Understanding Contextual Intelligence with Dr. Matt Kutz

In this episode of the Leader Lounge podcast, host Dr. Amy Taylor Bianco is joined by guest Dr. Kutz to discuss the framework of contextual intelligence. Dr. Kutzexplains how contextual intelligence involves diagnosing your environment in real time to understand complex social dynamics. He discusses how biases impact our perceptions and the importance of recognizing bias to improve social awareness. Dr. Kutz also shares how his background in athletic training led him to develop this leadership model. Listeners will learn strategies for flexing their social style based on different contexts and walking away feeling confident they have influenced others.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:07

Welcome to the Leader Lounge. We're here at the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership at Ohio University's College of Business. And I'm here with Matt Coutts, author of Contextual Intelligence, to talk about some of the complexity and uncertainty and things that he found looking at leadership and contextual intelligence. I'm here with co-host Nick Winnenberg.

SPEAKER_00: 0:28

Hello, America.

SPEAKER_02: 0:31

And Jen Traxler. Hello, everyone.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Fantastic. All right. Cool. So walk me through, what exactly do you mean by contextual intelligence from a very high level?

SPEAKER_03: 0:41

So contextual intelligence, the 50,000 foot view is diagnosing your environment in real time. And what I mean by that is, you know, we've all walk into a room and we get a sense and a vibe of what's going on in the space, who's good, who's bad. You know, we make these judgments and assessments and it's really that and how we go through that. What assumptions do I bring? What experiences am I pulling from my memory banks, et cetera, to form the opinion or the diagnosis that I'm making about the space. And then once you recognize or make the diagnosis, it's what Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25

So it's socially monitoring too, right? So there's some social monitors, some style flexing thrown in there, and you're kind of assessing the situation. With that comes a lot of bias.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33

Correct.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33

So how do you navigate the bias portion

SPEAKER_03: 1:35

of that? Well, so I don't. And I don't think that you navigate the bias. I think you become aware of the bias. And for me, that's really important. And that's part of what CI is about is understanding what bias I'm bringing to this diagnosis. And I think most people aren't aware of that. I mean, we talk about bias, we understand the concept of bias, but we never apply it to ourselves. We always think about it, well, you have bias and you have bias, but I don't have any bias. I'm the only one thinking clearly on the matter, you know, kind of thing. I'm the one, because you're filtering through your experience in first case scenario, you know, first person scenario. And I think it's, so I refer to that in the book as how And hindsight bias is one of the things that keeps us or prevents us from actually practicing CI well. Hindsight bias is misremembering the past in our favor. So I say it this way. A lot of times, you know, we all have memories and we play these memories back in our minds like videos. You know, we watch these videos and we always cast ourselves as the central character in that video. Hindsight bias, understanding hindsight bias is simply refusing to cast yourself as a central character in the video. So stop remembering everything with you as a central character and try to remember everything with other people as the central character in those memories. And already you're doing 100% better than most other people do. And that helps you reframe the experience that you're currently in as well as rehashes even your memories and actually helps you recategorize your memories more accurately.

SPEAKER_00: 3:16

So it's a lot of outward mindset. That's what it reminds me of, right?

SPEAKER_02: 3:19

It is a lot. At least it It seems to me a lot like outward mindset, but I'm kind of curious, like, so how do you, you walk in, right? You see the room, you figure things out, like what do you, and you said you diagnose the situation. So how do you, like, do you tell yourself like, oh, this is this environment? How do you, how do you do that? Do you talk about it? Do you?

SPEAKER_03: 3:36

So you watch for cues and everybody's going to have their own process for how they do this. And again, it's experience driven. So a big part of becoming contextual, contextual intelligent is understanding your own framework, your own. metrics, you know, and, and so to do that, I have, I, I describe what I call three meta skills and maybe there's a better word for it. I'd like meta skills right now. So three meta skills and I, uh, it's understanding complexity, understanding synchronicity and understanding tacit aware, your tacit knowledge, tacit awareness. So the big, the big thing is, and this is what we'll actually talk about some in the, in the keynote later today is this idea of understanding the difference between a complex situation and a complicated situation. So a lot of times we walk into situations and we think this is complicated and we're pre-programmed to think of life in the world and our relationships as complicated. Well, with that comes a certain belief system, certain biases. Well, complicated things are solved this way. Complicated things, we try to use a scientific method, for example, which I'm a big fan of, but it leads us astray sometimes because we assume that everything can be broken down to a smaller component part and isolated and then evaluated in an isolated space and then put it back in the bigger piece where it came from and think that it's going to be unaffected or be the same. And it's just not. So we have a certain precondition to how we handle complicated situations. Well, that completely changes when we begin to realize it's not complicated, it's complex. And the complexity component is a huge, it's a different, it's a game changer. You have to have a different mindset, a different understanding of interrelationships and what can be reduced, what can't be reduced, things like that. So that's the first. So we struggle and work through that. So becoming contextually intelligent is about recognizing those spaces. So one of the first things I would do when I walk into a space is I try to assess, okay, is this more complicated? Is it more complex? Because it doesn't mean that nothing is complex. There are certainly complicated things, but most of the time in human dynamics and interactions, It's complex. So I got to make sure my mind is right in that space. The next thing we do is we look at then synchronicity. Synchronicity is the meaning we make from experiences that we have. So another thing that's kind of automatic is we walk in and we immediately try to associate what I'm currently experiencing right now in real time with something previously that was as similar as I can find. Oh, interesting. And I would never say don't do that. But if we only do that, then we're misremembering. We need to have other things to pull from. So

SPEAKER_02: 6:31

how does it work? What happens when you go in and you get it right? You figure out all the things, right? And you get it right. What does it feel like? How is it different than not knowing?

