Using Four Frames To Communicate Across Leadership Styles
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Advocating for yourself in higher education doesn't happen only in job interviews or tenure reviews. Much of your career is shaped through ongoing conversations with supervisors where you pitch ideas, clarify priorities, and define your role. To succeed, professionals must influence the leaders who decide what work moves forward and how it is supported.
We often assume strong ideas and clear reasoning will be understood. But communication is frequently met with confusion, hesitation, or silence. In many cases, the issue is not the idea or the person delivering it, but a mismatch between how the message is framed and how it is received.
In higher education, leaders interpret information differently based on their priorities and leadership style, meaning the same message can land in very different ways. Effective communication requires more than clarity of thought. It requires understanding how different leaders hear, evaluate, and act on information.
Managing Up
The practice of effectively and meaningfully communicating with your supervisor is known as "managing up," and it's something that Emma Jones stresses as a crucial skill for those both thriving as individual contributors or elevating into leadership roles.
"We are case-making for what we're doing all the time," said Jones, who is the executive vice president for leadership at Carnegie, a higher education marketing and enrollment agency. "We're telling a story about the work, we're telling a story about what we're trying to achieve, and we are more successful at doing that when we are adapting the way that we share information to help people hear it in the best way.
"This is not only true for 'managing up,' but it's particularly true when you are working with a supervisor. The ability to craft your narrative in a way that really resonates with them can be really valuable."
The Challenge in Higher Ed
Jones has been working with cabinets, boards, and groups of higher education leaders since 2015 with a focus on the human side of leadership, advising them on how to navigate change and manage their energy.
Jones has observed the complexities of higher education and how "managing up" is more difficult in "loosely coupled systems," referring to all the functional areas and other verticals within institutions where people work relatively autonomously and make their own decisions with shared governance.
"You have all these groups of people who sort of interact," Jones said. "There's an ultimate end goal that's the same, but there's not this sort of clearly mapped single line from point A to point B."
Because of this, higher education must not only "manage up" but also "up and over." A proposal may need approval from a director, support from a dean, alignment with institutional priorities, and buy-in from faculty stakeholders.
"Are you case-making and working to manage your direct supervisor, or are you really trying to engage in work that requires a lot of buy-in from multiple levels of leaders internally?" Jones said. "Then the complexity just grows as you get into those different places."
Using Four Frames
One tool for understanding and navigating this environment that Jones recommends is the Four Frames. Developed in the 1980s by organizational theorists and leadership scholars Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, is a way to understand how leaders view organizations and make decisions. It suggests that people tend to interpret workplace challenges through one or more lenses -- symbolic, structural, human resource, and political.
Jones notes that people don't think about all these frames at any given time, nor do we stay within one frame in every context or situation, but they are useful to know "what leads you into the room" and what leads you and your manager's thinking.
1. Symbolic Frame
The symbolic frame focuses on vision, meaning, culture, and mission.
Use this frame by connecting ideas to institutional values, student success, and the broader purpose of the university. When communicating with leaders who favor this perspective, stories and shared meaning often matter as much as data. For example, pairing a proposal with a student success story or demonstrating how an initiative advances the institution's mission can strengthen support.
2. Structural Frame
The structural frame emphasizes systems, efficiency, planning, and measurable outcomes.
Use this frame by presenting ideas with clear goals, timelines, data, and implementation plans. Leaders who think structurally often want evidence that a proposal will solve a problem or improve effectiveness. Enrollment trends, retention data, assessment metrics, and defined processes can make communication more persuasive.
3. Human Resource Frame
The human resource frame centers on people, relationships, and organizational well-being.
Use this frame by considering how decisions affect faculty, staff, and students and by emphasizing collaboration and support. Leaders using this lens often care about morale, workload, and professional growth. Framing ideas around student well-being, staff capacity, or team impact can help build trust and buy-in.
4. Political Frame
The political frame recognizes that institutions operate through competing priorities, limited resources, and stakeholder interests.
Use this frame by understanding who is affected by a decision, where influence exists, and how coalitions can be built. Leaders operating from this perspective often want awareness of institutional realities and competing demands. Demonstrating cross-campus support, identifying key partners, and acknowledging competing interests can improve communication and increase the likelihood of success.
Meeting in the Middle
These frames are not all or nothing. Even if two people are on different frames, communication doesn't necessarily cease. Jones advises using a moderating approach. You can still lead with your Symbolic Frame toward a Structural-Frame manager, but support points in your story with data and facts so that you are speaking the same language.
"For people or leaders who might have a very different frame on the work that we're doing, I may need to think about whether that storytelling that's meaningful to me is as meaningful to them -- and if not, how do I adapt?" Jones said. "You have to sort of meet in the middle. We do this in our personal lives. We adapt the way that we communicate with our spouses or with our friends because we know them. We interact in different ways with different people, and it's no different in the workplace when we're thinking about managing up."
What Leaders Need From You
Effective communication is achieved when you have the audience's needs in mind. The same goes for managing up. Based on the Four Frames, does your leader need the following:
- context or brevity?
- focus on outcomes or focus on people?
- clear data or a compelling story?
- clarity of structure or clarity of action?
Your leader might fall on a continuum and not need all of one or the other, but this is a shorthand version inspired by the Four Frames.
You can also take cues from your supervisor. If they say, "Send me materials the day before the meeting and give me the quick version," that's valuable insight into how they prefer to receive and process information. You can also ask directly: "How can I bring information to you in the most helpful way?"
This is not about people-pleasing or manipulation. It is about establishing shared expectations for effective communication. When leaders and team members understand how information is best received, it supports clearer decision-making and a more efficient, high-functioning workplace.
In Conclusion
Higher education runs on good ideas and committed people, but too often those ideas get lost in translation between different leadership styles and organizational lenses. The challenge for higher education professionals is making sure that messages connect with the way decision-makers actually think and operate.
That's where the Four Frames become more than theory. They're a practical reminder that influence in higher education isn't one-size-fits-all. Effective professionals must read the room, adjust their frame, and make the case in a way that fits the audience. In the end, progress depends less on how clearly you speak and more on whether your message moves people to act.
