Frame control is definitely real. I think if I were to try to operationalize it, it’s something like the ability influence the ontologies people use and the valence they assign to objects with in those ontologies. This caches out as influencing how important and virtuous people find certain ideas and actions.
Frame control is probably necessary for good leadership. A good leader is a Kegan 5 individual who can find the ontology that they can use to educate and motivate Kegan 4 and Kegan 3 underlings in an organization that will allow them to correctly respond to current conditions, and then help them to change that ontology as the conditions change.
But frame control is also the thing that Kegan 4.5 sociopaths use to control the narrative in cults and moral mazes. It allows them to get all of the credit, take none of the blame, and keep less powerful or sophiscated people in the dark about their games, and even happy to give them more control and power.
A well aligned Kegan 5 leader aware of the possiblity of capture by sociopaths, and skilled in frame control, is one of the best defenses against sociopaths, moreso than any specific communication rules, although rules like e.g. transparency of communication are helpful in this regard, as is Malcolm’s norm around honoring distrust.
So I disagree that intent doesn’t matter—it matters supremely, as you actually want a leader who’s skilled in frame control to prevent you from getting taken advantage of. BUT, the caveat is that a Kegan 3 or 4 person trying to understand the intent of a Kegan 4.5 or 5 person skilled in frame control will most times not be able to—that’s the nature of hierarchical complexity. So in practice trying to “determine the intent” of your leader to figure out if they’re aligned with your interests or not isn’t useful, even if the intent itself is one of the most important things.
This is basically an unsolved problem and one of the causes of civilizational inadequacy. The inability to select between competent Kegan 5 leaders who apply aligned frame control, and competent Kegan 4.5 sociopaths who apply misaligned frame control, is the cause not only of unhealthy religious style cults, but also the cause of most of the Moral Mazes that cause harm to people in normal corporate contexts.
Hm.. The idea that positive leadership also involves frame control is interesting. I never thought of it that way.
I suspect that you only get a cult-like group/organization if the leader uses frame control, rather than something with independent-thinking, healthy group members.
Maybe good leaders are skilled at something frame-related, but it’s not frame control; rather, it’s about listening to what people’s motivations actually are and then crafting a frame for the group as a whole where people will be motivated to pursue the mission, based on their needs and so on.
Maybe this is the same thing you also mean. I guess I just assumed that in the “frame control as bad” connotation, there’s something coercive about it where the frame that is imposed over you is actually bad for you and your goals.
In my experience very good organizations are cult-like in their very strong cultural practices. For instance, I was part of City Year in Boston, which has people wear bright red jackets everywhere, do physical training in the Middle of Copley Square every Wednesday, and has you answer “Fired Up!” when someone asks you how you’re doing. You are expected to memorize their values as you do your job.
In my experience the heads of City Year, people like Charlie Rose, are incredibly good at the thing I’m calling frame control in this post. They make you excited about the values of the organization when they speak, they’re charismatic, good at commanding a room and taking control of situations.
I’ve also been part of the Men’s Circle in San Francisco. Again, you have to memorize the values here to join. You have to go through an initiation process of cleaning up all the open loops or lapses of integrity in your life, THEN you can get voted in to join. You can’t speak about anything that happens (to other people) in the circles at the men’s circle. Again, these are all “cult-like” things. And the leaders are charismatic, good at frame control.
I’m now part of Monastic Academy, which has been called out in this very comment thread for “negative” frame control.
If you read Kegan’s book “An Everyone Culture”, you’ll also find that the groups do practices that are associated with cults, like processing their feelings at work. I would also venture to guess that e.g. Ray Dalio is good at frame control (and this seems apparent in e.g. reading Principles, he makes you think like he does and get excited about his way of seeing).
In my experience, none of those people are trying to craft motivations that fit the group as a whole necessarily (although there’s a little of that). Rather, they’re crafting a narrative that fits the situation and then working to attract people who fit into those values/narrative. Again, this looks a lot like what “negative cult leaders” do, the difference being the intent.
There are a few differences of course. None of these recommend cutting off family or friends, or other ways of seeing. They have oversight on the leaders, and ethical rules in place to prevent issues (e.g. No dating between leadership and members).
In general, I think that e.g. Aella and the people she’s interviewed have been abused. They have an understandable trauma response to strong charismatic leaders, and so totalize around the negative aspects. Meanwhile, I’ve had largely positive experiences, managed to avoid “negative cults”, and seen how these sorts of behaviors can create powerful cultures that help people grow and do good in the world. So I don’t see it as “Frame Control is bad” but “Frame control is powerful, and sometimes people are bad.”
Thanks for explaining! You’re definitely pointing out a real phenomenon and “skill,” but I feel like it’s different somehow than the thing aella was gesturing at. Maybe the main difference is that the neutral leaders you talk about try to set up frames that their subjects find positively exciting, whereas frame controllers set up frames that are disempowering and make the person smaller? For instance, I don’t necessarily think it’s “frame control” when Lucius Malfoy rallies his fellow death eaters around hating Dumbledore. He’s just being a good leader. It becomes frame control when he gaslights his underlings and underhandedly blames them for everything that when wrong with his latest plan.
But we might just be interpreting the OP differently. I can see why you want to use “frame control” for both the good thing and the neutral thing. Maybe it would be appropriate to coin a different term for the thing aella means. Maybe something like “frame erosion” or “frame distortion” that emphasizes the potential adverse effect on victims when someone uses frame control (a more neutral behavioral strategy under this meaning) in an exploitative and uncaring way.
