Become the leader you want to be: The Power of Cognizance & Context

In our model for leadership, we cover six practices that we’ve found to be meaningful in taking a human-centered approach. Cognizance, Context, Cause, Courage, Care, and Co-creation. Typically, we begin our exploration with the practice of Cognizance, defined as the practice of raising awareness of our impact.

As leaders, we have the opportunity to create a significant impact on our teams and our organizations. But how aware are we of that impact? Do we know what our inherent strengths are? Do we understand what our weaknesses are? And do we know how these affect the people we work with? In our work with leaders from various levels and companies, the practice of cognizance seems to be the one they would like to improve on the most, so we co-create spaces where leaders feel safe to receive feedback, learn about their values and motivations, and explore how they might bring out better awareness of their team members’ values and motivations as well. It’s not an easy process but the gains we’ve observed have been quite significant. 

What makes the practice of Cognizance so important? According to a study by Showry and Manasa (2014), successful leadership comes about when one is self-aware. Conversely, when leaders overestimate their abilities it is correlated to lower performance (Bratton et al, 2011). Having a more accurate view of oneself and one’s team members is a critical practice which can help us become more human-centered leaders.

Gaining awareness, as previously mentioned, is simply the place to begin. Cognizance without Context may not be as effective. This is the practice of navigating within a system. Having an understanding of what your business environment requires, what your company directions are, and what your team dynamics look like – all play an important role in determining what is required of us as leaders. Any change in these factors may change what is required of you as a leader. Systems thinking has also been linked to leadership performance (Palaima & Skaržauskienė, 2010), where a one-size-fits-all approach may not be the ideal. A good question to ask oneself is how we are continuously seeking to understand the needs of our organization based on the changes occurring both in and out of the company.

Over the coming months, we will dive into the rest of the practices and in the meantime I encourage you to reflect on what you can do in the next few weeks to enhance your practice of Cognizance and Context.