Context drift: what changed that no one named

At a recent keynote, something unusual happened.

The energy in the room almost felt therapeutic — not in a soft way, but like the room let out a collective exhale and was able to start building on momentum that had previously felt stagnant.

Many of the leaders in attendance hadn’t recently sat in a room with others facing the same pressures — or, if they had, the tensions they were each grappling with had gone unacknowledged.

They felt seen. Validated. And they left with practical next steps.

Leaders were sharing exactly how they planned to apply the ideas immediately.

People were exchanging contact information.

A participant later wrote to the organizers to say how necessary the conversation felt.

We were discussing supportive context, a concept I’ve been presenting on a lot, but one I don’t see talked about nearly often enough.

Let’s be clear: Supportive context is not emotional reassurance.

But it is the foundation of an environment that takes well-being into account. It’s how you get your team to help you help them.

In practice, that looks like transparency and support in four critical areas, so they can lobby for the support they need:

• Information — Specifically what is needed?

• Decision Authority — Who has authority to make it happen?

• Priority — How critical is this to our purpose?

• Delivery — By when is it needed?

Most leaders don’t know the answer, or assume the answers are obvious. They are not.

When context is unclear, teams compensate by escalating, hedging, and slowing down.

Ask yourself: Where is friction showing up that we’re attributing to personalities instead of context?

Most teams aren’t set up to succeed

In my work with high-performing teams, I draw on Harvard University’s research behind the 6 Conditions of Team Effectiveness.

3 Must-Haves: Compelling purpose, real team, and right people

And 3 Enablers: Sound structure, supportive context, and team coaching

The research shows these conditions explain up to 80% of team effectiveness.

And yet most teams focus almost exclusively on individual performance.

An easier — and quicker — point of leverage is to shift the context they’re working with.

Recently, I worked with a regional utility leadership team shortly after a major restructuring.

On paper, everything looked fine:

• Revenue was steady

• Delivery metrics were stable

• There was no visible crisis

Underneath, though, VP-level leaders were escalating calls they previously owned, senior leaders were pulled into operational arbitration, and cross-functional coordination was slowing.

There had been a lot of changes: role scope, decision boundaries, capacity assumptions, and coordination complexity

But what hadn’t changed? The expectations.

No one had reset what “good” looked like in the new structure.

No one had explicitly recalibrated authority.

The system had shifted — but the context hadn’t been updated to match it.

That’s context drift. And it’s the natural consequence that follows when structural change outpaces clarity about authority, expectations, and risk tolerance.

Ask yourself: What assumptions about authority might we still be carrying from our previous structure? What has changed about our risk tolerance in the last 12 months — and have we named it out loud?

Why leaders are so hungry for this right now

Pressure isn’t new, but the pace of structural change is accelerating.

Restructurings. Expanded spans of control. Compressed layers. Evolving risk tolerance.

In fact, my recent article in Harvard Business Review explores how leadership teams often fail to recognize when their collective risk tolerance has shifted — and how misalignment at the top quietly cascades downward.

When the environment changes, and context isn’t recalibrated, teams experience slower decision velocity, emotional depletion and hidden dysfunction.

Not because they lack capability.

But because the system they’re operating in is ambiguous.

Supportive context can help clarify that ambiguity.

For the utility leadership team, supportive context meant:

• Clarifying decision ownership

• Resetting what “good” looks like in the new model

• Narrowing priorities

• Explicitly recalibrating authority

None of this was about motivation. It was about design.

And once those adjustments were made, escalation decreased, and coordination improved — without adding headcount or launching a culture initiative.

Ask yourself: What condition on our team effectiveness scorecard is quietly dragging everything else down? How do we create the conditions to fix it?

The frame that changes everything

If you are leading through change, here is the most powerful shift you can make:

Stop asking, “Why aren’t they stepping up?”

Instead, start asking:

• What specifically is needed?

• By when?

• Who is the decider?

• And what is the opportunity cost if we don’t secure this in time?

Most teams never articulate that final question, but the opportunity cost sharpens priorities. It forces tradeoffs into the open. It transforms vague requests into executable commitments.

When teams can answer those four questions clearly, performance accelerates — because friction drops. (You can diagnose where your team is getting stuck using this assessment.)

When teams struggle, leaders often try to fix the people, but the fastest leverage point is usually the lowest-scoring condition.

And very often, that condition is supportive context.

Not because people are fragile.

But because even strong leaders cannot perform inside unclear systems indefinitely.