Or maybe another dimension here has to do with consent. If you sign up for an organization that makes you learn special greetings or mantras, you give consent to let yourself be shaped in some kind of cult-like direction. By contrast, in the examples aella talks about, the frame controller starts to get more and more influence over aspects of the person’s thinking that seem like they shouldn’t be under someone else’s influence.
On the merits of the type of leadership you describe: I’m skeptical. I worry that whatever stated mission an organization has cannot be easily compressed into slogans or rituals, and if people have to do these things in order for the organization to work, then maybe it’s lacking in authentically mission-driven individuals, and that spells trouble.
Of course, the counterpoint is “authentically mission-driven individuals are rare and it would be highly valuable if a single mission-driven leader can recruit a large number of otherwise non-contributing people toward the mission.”
And my reply to that is “yeah, it would be great if it worked, but it’s not going to if the mission you’re after doesn’t have easily attainable (and hard-to-Goodheart) metrics that you can use to keep outputs in check.”
Maybe the main difference is that the neutral leaders you talk about try to set up frames that their subjects find positively exciting, whereas frame controllers set up frames that are disempowering and make the person smaller?
Yeah this makes sense.
. I worry that whatever stated mission an organization has cannot be easily compressed into slogans or rituals, and if people have to do these things in order for the organization to work, then maybe it’s lacking in authentically mission-driven individuals, and that spells trouble.
I don’t think the point is to compress the mission into slogans or rituals, it’s to ensure a culture that screens for people authentically excited about the vision, and to continually steer the organization back towards it.
Of course, the counterpoint is “authentically mission-driven individuals are rare and it would be highly valuable if a single mission-driven leader can recruit a large number of otherwise non-contributing people toward the mission.”
And my reply to that is “yeah, it would be great if it worked, but it’s not going to if the mission you’re after doesn’t have easily attainable (and hard-to-Goodheart) metrics that you can use to keep outputs in check.”
FI think the merits of a DDO that’s run like this is that it:
Allows mission driven leaders to recruit people to the organization.
Alllows them to recruit people who are authentically mission driven—participating in these sorts of practices is an incredibly good way to find people who are ACTUALLY on board with the values and authentically excited about the mission
But more importantly, it creates a culture that can develop more Kegan 5 leaders who can drive the organization.
This is why they’re called deliberately developmental organizations, they help bring recruits UP to the level of the leader (perhaps this is the big difference, whereas negative cults try to push the underlings DOWN and prevent them from becoming powerful). So the real power of these organizations is “We can recruit people who think like us to help push the mission forward, and then teach them in the process teach them how to think for themselves and continually refine the mission).”
I don’t think the point is to compress the mission into slogans or rituals, it’s to ensure a culture that screens for people authentically excited about the vision, and to continually steer the organization back towards it.
Right, I was strawmanning with that phrasing, sorry.
I guess the whole point of the strategy you’re describing is that it scales well, and my criticism of it is that it’s scaling too quickly, so is at risk of losing nuance. This seems like a spectrum and I happen to be at the extreme end of “if your mission is more complicated than ‘make money’, you’re likely doomed unless you prioritize hiring people with a strong ability to stay on the path/mission.” (And for those latter people, activities like the ones you describe wouldn’t be necessary.)
Fellow former City Year Member here who served in Columbia, SC. Reading your comment definitely brought up memories and makes me feel like I need to go back over that experience with a new lense now. City Year was definitely challenging to ones sense of individuality and had a very rigid structure. Yes they have very specific ways of building culture (red jackets, morning chants, PITWs, ect.) That could described as culty and definitely focus on instilling a particular view/set of values—hadn’t quite thought about it that way at the time. There is definitely a clear hierarchy in structure and a bit of a glorified image put forward that is umm.. different then the experience. The work and the year also yielded a lot of important lessons. I can totally see how “frame control” showed up with certain leaders. That being said to my knowledge there were also clear agreements being made with consent, organizational and financial transparency, clear codes of conduct, people feel comfortable complaining and giving feedback, and at least within the branch I served at the overall cohort lacked many of the defining features of a cult (i.e the cult personality and many group dynamics). People still maintained a level of individuality and agency even within that and nobody was ever pressured to stay beyond their original commitment of one year. Even then people did not meet resistance if they chose to leave mid contract. Though given a particular leader with narcissistic and charismatic authoritarian qualities (like Soryu) I could totally see how a dynamic could easily become more cult like. There were things City Year was really good at - and then there were things that they really weren’t.
You mentioned above you think frame control is probably necessary for good leadership—but what if that’s based on a cultural script and model of leadership that doesn’t actually serve to create a better or more equitable world. What if that model of leadership is actually just perpetuating the same patterns of harm? The question is, is it beneficial to aspire to that level of frame control? Or are these types of hierarchical, power over structures in which heavily utilized frame control is actually outdated, limiting, lacking in diverse perspectives, and creating environments in which abuse of power is more likely to occur.
I’d say one difference between “frame control” and say sharing different points of view is “power” and the extent to which one (mis)uses their skills, talent, status, resources to overpower or control another person’s reality vs. them operating from a place of agency and engaging with one another.
