Understanding Your Context
Leaders of all kinds should be working to understand their context.
Regardless of market or intention, leaders should be working to have a situational awareness of what is happening around them. This understanding supports better decision-making by ensuring that the relevant information is not only surfaced but anticipated.
Social Leadership is a little different though. The Social Leader is challenging themselves to look at the widest possible context. To do this without becoming overwhelmed is a skill, to do this without jumping to early conclusions about the solution is an art.
For the Social Leader this is inner-work. Pursuing this type of situational-awareness involves dealing with failure and time spent staring into the abyss.
But the rewards are great.
To tie your effort to impact that goes beyond Profit & Loss statements, or the shifting of market trends; to instead capture how the cultures we create can shape the world, or how we can solve the key questions troubling humanity right now - that is meaning and legacy. Impact for everyone.
More than that, the 21st Century needs people who can make these leaps. It needs those who can look up beyond their immediate future and their immediate comfort - and instead pursue something riskier, more daring, more valuable.