Contextual Leadership

Complexity is also present in the organization's internal contextual elements: 1) people; 2) resources, such as technology, available cash, and time; 3) structures that connect, group, and otherwise organize people for a particular purpose; 4) processes ' how people execute the various tasks that must be accomplished to make an organization do whatever needs to be done to effectuate its purpose for existing; and 5) socially constructed narratives about values, identity, vision, and goals. The external context is the world in which the organization or group operates, from the macro forces, like politics and economics to the micro forces, like a single client or new technology.

What Is a Contextual Leader?

Leading is about collecting and analyzing data and creating the right internal context. For example, a leader who intends to create leadership bench strength (executive presence) will evaluate every structure, process, resource allocation, and socially constructive narrative for their effects or potential effects on what is needed to create leadership bench strength. Do organizational structures bring high-potential leaders and high performing leaders together? Are high-performing leaders engaged in modeling, mentoring, and sponsoring processes? If not, the leadership question is: Which structures and processes must change and how?

Contextual leaders are successful by including the right people, at the right time, in making and implementing the right decisions to adjust aspects of the organizational context and create the changes that define effective, resilient, and high-performance organizations. Rare is the leader with sufficient charisma to persuade others or power to force into existence the context required for any high performing organization. Instead, contextual leaders begin with a vision and specific objectives. Then the focus shifts to adjusting elements of the context to encourage the right behaviors to emerge.

Context Adjustment

Context adjustment requires preparation, planning and implementation of actions to create the desired changes. There are four steps to preparation: 1) define the problem to be solved; 2) describe the desired outcome; 3) collect data about the contextual elements that maintain the status quo; and 4) analyze the data to better understand what is maintaining the status quo and which contextual elements to change. Superimposed on the entire process is the participation of the right people at the right time.

The right people: 1) have data about the status quo; 2) are able to analyze and attach meaning to the data; 3) have the power to close the gap between the present and desired outcome or block efforts to do so; and 4) will be affected by or participate in the context changes. Including the right people builds collaboration, trust and energy. It also overcomes multiple types of resistance to change, creates inclusion, and builds organizational cohesion.

Contextual leadership means leading this multifaceted change process with a skill set that affects how the leader thinks, feels, and behaves. Consider the difficulty in getting people to use a new CRM system, the benefit of which, to improve client relations management, is broadcast in the name. Rational argument does not persuade anyone to spend time and effort learning a new technology when the personal benefits are difficult to imagine and the costs much more obvious. Instead, including these people as participants in a collaborative preparation, planning, and implementation process to identity the contextual elements to change and how and when to change them, influences people to learn about and use the new technology.

Contextual leaders are only as effective as their foundation of knowledge in three core areas: organization dynamics that cause the persistence of the status quo; systemic and individual change dynamics; and self-awareness and use of self as an instrument of change. The associated skills fall into four categories as shown in the Table below.

This set of skills is best developed through a combination of formal training, action learning (on-the-job learning or learning-by-doing combined with reflection) and coaching. Incorporating Contextual leadership into your organization builds a foundation for successful change.

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Susan Letterman White is a principal of Letterman White Consulting, Boston. She is the author of Power and Influence for Lawyers: How to Use it to Develop Business and Advance your Career (Thomson-Reuters/West Publishing 2011). A member of this newsletter's Board of Editors. Ms. White is working on her second book, is an adjunct faculty member at Northeastern University, is certified in e-Learning, and serves as an arbitrator and mediator for workplace disputes.