You had to be there is an expression that says you had to be in a particular situation, in that particular vibe, to fully understand a situation. It could have been something that was particularly funny, but on retelling seems to fall flat, or a special emotional occasion which somehow fails to evoke the same emotional depth on relating this to others.
This tells us something that we all intuitively know – that situations are different. Indeed, in social psychology many believe this is one of the most underrated aspects of behaviour: situational or environmental influences. Consider how people behave in churches all over the world. When people walk into a church, they become quiet, and speak in whispers and walk gently around. Churches evoke this behaviour in introverts and extroverts alike. The context is more important than personality.
The contributing factors to situations and contexts are wide and diverse. But it also means that what happens in one situation may not happen in another. So, when it comes to change and behaviour, we have to be conscious of how much is driven by the situation – or indeed if it is situation dependent.
Within this is a supply side problem of people and skills – a change programme may have worked in one situation because of particularly talented individuals or leaders driving this – but you cannot copy and scale these because these are particular skills that limited individuals have.
This means we may be able to change behaviour in one situation and initiate the positive change we want to see but in another it may completely fail.
Simple Takeaways
-
- Understand situations and contexts
- Anaylse situations and contexts
- Collect data on contextual aspects
(including various personality or demographic data as already recommended) - Multiple pilots or trials (as already recommended) in different contexts
© leading brains 2022
References
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