Similarly, I’ve been a part of a many many Women’s Circle in the PNW that shared many multicultural elements, groups norms, ceremonies, common language, ect. We also have “agreements” of confidentially. Agreements being the keyword are often co-created. Creating shared realities is not the same thing as frame control. However, cause humans be humans obviously varying levels of frame control can happen in any relational or group environment. For all I know your men’s group might have been cult like. Who am I to say!
I have also worked with a number of nonprofits (8) over the past 10 years with various cultural and organizational dynamics I won’t go into here in direct services, as a Development Coordinator/Director, Grant Writer, Strategic Planning and Organizational Development, board member, various other service leadership roles, ect which has yielded a lot of insight into how organizations develop at various stages and what best practices support functional dynamics a long the way. It’s been my observation that collaborative and egalitarian models which strongly represent the communities they serve, have strong accountability and grievance processes, and actively seek feedback and integrate community voices are most effective at achieving their mission, create healthier communities and are more stable over the long-term. They actually engage in LESS “frame control” and actively create spaces for very different perspectives and lenses to intersect—which seems to create more positive organizational cultures. While structures like City Year can scale quickly and get a lot done—there are also significant disadvantages to having a more hierarchal structures and they tend to leave many young people somewhat burnt out rather than ” Fired Up!”
Any group or community can evolve into cult dynamics within an authoritarian, hierarchal structure without clear safe guards and healthy, ethical leaders. It’s important to be clear about the difference between a culture and a “cult”. When we start talking about cults according to it’s current definition what is being talked about is a very specific set of structures and defined group behaviors. Usually it’s when these characteristics and behaviors are taken together that you get an actual “cult”. I’d highly recommend you aquaint yourself with what these are Friend, because you are in a very high risk situation.
I also happen to be a former Monastic Academy apprentice and am the one who brought them up earlier. In ten years of nonprofit service I have never personally encountered a more high risk, dysfunctional, authoritarian/hierarchal, unethical, sexist and abusive organization. I have never encountered the level of flat out denial, silencing, disassociation, and “frame control” anywhere else other than maybe some fundamentalist Christian churches. City Year was NEVER anywhere close in terms of frame control and the kind of unethical behavior that happens at the MA would never have flown at CY. The one thing they do have in common is using an overly idealism driven and not entirely transparent narrative to recruit young people to engage in areas of work that they are under qualified for and far more inexperienced than what is actually needed which creates a lot of challenge and usually leaves people burnout or in some cases pretty fucked up leaving the Monastic Academy. Having existed for 7+ years and despite consistent feedback about harmful impacts from many past residents and apprentices the MA still does not even have a basic feedback process in place to gather either qualitative or quantitative data about the impact of their programs. At this point it’s leadership is actively aware that the program is actually harmful to a substantial number of people and does not communicate these risks upfront. People who dissent or share negative feedback are actively excluded and/or forced to leave the community (especially in instances of ethical and organizational misconduct as happened in my own experience). This ensures that the community consolidates toward those who agree and are willing to be complicit or at least silent when faced with harmful practices. In the case of a former partner, yes multiple members of the community actively told him to cut any contact with me after I was forced to leave and after I spoke out publicly online about the organization and his complicity he did cut contact with me. Many former residents and apprentices experience symptoms of cPTSD and need to recover significantly after leaving. Longstanding patterns of domination, colonization, misogyny and sexism are very much present in the space. For example forcing women out of the community and actively using coercive methods to keep them silent when they are impacted by the sexual misconduct of leaders and wealthy donors. The relationship to power and money is extremely unhealthy—and their are no real accountability structures in place (i.e. no code of conduct for teachers that defines what abuse is, no established grievance process, and a nonfunctional board). As a fundraiser I definitely found their practices to be highly questionable and unethical—and are likely illegal in some cases according to Vermont State law regarding fiduciary duties and 501c3 compliance. The current board is currently primarily made up of former students and others who have direct conflicts of interest that can impact ones ability with board duties as defined by Vermont State law. This along with the fact that Soryu is head teacher, founder, AND board president creates major power imbalances and is not in alignment with nonprofit or Monastic best practices. Recommendations from most sources and nonprofit consultants say that a board should have at least 7 board members with 0 conflicts of interest—the MA has 2. Most people do not understand how board governance works or how important the make up of a board is to ensure a functional board and oversight. Soryu has zero sources of accountability and Shinzen Young is rarely on site and cannot provide adequate oversight either. He is not a part of legitimate Buddhist lineage and in fact his training history with Sogenji is actually pretty sketchy. It has been my experience that I have never witnessed the level of cognitive dissonance, disassociation, and failure to live up to ones stated mission and values anywhere else. And yet somehow they always find a way to frame themselves as ethical, trustworthy, compassionate, wise, and having integrity even whilst actively behaving otherwise. Frame control is by far one of the things they seem to exceed best at.
You talk about the advantages of a mission driven organization but you don’t seem to question whether or not that model of expansionist, authoritarian leadership is actually healthy—rather than simply perpetuating longstanding cultural patterns of harm that have been going on for a very long time. There are lot of ways nonprofits are shifting and need to shift away from being mission-driven to being community-centered—and to examine the history of colonization, patriarchy, racism, ablism, ect. That exist everywhere. I love nonprofits and working in this sector, but nonprofits are not inherently free of harm simply because they aspire to do good work. It takes active cultivation, addressing cultural patterns and bias, and listening deeply to ensure that one is actually having the impact that one intends to have!
