Understanding Contextual Intelligence: A Critical Competency for Today's Leaders

Abstract

Today's leadership landscape is dynamic and challenging. Earlier theories and assumptions appear to be inadequate and over simplistic in their ability to flex with the volatility and complexity of organizations which function in a knowledge economy at a local, national and global level. This paper offers a working model of contextual intelligence for practitioners, which extends the non-Newtonianbased leadership paradigms by integrating the principles of tacit knowledge, synchronicity and time orientation: essential competencies for today's leaders.INTRODUCTIONBasic assumptions of how to lead and what leadership entails are being challenged more than ever before. It has always been difficult to define leadership succinctly. As the context of leadership expands and becomes more complex that difficulty is increasing. Traditional theories and models of leadership are becoming progressively insufficient because they suffer from what Tetenbaum and Laurence (2011) describe as a sole focus on either the leader, the follower (usually in a one-on-one relationship), or the context. Consequently, few leadership theories or models adequately address the complexity and uncertainty of today's leadership landscape. Furthermore, they do not account for the volatile and dynamic contexts that are created by the interactions between the leader, follower, and the outcomes of their interactions and decisions (e.g., their environment).Fleishman and colleagues (1991) attempted to describe a functional interpretation of the different leadership taxonomies presented in the literature and identified over 65 different taxonomies. Winston and Patterson (2006) delineated a holistic definition of leadership and presented a nearly 1000-word definition incorporating over 93 different dimensions. The sheer number of leadership theories and dimensions makes it difficult for leaders to decide how to apply leadership theories, which ones to apply, and under what circumstances to apply them. Many leadership models have been reported to be inadequate and overly simplistic when it comes to addressing the volatility and complexity of leadership in today's organizations (Tetenbaum & Laurence, 2011).To address complexity and better understand contemporary leadership landscape, many practitioners and theorists have introduced leadership concepts that are based on non-Newtonian frameworks. For example, chaos theory (Burns, 2002; Wheatley, 2006; Tetenbaum & Laurence, 2011), complexity theory (Lewin, 1999; Schneider & Somers, 2006; Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007), adaptive capacity (Heifetz, 1994; Vincent, 2007), interactional psychology (Mischel, 1977) and systems thinking (Senge, 1990; Gharajedaghi, 2011) have been introduced as necessary paradigms from which to understand organizations and leadership. These frameworks provide an important perspective necessary to navigate context-rich organizations. However, they fall short in providing a usable model (e.g., measurable competencies) for practitioners. Models that incorporate complexity and chaos theories must also reframe how experience (tacit-based knowledge) is used and provide competencies in which to inform behavior and proficiency.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide a model of contextual intelligence that integrates non-Newtonian perspectives with traditional leadership competencies that also addresses the leader-follower-context nexus. Contextual intelligence extends non-Newtonian-based leadership paradigms by integrating the principles of tacit knowledge, synchronicity, and time orientation that offer the practitioner outcomes that can immediately impact performance. Outcomes associated with the practice of contextual intelligence include;* Explaining why there may be success in one environment and failure in another;* Reducing conflict and increasing awareness of the values and ideas of self and others;* Increased ability to effectively influence others;* Responding to and profiting from unexpected or complicated change;* Increasing team buy-in;* Accelerating ability to contribute in a new context, and;* Appreciating external and internal influences. …