Toward a Conceptual Model of Contextual Intelligence: A Transferable Leadership Construct

Organizations and their leaders have a growing pool of stakeholders with a growing chasm among stakeholder values. This, accompanied by growing global diversity and constant pressure to innovate, gives rise to continually changing contexts. In turn, these phenomena require executives and leaders to respond and adapt to quickly changing contexts. The purpose of this article is to assimilate the concepts of context, intelligence, intuition, and experience, and present a conceptual model for “contextual intelligence.” Contextual Intelligence is a construct that involves the ability to recognize and diagnose the plethora of contextual factors inherent in an event or circumstance, then intentionally and intuitively adjust behavior in order to exert influence in that context. The conceptual basis of contextual intelligence involves convergence of three abilities. Contextual intelligence necessarily requires that 1) an intuitive grasp of relevant past events, 2) acute awareness of present contextual variables, and 3) awareness of the preferred future, interact so that the practitioner can exert influence and make appropriate decisions. In addition to these three “soft” skills, Exploratory Factor Analysis extracted twelve leadership competencies (from a larger pool of 49) that serve as the basis for this construct. While a potent concept, there remains much work in dialogue and future research toward validating contextual intelligence. However, the concept of contextual intelligence may help to delineate the implicit leadership skill(s) referenced in the literature as the intangible element that keeps so many managers from reaching their leadership potential.