There is an idea that programming languages don’t get to make everything easy, they get to choose some things to make easy and some to make hard (following a loose invocation of the Pigeonhole Principle here).
You want a programming language to decide to make useful things easy and useless things hard.
This is why you would expect “Frame Control” to be useful in a “good” organization. A good organization should use a frame that encourages good things and discourages bad things. A neutral frame is harder to fight the good frame from than a “good” frame!
In my humble opinion, the only difference between “bad” Frame Control and “good” Frame Control is in how much the Frame corresponds with objective reality, and hopefully, social reality as well.
Good leadership could be then explained as Frame Controlling the group towards alignment with positive outcomes in objective physical reality while avoiding negative social outcomes.
In my humble opinion, the only difference between “bad” Frame Control and “good” Frame Control is in how much the Frame corresponds with objective reality, and hopefully, social reality as well.
Hmm. I would guess that, if someone is using a wrong frame (let’s say it depends on assumptions that are demonstrably false), and you have a better frame in mind, there are still better ways and worse ways to go about communicating this and going from the one to the other. Like, explicitly saying “It looks like you’re assuming X, which is wrong because …” seems like the most educational and intellectually legible approach, probably best in a good-faith discussion with an intelligent counterpart; whereas e.g. just saying new stuff from a different set of assumptions that doesn’t directly engage with what they’ve said—but initially looks like it does, and takes long enough / goes through enough distracting stuff before it reaches a mismatch that they’ve forgotten that they’d said something different—is potentially bad.
Now, er, the original post says it uses “frame control” to mean the non-explicit, tricky approach. It mentions “Trying to demonstrate, through reason and facts, how their box is better”, and says “These are all attempts to control your frame, but none of these is what I mean by frame control”, and “No; frame control is the “man doesn’t announce his presence, he just stalks you silently” of the communication world.”
This is unfortunate, because the bare phrase “frame control” will inevitably be interpreted as “actions that control the frame” without further qualifiers (I’d forgotten that the post had the above definition). Something like “silent frame control”, “frame manipulation”, or “frame fuckery” would probably fit better.
I’ll risk sounding a bit crass, but is it not often an issue of the intelligence/knowledge of the recipient?
I mean it in two ways:
1. Sometimes Frame Control only feels tricky or non-explicit, because the recipient is unobservant, or lacking in social tools to recognize explicit but gentle Frame Control. Basically, mistaking politeness and verbosity for manipulation. To use that metaphor: the man was not stalking you silently, you were just wearing headphones and daydreaming instead of paying attention to your surroundings.
2. The recipient could not be convinced that objectively true facts are true, because they lack the knowledge or mental skills to understand them, and Frame Control is pretty much the only way they can be led to accept the facts. I, for one, do not know jack about Quantum Physics, and the holes in my understanding go back to HS science and math. It is literally impossible to teach me to accept say, String Theory on objective principles (“I know it makes sense!”), only to Frame Control me into agreeing with it on subjective principles (“This Hawking guy sure sounds smart!”).
Because of points 1 and 2, a “Frameless” discussion is very hard and unlikely, unless both people are intellectually adept and introspective rationalists, who only slightly differ in their knowledge of the facts on the subject. Any other human interaction by necessity runs on Appeal to Authority (which is basically Frame Control), otherwise nothing would ever get accomplished.
Hm, maybe. I can see that frame control comes in handy when you’re a general in a war, or a CEO of a startup (and probably at least some generals or CEOs are good people with good effects on the world). However, in wartime, it feels like a necessary evil to have to convince your soldiers to march to the their death. And in startups – I don’t know, cultishness can have its advantages, but I feel like the best leadership is NOT turning your underlings into people who look cultish to outsiders. So, I think the good version of frame control is generally weaker than the bad version, for instance because good leaders don’t have anything to fear in terms of their followers becoming better at passing Ideological Turing tests for opposing views. But I guess that’s just expressing your point in different words: we can say that, if our frame is aligned with physical reality and avoids negative social outcomes, it shouldn’t look like the people who buy into it are cultists.
I also think it’s informative to think about the context of a romantic relationship. In that context, I’m not sure there’s a version of “good frame control” that’s necessary. Except maybe for frames like “good communication is important” – if one person so far struggled to express their needs because they weren’t taken seriously in their past life, it can be good for both individuals if the more securely attached person pushes that kind of frame. However, the way you would do that isn’t by repeating “good communication is important” as a mantra or weapon to shame the other person for not communicating the way you want! Instead, you try showing them the benefits of good communication, convincing them through evidence of how nice it feels when it works. That’s very different from the bad type of frame control in relationships. Also, let’s say you have two people who already understand that good communication is important. Then no one is exerting any frame control – you simply have two happy people who live in the same healthy frame. And insofar as they craft features of their personal “relationship frame,” it’s a mutual sort of thing, so no one is exactly exerting any sort of control.
These examples, and the fact that you can have relationships (not just romantic ones) where something feels mutual rather than “control exerted by one party,” makes me think that there’s more to it than “good frame control differs from bad frame control merely in terms of correspondence to physical reality (and social reality).” I guess it depends what we mean by “social reality.” I think bad frame control is primarily about a lack of empathy, and that happens to leave a very distinct pattern, which you simply can’t compare to “good leadership.”
