminology Was Off: Priming’s Misuse

The use of ‘priming’ didn’t feel right to me.

The author says that ‘the more you prime, the stronger the bond’ and ‘priming is a little like putting on sunglasses on a sunny day’.

But that’s not what’s usually meant by ‘priming’ in psychology, which refers to activating certain mental pathways by exposing someone to related stimuli, typically leading to subtle and short-lived changes in perception, memory, or behavior.

Priming’s effects are not massive. Persuasion scholars say that ‘priming is too weak to have a strong effect in the real world’.

Instead, I think the author was referring to ‘repetition’, mental association-building (rewiring or strengthening neural pathways), or framing.

PROS

• Exercises
• Many case studies
• Templates
• Capable author: despite the criticism above, she is well-learned and a skilled communicator
• Several good ideas

REVIEW

The Power of Framing is a solid and practical resource on communication and persuasion.

I felt the book could gain with more accuracy on terminology and some evidence, but I took away some important notes, and that’s the most important thing.

While it’s not laser-specific on frame control techniques, that may be an advantage as it offers a broader approach to persuasion that may be even more useful to leaders.

If you’re interested, you can also check:

• Best frame control books
• Power University, where you can learn the ins and outs of

Check the best books to read or get this book on Amazon.