ABSTRACT
In the early part of this book, we saw that leadership consists of a process of building close relationships with people within which we get to listen deeply to them so that we can think clearly about them. The focus there was on the content of leadership, what it is that leaders do. To have a full picture of what is involved in this process, however, we also have to look at the leadership context. Leadership does not take place in a social vacuum. It is not just an interaction between individuals with no history to their relationships, no feelings about their experiences, no differences in access to power and resources, or no learned or conditioned responses to their environment. The people involved have a shared history and an ongoing dynamic to their relationship. In other words, leadership has a social context. Since we have defined leadership as a process of thinking about people, we need to take account of this social context and of all the factors that influence the ways they think, feel and behave.