Edit: I saw another commenter making a good point in reply to your comment. What you call “good frame control” is done out in the open. The merits of good frames are often self-evident or at least verifiable. By contrast, the OP discusses (bad) frame control as a type of sneak attack. It tries to overcome your epistemic defenses.
Here’s a few things I believe:
Frame control is definitely real. I think if I were to try to operationalize it, it’s something like the ability influence the ontologies people use and the valence they assign to objects with in those ontologies. This caches out as influencing how important and virtuous people find certain ideas and actions.
Frame control is probably necessary for good leadership. A good leader is a Kegan 5 individual who can find the ontology that they can use to educate and motivate Kegan 4 and Kegan 3 underlings in an organization that will allow them to correctly respond to current conditions, and then help them to change that ontology as the conditions change.
But frame control is also the thing that Kegan 4.5 sociopaths use to control the narrative in cults and moral mazes. It allows them to get all of the credit, take none of the blame, and keep less powerful or sophiscated people in the dark about their games, and even happy to give them more control and power.
A well aligned Kegan 5 leader aware of the possiblity of capture by sociopaths, and skilled in frame control, is one of the best defenses against sociopaths, moreso than any specific communication rules, although rules like e.g. transparency of communication are helpful in this regard, as is Malcolm’s norm around honoring distrust.
So I disagree that intent doesn’t matter—it matters supremely, as you actually want a leader who’s skilled in frame control to prevent you from getting taken advantage of. BUT, the caveat is that a Kegan 3 or 4 person trying to understand the intent of a Kegan 4.5 or 5 person skilled in frame control will most times not be able to—that’s the nature of hierarchical complexity. So in practice trying to “determine the intent” of your leader to figure out if they’re aligned with your interests or not isn’t useful, even if the intent itself is one of the most important things.
This is basically an unsolved problem and one of the causes of civilizational inadequacy. The inability to select between competent Kegan 5 leaders who apply aligned frame control, and competent Kegan 4.5 sociopaths who apply misaligned frame control, is the cause not only of unhealthy religious style cults, but also the cause of most of the Moral Mazes that cause harm to people in normal corporate contexts.
I agree with all of this, and just wanted to note that there are Kegan 4 frame-controllers and Kegan 3 frame-controllers, too.
Good point.
I see no reason why Kegan 2s cannot be frame controllers as well, if, rather blatant ones due to messy Frame.
In fact, Kegan 1s are supreme Frame Controllers, except their Frame is completely messy (ask any parent of a baby/toddler/preschooler).
Hm.. The idea that positive leadership also involves frame control is interesting. I never thought of it that way.
I suspect that you only get a cult-like group/organization if the leader uses frame control, rather than something with independent-thinking, healthy group members.
Maybe good leaders are skilled at something frame-related, but it’s not frame control; rather, it’s about listening to what people’s motivations actually are and then crafting a frame for the group as a whole where people will be motivated to pursue the mission, based on their needs and so on.
Maybe this is the same thing you also mean. I guess I just assumed that in the “frame control as bad” connotation, there’s something coercive about it where the frame that is imposed over you is actually bad for you and your goals.
In my experience very good organizations are cult-like in their very strong cultural practices. For instance, I was part of City Year in Boston, which has people wear bright red jackets everywhere, do physical training in the Middle of Copley Square every Wednesday, and has you answer “Fired Up!” when someone asks you how you’re doing. You are expected to memorize their values as you do your job.
In my experience the heads of City Year, people like Charlie Rose, are incredibly good at the thing I’m calling frame control in this post. They make you excited about the values of the organization when they speak, they’re charismatic, good at commanding a room and taking control of situations.
I’ve also been part of the Men’s Circle in San Francisco. Again, you have to memorize the values here to join. You have to go through an initiation process of cleaning up all the open loops or lapses of integrity in your life, THEN you can get voted in to join. You can’t speak about anything that happens (to other people) in the circles at the men’s circle. Again, these are all “cult-like” things. And the leaders are charismatic, good at frame control.
I’m now part of Monastic Academy, which has been called out in this very comment thread for “negative” frame control.
If you read Kegan’s book “An Everyone Culture”, you’ll also find that the groups do practices that are associated with cults, like processing their feelings at work. I would also venture to guess that e.g. Ray Dalio is good at frame control (and this seems apparent in e.g. reading Principles, he makes you think like he does and get excited about his way of seeing).
In my experience, none of those people are trying to craft motivations that fit the group as a whole necessarily (although there’s a little of that). Rather, they’re crafting a narrative that fits the situation and then working to attract people who fit into those values/narrative. Again, this looks a lot like what “negative cult leaders” do, the difference being the intent.
There are a few differences of course. None of these recommend cutting off family or friends, or other ways of seeing. They have oversight on the leaders, and ethical rules in place to prevent issues (e.g. No dating between leadership and members).
In general, I think that e.g. Aella and the people she’s interviewed have been abused. They have an understandable trauma response to strong charismatic leaders, and so totalize around the negative aspects. Meanwhile, I’ve had largely positive experiences, managed to avoid “negative cults”, and seen how these sorts of behaviors can create powerful cultures that help people grow and do good in the world. So I don’t see it as “Frame Control is bad” but “Frame control is powerful, and sometimes people are bad.”
