Home topics small-business-resources managing Managing Small Business Managing How to ‘reframe’ your role at work Joan Lurie November 8, 2018 Recently a colleague approached me somewhat distressed. For the past year she had been working as a consultant for a small niche enterprise advising them on culture and leadership development. She had been so successful and had built up such a positive relationship with the CEO that he had invited her to join the company full time and continue to do her work for him internally, as the company was growing rapidly and would need more and more of her capability and services. She had considered the offer carefully and then decided to take the position. A few weeks into taking up the position as the new Head of Culture, some tension started to emerge between her and the CEO. She was very troubled and perplexed by this as the ‘tension’ and ‘noise’ was increasing between them. She thought she knew the CEO, had she misjudged who she thought he was? Why was he behaving so strangely towards her? What was she doing wrong? Were some of her negative patterns she thought she had ‘conquered’ and left behind long ago re-emerging? Had she made a mistake taking the position? Understanding role-relatedness I invited her up onto the ‘balcony’, a technique which is useful to see the bigger picture, to explore with me what was going on in the system between her and the CEO. As she stepped into observer role