Jun

24

The importance of context for successful leadership

Filed Under Leadership Practices 

Tony Mayo, co-author of "In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century", discusses the importance of contextual intelligence for leaders. In his post Tony Mayo describes the importance of context for leaders….

"Yes, business leaders need to have certain personal characteristics to be successful, but it is often the application of those characteristics within a specific context that define great success. It’s not only who you are, but when and where you are."

Too much emphasis is placed on heroic leaders, those special individuals with a unique set of traits, CEO’s who turn-around large organisations and political leaders that free a nation. Tony goes on to note that:

“There is far too much focus on individual characteristics of leadership and far too little focus on the situational context. By placing too much emphasis on the individual, we can easily fall prey to the cult of the CEO and believe that any individual who was successful in one setting would naturally be successful in a new setting. The list of once-successful CEOs who have failed in new business settings is long.”

This focus on heroic leadership traits, leads to a number of dysfunctional behaviours, such as:

  • The tendency to try and become like our leadership hero’s, instead of seeking to become more of who we are, to be original’s and not copies. What traits and factors that made a leader great in the past, will not necessarily make the leader great tomorrow. This is why you cannot blindly emulate successful leaders from the past and expect to get the same results. What made Jack Welch successful, will not make your successful. We need to leader from successful leaders and not to try to emulate or copy them.
  • The tendency to over-estimate the importance of our leaders, and to under-estimate the difference we can make in our daily actions.
  • The tendency to relay on past success and limit ourselves from experimenting and trying new things.

Given the importance of context, it’s important for  leaders to be able to make sense of the changing environment and then adapt their leadership style, approach and behaviour to ensure they’re effective in the new context.

“Clearly, context is important. Business leaders who have been sensitive to context possess what Nitin Nohria and I call contextual intelligence. Not only do these leaders understand the implications of the contextual forces that surround them, they also have the ability to adapt and change their leadership style and approach as environmental conditions evolve. Success in one realm does not always translate into success in another. Indeed, relying on past models of success without being sensitive to the context of the situation has often yielded major disappointments.” - Tony Mayo, Why Do Some Leaders Have More Influence than Others?

Do you have a good understanding of the context in which you are leading?

Do you know what leadership behaviour and traits will be most effective in this context?

 

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Comments

One Response to “The importance of context for successful leadership”

  1. Steven Sonsino on June 25th, 2008 13:33

    George, your post is a valuable reminder that we need to flex our leadership styles to influence and lead others. However, I wonder how many managers know and appreciate this intellectually, but don’t actually know HOW to do this? I recently began the closing phase of a year-long research study where the most regular questions all began with the word ‘how’.

    I sense that managers and leaders know what they have to do, now they’re just grappling with how. Especially given the overload they’re dealing with and the pressure to perform now and not next week.

    It would be great to see some more posts addressing the ‘how’.

    Great blog, by the way.

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