Thanks for explaining! You’re definitely pointing out a real phenomenon and “skill,” but I feel like it’s different somehow than the thing aella was gesturing at. Maybe the main difference is that the neutral leaders you talk about try to set up frames that their subjects find positively exciting, whereas frame controllers set up frames that are disempowering and make the person smaller? For instance, I don’t necessarily think it’s “frame control” when Lucius Malfoy rallies his fellow death eaters around hating Dumbledore. He’s just being a good leader. It becomes frame control when he gaslights his underlings and underhandedly blames them for everything that when wrong with his latest plan.
But we might just be interpreting the OP differently. I can see why you want to use “frame control” for both the good thing and the neutral thing. Maybe it would be appropriate to coin a different term for the thing aella means. Maybe something like “frame erosion” or “frame distortion” that emphasizes the potential adverse effect on victims when someone uses frame control (a more neutral behavioral strategy under this meaning) in an exploitative and uncaring way.
Or maybe another dimension here has to do with consent. If you sign up for an organization that makes you learn special greetings or mantras, you give consent to let yourself be shaped in some kind of cult-like direction. By contrast, in the examples aella talks about, the frame controller starts to get more and more influence over aspects of the person’s thinking that seem like they shouldn’t be under someone else’s influence.
On the merits of the type of leadership you describe: I’m skeptical. I worry that whatever stated mission an organization has cannot be easily compressed into slogans or rituals, and if people have to do these things in order for the organization to work, then maybe it’s lacking in authentically mission-driven individuals, and that spells trouble.
Of course, the counterpoint is “authentically mission-driven individuals are rare and it would be highly valuable if a single mission-driven leader can recruit a large number of otherwise non-contributing people toward the mission.”
And my reply to that is “yeah, it would be great if it worked, but it’s not going to if the mission you’re after doesn’t have easily attainable (and hard-to-Goodheart) metrics that you can use to keep outputs in check.”
Yeah this makes sense.
I don’t think the point is to compress the mission into slogans or rituals, it’s to ensure a culture that screens for people authentically excited about the vision, and to continually steer the organization back towards it.
FI think the merits of a DDO that’s run like this is that it:
Allows mission driven leaders to recruit people to the organization.
Alllows them to recruit people who are authentically mission driven—participating in these sorts of practices is an incredibly good way to find people who are ACTUALLY on board with the values and authentically excited about the mission
But more importantly, it creates a culture that can develop more Kegan 5 leaders who can drive the organization.
This is why they’re called deliberately developmental organizations, they help bring recruits UP to the level of the leader (perhaps this is the big difference, whereas negative cults try to push the underlings DOWN and prevent them from becoming powerful). So the real power of these organizations is “We can recruit people who think like us to help push the mission forward, and then teach them in the process teach them how to think for themselves and continually refine the mission).”
Right, I was strawmanning with that phrasing, sorry.
I guess the whole point of the strategy you’re describing is that it scales well, and my criticism of it is that it’s scaling too quickly, so is at risk of losing nuance. This seems like a spectrum and I happen to be at the extreme end of “if your mission is more complicated than ‘make money’, you’re likely doomed unless you prioritize hiring people with a strong ability to stay on the path/mission.” (And for those latter people, activities like the ones you describe wouldn’t be necessary.)
PITW #159 “This is hard, Be strong”
Fellow former City Year Member here who served in Columbia, SC. Reading your comment definitely brought up memories and makes me feel like I need to go back over that experience with a new lense now. City Year was definitely challenging to ones sense of individuality and had a very rigid structure. Yes they have very specific ways of building culture (red jackets, morning chants, PITWs, ect.) That could described as culty and definitely focus on instilling a particular view/set of values—hadn’t quite thought about it that way at the time. There is definitely a clear hierarchy in structure and a bit of a glorified image put forward that is umm.. different then the experience. The work and the year also yielded a lot of important lessons. I can totally see how “frame control” showed up with certain leaders. That being said to my knowledge there were also clear agreements being made with consent, organizational and financial transparency, clear codes of conduct, people feel comfortable complaining and giving feedback, and at least within the branch I served at the overall cohort lacked many of the defining features of a cult (i.e the cult personality and many group dynamics). People still maintained a level of individuality and agency even within that and nobody was ever pressured to stay beyond their original commitment of one year. Even then people did not meet resistance if they chose to leave mid contract. Though given a particular leader with narcissistic and charismatic authoritarian qualities (like Soryu) I could totally see how a dynamic could easily become more cult like. There were things City Year was really good at - and then there were things that they really weren’t.
You mentioned above you think frame control is probably necessary for good leadership—but what if that’s based on a cultural script and model of leadership that doesn’t actually serve to create a better or more equitable world. What if that model of leadership is actually just perpetuating the same patterns of harm? The question is, is it beneficial to aspire to that level of frame control? Or are these types of hierarchical, power over structures in which heavily utilized frame control is actually outdated, limiting, lacking in diverse perspectives, and creating environments in which abuse of power is more likely to occur.
I’d say one difference between “frame control” and say sharing different points of view is “power” and the extent to which one (mis)uses their skills, talent, status, resources to overpower or control another person’s reality vs. them operating from a place of agency and engaging with one another.
Similarly, I’ve been a part of a many many Women’s Circle in the PNW that shared many multicultural elements, groups norms, ceremonies, common language, ect. We also have “agreements” of confidentially. Agreements being the keyword are often co-created. Creating shared realities is not the same thing as frame control. However, cause humans be humans obviously varying levels of frame control can happen in any relational or group environment. For all I know your men’s group might have been cult like. Who am I to say!
