Employee Super Power 3 – Giving Context

Author: James Middleton

Last week I wrote about how being able to ask the right questions can save a lot of pain, heartache and money. By asking good questions, you immediately reduce the chance of getting into that slightly awkward situation where you’ve done a lot of work… and it’s all wrong. My hope with this post is to flip the proverbial coin and show that providing context is just as important in the pursuit of understanding people and delivering exactly what they want.

What happens without context?

Imagine a situation where you need your team or supplier to get a specific piece of work done. For example, you need them to hire a new writer. If that’s all the context the person responsible for doing the recruiting has, the options of who they could find are almost endless! I can just imagine the poor soul walking out the room, that feeling of emptiness and hopelessness mixing together like ice-cream and Tobasco sauce… unpleasant.

What happens next will probably proceed as follows (depending on the intelligence and experience of the person doing the recruiting): they will go through their own understanding of what a writer is (we all know how broadly interpreted a label like “writer” is), assume that their definition of a writer is what the company is looking for and then go about searching for such an individual.

Essentially, the person carrying out the task without a useful understanding of the overall context has an incredibly high chance of doing the wrong thing. Without understanding what the target is, who’s involved, when it’s for, why it’s happening, what the consequences around it are and what the budget implications are, they are literally shooting in the dark. They will have succeeded if they find a writer, but is a writer (in the broadest possible sense), what is really required

Add a little context for amazing results

If we stick with our example of hiring a writer, what type of things would the person doing the hiring need to know? What information is required to erect a useful set of goal posts for them to aim at?

My humble list of things that they would need to know include the following:

• Who will this person be writing for?
• What will they be writing about?
• Who will be reading what they’re writing?
• How much experience do they need to have?
• What is the budget regarding their salary?
• What type of personality has traditionally worked well in the company?
• When do they need to start by?

The list could go on and on. Anything that is going to help the person know in detail what they’re looking for is useful.

Giving context works both ways

In the same breath, providing context in the other direction (i.e. from the task “doer” to the task receiver) is also incredibly powerful. By explaining your thinking, your reasoning, your methods, your challenges and your inspirations, you let the other individual into your mind and into your logic. They see why you’ve done it and are much more likely to approve of what you’ve done (given that all your thinking is correct and execution of a high quality).

So to roundup, combining the two superpowers of asking good questions and providing good context work hand-in-hand. Together they create a web of information around those involved where everybody has the same expectations, understands the goals, is aware of the challenges and is cognisant of the potential consequences. Together, these two superpowers get everybody moving in the same direction!