Main Idea:
Series: If leaders do not become conscious of the culture and context they interact with and are embedded in, those cultures will manage them.
Today: Every culture that exists was formed over time to create a specific context today. Knowing how & why that context came to be enables us to better interact with, lead within, and when necessary: shift that culture.
Context is never simply “bad”.

The effectiveness of any culture cannot be evaluated separately from the environment to which it exists.
There is no universally correct leadership style because of cultural variation.
Context has layers.

When seeking cultural change you must impact culture at the deepest level for it to take hold.
An outsider can often gain a greater sense of “what” is happening at the deepest level, but they will not know “why”.
You do not understand a context if you cannot appreciate a context.

Goal:
Leaders must understand their own culture well enough to be able to detect where there are potential incompatibilities with their culture and other contexts, and within their culture & their vision.
Leaders must be able to decipher other contexts well enough to reveal their assumptions, synergies, and incompatibilities.

Assignment:
**Get someone else in your organization & both of you write out a list describing the culture you’re in, compare your list to another person and begin to figure out where your differences came from & what it means about your deeper values.