2. Play Your Role Well before You Build upon It
,Context doesn’t have to slow you down indefinitely, but it certainly does limit your role, and for quite some time, if you have entered a new situation. Unless you properly evaluate the context of the situation and figure out where you fit, you will never have an opportunity to build on your role.
To play your role well in any context, you have to be able to determine the following:
• What expectations and hopes about the situation are reasonable for you to have?
• What communications are reasonable?
• What actions are reasonable?
Once you are actually playing your role well, the most productive ways to build on that role will become apparent over time.
• Think of a new situation you are currently entering, or a new situation you have recently entered.
SITUATION:
• Now figure out where you fit in the picture:
— What are the big factors shaping the context of this situation?
— What is the mission of the group?
— Who are the other people and what is at stake for them?
— Where do you fit?
• When did you get there?
• What is at stake for you?
• What is your appropriate role?
• What do you need to do to play that role very well?