exercise · all tools
Positive Reframing
Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★any
Disclosure · what is sharedoptional
Participants take real negative framings — of the crisis, the project, the team's chances — and rework them into honest positive ones, testing the difference in energy and options each framing produces. Optimism built as a craft of language and attention, explicitly without denial.
Hold with care
- Reframing despair a group actually feels, too fast, reads as dismissal — acknowledge first, reframe second (Jordan's version: 'genuine hope without denial')
Practical
- Time
- 60-90 min
- Group
- 2–10 · pairs, small-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Whiteboard or flip chart
- Mechanisms
- cognitive-reframing, dialogic-encounter
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Origin & where it lives
Mashiho Mihalache via Transition Makers Toolbox (IIS UvA); team adaptation by Thomas Jordan — Cognitive reframing / hope work
Instructions: open online
In this directory via Transition Makers Toolbox · Thomas Jordan's IDG Resource Library
status: checked · added 2026-08-25