Here we shall begin to discover for ourselves what a context is and how it uses us. It is simple however counter-intuitive and since us human beings tend to conceptualize life and approach life from an ‘understanding ‘ perspective, it is not an easy task for most of us. For those of us who are clever and smart, it makes it even more difficult as you will undoubtedly ‘understand’ it instead of discover it as-lived, as-experienced, real-time.
Every situation whether we realize it or not comes with a context. It is how we (our brains) make sense of the world. One of the several examples used in the course is driving behind someone who is ‘slow’ and seems not so mindful or perhaps is over-concerned about the traffic. If not yourself, you have seen others become irritated, frustrated, and annoyed. In every one of those situations, we find ourselves being irritated and there are some actions associated with it (body language, driving differently). It is possible to alter the context by simply considering that it is your favorite grandmother you dearly love is in front of you. That shifts the context and gives us a different way of being and acting.
That is easily understandable. Here is the challenging leap: EVERY situation (every moment) there is some context at play, whether or not we are aware of it. We rarely work on the framework that surrounds the situation (context) if ever. To harness the power available in reframing (restructuring, rewriting) we need to see just how pervasive it is.
The prevailing contexts we live in are invariably coercive and we end up dealing with the same things rather ineffectively and they repeat ad nauseam. Those contexts are the contexts we want to identify and re-contextualize to gain a new level of performance.
In The Being A Leader Course we use this ‘new paradigm of performance’ create a context that gives one the being and actions of leader and leadership as your natural self-expression (automatically). To go back to Context Rules here.
Context for the present is the future here.
Reference
Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve and Echeverria, Jeronima, Course Materials for: ‘Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model’ (October 4, 2022). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 09-038, Simon School Working Paper No. 08-03, Barbados Group Working Paper No. 08-02, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1263835 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1263835