I have also worked with a number of nonprofits (8) over the past 10 years with various cultural and organizational dynamics I won’t go into here in direct services, as a Development Coordinator/Director, Grant Writer, Strategic Planning and Organizational Development, board member, various other service leadership roles, ect which has yielded a lot of insight into how organizations develop at various stages and what best practices support functional dynamics a long the way. It’s been my observation that collaborative and egalitarian models which strongly represent the communities they serve, have strong accountability and grievance processes, and actively seek feedback and integrate community voices are most effective at achieving their mission, create healthier communities and are more stable over the long-term. They actually engage in LESS “frame control” and actively create spaces for very different perspectives and lenses to intersect—which seems to create more positive organizational cultures. While structures like City Year can scale quickly and get a lot done—there are also significant disadvantages to having a more hierarchal structures and they tend to leave many young people somewhat burnt out rather than ” Fired Up!”
Any group or community can evolve into cult dynamics within an authoritarian, hierarchal structure without clear safe guards and healthy, ethical leaders. It’s important to be clear about the difference between a culture and a “cult”. When we start talking about cults according to it’s current definition what is being talked about is a very specific set of structures and defined group behaviors. Usually it’s when these characteristics and behaviors are taken together that you get an actual “cult”. I’d highly recommend you aquaint yourself with what these are Friend, because you are in a very high risk situation.
I also happen to be a former Monastic Academy apprentice and am the one who brought them up earlier. In ten years of nonprofit service I have never personally encountered a more high risk, dysfunctional, authoritarian/hierarchal, unethical, sexist and abusive organization. I have never encountered the level of flat out denial, silencing, disassociation, and “frame control” anywhere else other than maybe some fundamentalist Christian churches. City Year was NEVER anywhere close in terms of frame control and the kind of unethical behavior that happens at the MA would never have flown at CY. The one thing they do have in common is using an overly idealism driven and not entirely transparent narrative to recruit young people to engage in areas of work that they are under qualified for and far more inexperienced than what is actually needed which creates a lot of challenge and usually leaves people burnout or in some cases pretty fucked up leaving the Monastic Academy. Having existed for 7+ years and despite consistent feedback about harmful impacts from many past residents and apprentices the MA still does not even have a basic feedback process in place to gather either qualitative or quantitative data about the impact of their programs. At this point it’s leadership is actively aware that the program is actually harmful to a substantial number of people and does not communicate these risks upfront. People who dissent or share negative feedback are actively excluded and/or forced to leave the community (especially in instances of ethical and organizational misconduct as happened in my own experience). This ensures that the community consolidates toward those who agree and are willing to be complicit or at least silent when faced with harmful practices. In the case of a former partner, yes multiple members of the community actively told him to cut any contact with me after I was forced to leave and after I spoke out publicly online about the organization and his complicity he did cut contact with me. Many former residents and apprentices experience symptoms of cPTSD and need to recover significantly after leaving. Longstanding patterns of domination, colonization, misogyny and sexism are very much present in the space. For example forcing women out of the community and actively using coercive methods to keep them silent when they are impacted by the sexual misconduct of leaders and wealthy donors. The relationship to power and money is extremely unhealthy—and their are no real accountability structures in place (i.e. no code of conduct for teachers that defines what abuse is, no established grievance process, and a nonfunctional board). As a fundraiser I definitely found their practices to be highly questionable and unethical—and are likely illegal in some cases according to Vermont State law regarding fiduciary duties and 501c3 compliance. The current board is currently primarily made up of former students and others who have direct conflicts of interest that can impact ones ability with board duties as defined by Vermont State law. This along with the fact that Soryu is head teacher, founder, AND board president creates major power imbalances and is not in alignment with nonprofit or Monastic best practices. Recommendations from most sources and nonprofit consultants say that a board should have at least 7 board members with 0 conflicts of interest—the MA has 2. Most people do not understand how board governance works or how important the make up of a board is to ensure a functional board and oversight. Soryu has zero sources of accountability and Shinzen Young is rarely on site and cannot provide adequate oversight either. He is not a part of legitimate Buddhist lineage and in fact his training history with Sogenji is actually pretty sketchy. It has been my experience that I have never witnessed the level of cognitive dissonance, disassociation, and failure to live up to ones stated mission and values anywhere else. And yet somehow they always find a way to frame themselves as ethical, trustworthy, compassionate, wise, and having integrity even whilst actively behaving otherwise. Frame control is by far one of the things they seem to exceed best at.
You talk about the advantages of a mission driven organization but you don’t seem to question whether or not that model of expansionist, authoritarian leadership is actually healthy—rather than simply perpetuating longstanding cultural patterns of harm that have been going on for a very long time. There are lot of ways nonprofits are shifting and need to shift away from being mission-driven to being community-centered—and to examine the history of colonization, patriarchy, racism, ablism, ect. That exist everywhere. I love nonprofits and working in this sector, but nonprofits are not inherently free of harm simply because they aspire to do good work. It takes active cultivation, addressing cultural patterns and bias, and listening deeply to ensure that one is actually having the impact that one intends to have!
I’d like to analogize this to a Turing Tarpit.
There is an idea that programming languages don’t get to make everything easy, they get to choose some things to make easy and some to make hard (following a loose invocation of the Pigeonhole Principle here).
