The Challenge
Overlooking the Importance of Context
Leadership development programs often overlook the importance of context.
The organization’s position, strategy, culture, and business goals should all provide context for leadership development, as should each leader’s function, role, culture, team, and boss.
Creativity offers a good example of why context is important. Creativity is certainly important for your leaders in marketing or product innovation, for example. But what about those in finance or compliance? It matters for them too. The context is just different.
The Solution
Treat Context as King
Context is everything.
Even within the same organization, even within the same function, the context can be wildly different for different leaders. Just as we should ask leaders to reflect on their individual differences, we also need them to consider their context—and we need them to stay aware of it so they can be ready to adapt when it changes.