You want a programming language to decide to make useful things easy and useless things hard.
This is why you would expect “Frame Control” to be useful in a “good” organization. A good organization should use a frame that encourages good things and discourages bad things. A neutral frame is harder to fight the good frame from than a “good” frame!
I think it can happen even without the leader doing it, if the followers already have a cult-like frame they want to fit the leader in.
In my humble opinion, the only difference between “bad” Frame Control and “good” Frame Control is in how much the Frame corresponds with objective reality, and hopefully, social reality as well.
Good leadership could be then explained as Frame Controlling the group towards alignment with positive outcomes in objective physical reality while avoiding negative social outcomes.
Hmm. I would guess that, if someone is using a wrong frame (let’s say it depends on assumptions that are demonstrably false), and you have a better frame in mind, there are still better ways and worse ways to go about communicating this and going from the one to the other. Like, explicitly saying “It looks like you’re assuming X, which is wrong because …” seems like the most educational and intellectually legible approach, probably best in a good-faith discussion with an intelligent counterpart; whereas e.g. just saying new stuff from a different set of assumptions that doesn’t directly engage with what they’ve said—but initially looks like it does, and takes long enough / goes through enough distracting stuff before it reaches a mismatch that they’ve forgotten that they’d said something different—is potentially bad.
Now, er, the original post says it uses “frame control” to mean the non-explicit, tricky approach. It mentions “Trying to demonstrate, through reason and facts, how their box is better”, and says “These are all attempts to control your frame, but none of these is what I mean by frame control”, and “No; frame control is the “man doesn’t announce his presence, he just stalks you silently” of the communication world.”
This is unfortunate, because the bare phrase “frame control” will inevitably be interpreted as “actions that control the frame” without further qualifiers (I’d forgotten that the post had the above definition). Something like “silent frame control”, “frame manipulation”, or “frame fuckery” would probably fit better.
I’ll risk sounding a bit crass, but is it not often an issue of the intelligence/knowledge of the recipient?
I mean it in two ways:
1. Sometimes Frame Control only feels tricky or non-explicit, because the recipient is unobservant, or lacking in social tools to recognize explicit but gentle Frame Control. Basically, mistaking politeness and verbosity for manipulation. To use that metaphor: the man was not stalking you silently, you were just wearing headphones and daydreaming instead of paying attention to your surroundings.
2. The recipient could not be convinced that objectively true facts are true, because they lack the knowledge or mental skills to understand them, and Frame Control is pretty much the only way they can be led to accept the facts. I, for one, do not know jack about Quantum Physics, and the holes in my understanding go back to HS science and math. It is literally impossible to teach me to accept say, String Theory on objective principles (“I know it makes sense!”), only to Frame Control me into agreeing with it on subjective principles (“This Hawking guy sure sounds smart!”).
Because of points 1 and 2, a “Frameless” discussion is very hard and unlikely, unless both people are intellectually adept and introspective rationalists, who only slightly differ in their knowledge of the facts on the subject. Any other human interaction by necessity runs on Appeal to Authority (which is basically Frame Control), otherwise nothing would ever get accomplished.
Hm, maybe. I can see that frame control comes in handy when you’re a general in a war, or a CEO of a startup (and probably at least some generals or CEOs are good people with good effects on the world). However, in wartime, it feels like a necessary evil to have to convince your soldiers to march to the their death. And in startups – I don’t know, cultishness can have its advantages, but I feel like the best leadership is NOT turning your underlings into people who look cultish to outsiders. So, I think the good version of frame control is generally weaker than the bad version, for instance because good leaders don’t have anything to fear in terms of their followers becoming better at passing Ideological Turing tests for opposing views. But I guess that’s just expressing your point in different words: we can say that, if our frame is aligned with physical reality and avoids negative social outcomes, it shouldn’t look like the people who buy into it are cultists.
I also think it’s informative to think about the context of a romantic relationship. In that context, I’m not sure there’s a version of “good frame control” that’s necessary. Except maybe for frames like “good communication is important” – if one person so far struggled to express their needs because they weren’t taken seriously in their past life, it can be good for both individuals if the more securely attached person pushes that kind of frame. However, the way you would do that isn’t by repeating “good communication is important” as a mantra or weapon to shame the other person for not communicating the way you want! Instead, you try showing them the benefits of good communication, convincing them through evidence of how nice it feels when it works. That’s very different from the bad type of frame control in relationships. Also, let’s say you have two people who already understand that good communication is important. Then no one is exerting any frame control – you simply have two happy people who live in the same healthy frame. And insofar as they craft features of their personal “relationship frame,” it’s a mutual sort of thing, so no one is exactly exerting any sort of control.
These examples, and the fact that you can have relationships (not just romantic ones) where something feels mutual rather than “control exerted by one party,” makes me think that there’s more to it than “good frame control differs from bad frame control merely in terms of correspondence to physical reality (and social reality).” I guess it depends what we mean by “social reality.” I think bad frame control is primarily about a lack of empathy, and that happens to leave a very distinct pattern, which you simply can’t compare to “good leadership.”
Edit: I saw another commenter making a good point in reply to your comment. What you call “good frame control” is done out in the open. The merits of good frames are often self-evident or at least verifiable. By contrast, the OP discusses (bad) frame control as a type of sneak attack. It tries to overcome your epistemic defenses.