SPEAKER_03: 6:42

So that's a great question, by the way. I've never been asked it that way before. So give me a second to think about this. Props, Dr. B. I would say you walk away feeling like you left a good impression. Again, I'm going to think about this because that's a great question, but you walk away feeling like I have practiced the art of influence. And you kind of give yourself a little pat on the back, so to speak, where, okay, I made the impression. I think I did okay. Leadership happened. And again, so one of the things that I like to talk about is the difference between leadership as a formal role structure. I'm a leader because I'm the boss versus ontological leadership, where I'm a leader because it's who I am and part of my being. And I would guess that when you walk away from that experience, you thinking, okay, I did leadership. regardless of if I have the role, the title, whatever, but I did leadership today. That's how I think, that's how I would mark, okay, I was, I was contextually intelligent.

SPEAKER_02: 7:50

That's interesting. So what, so your background in kind of medicine and medical setting. So how did that lead you to this? Like, was it trying to get those settings right? Was it really, you know, complex, complicated situation? Like how did, how'd you get from there to here?

SPEAKER_03: 8:04

Yeah. So my background is, so I'm actually a professor of athletic training. Okay. I teach an athletic training and for everybody who doesn't know what that is it's kind of the sports medicine-y thing, and I'll offend all my athletic training friends if I call it sports medicine. You just made half the population very upset. So at any rate, that's fine. That's fine. I've been doing that for years, so they're upset with me anyways. But yeah, that's what I wanted to know. I had observed in my own life and practice that, for example, one of my original research questions is, what would happen if we took a world-famous coach? Let's just hypothetically say, back when I was doing this study, Phil Jackson was the coach. of the Bulls, you know, and he's won all kinds of national or, you know, world championships and iconic coach. Everybody thinks he's a great coach. Well, what if we took him and made him the coach of the Detroit Lions, which is my NFL team, which were pathetic back then and were getting better, but they were bad. If he coached them, It's coaching coaching. Yeah. Or is there something specific about the sport and things like that? And so I begin to do lit reviews and studies and most of what I could find in the literature was idiosyncratic to a particular industry. Well, here's leadership in sales. Here's leadership in government. Here's leadership in business, you know, entrepreneurial leadership is one thing and sales leadership is another thing. And I wondered is, are there leadership skills that transcend

SPEAKER_02: 9:26

context? Okay. Okay. You

SPEAKER_03: 9:28

know, and, and, and if, For example, if he did go over and coach a completely different sport, could he be successful and motivating and inspiring? What leadership skills would he use? Or would he have to relearn everything? It's the Ted Lasso. It's the Ted Lasso. It is the Ted Lasso. It is. Oh, my gosh. Congratulations. You just wrote the plot to Ted Lasso. I appreciate that. I did. Yeah. Years ago. This was almost 20 years ago. They didn't actually consult on that? I mean, you should have gotten credit, you know? 20 years ago. Totally, yeah. That's exactly right. The Ted Lasso effect. There's my next title for my next movie, too. Yeah, exactly. It really is. So, yeah. So that's what I really wanted to know and wondered. So I did the things and did the surveys and the research and all that and asked, you know, what behaviors, leadership-wise, do you practice when you find yourself in the midst of a transition of some kind? And so we defined that for them. And we came back and we were able to identify several behaviors that people practice regardless of the context from a leadership perspective and then from there develop the framework and then we did other studies and identified other cool stuff and blah blah blah

SPEAKER_02: 10:39

so that's cool so you think based on it that you could take a really good leader and you could probably transition he or she to another context with

SPEAKER_03: 10:47

right

SPEAKER_02: 10:48

a little bit of training that almost wouldn't matter

SPEAKER_03: 10:50

that's what that was I was wondering okay you know yeah that's what I was wondering is could that really happen and it turns out that people do it in everyday life all the time anyways and we create constraints with how we build organizations and how we create certain things that make it harder to do. But if we can get by some of those constraints, one of those constraints, for example, is what we just talked about. The difference between assuming a situation is complicated versus complex. So we all think our businesses, our organizations, our jobs are complicated because we want to believe that, well, no one else can do this as good as I can. Right. So we create stuff that's just not true, not real when And if we could understand, well, complexity mindset actually helps me in this case. So that's kind of where that falls into play. And so I think we're starting to see and realize that transition is easier maybe than we thought if we have the right frame of mind. And of course, what's been going on in the world, you know, and with everything has helped us understand transitions can happen better than maybe we thought.

SPEAKER_01: 11:56

So I'm one of those people that need the whole puzzle completed. And you've talked about the first two, but you didn't talk about tacit. So I've been sitting here going, okay, when's he going to talk about that? So can you elaborate on that piece of when you were talking

SPEAKER_03: 12:11

about it? So the third meta skill is tacit awareness. And again, this is understanding. So tacit awareness, I'm sure we've heard the phrase, the best way to understand it is to compare it to explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is what we read in a book, learn in a classroom, take in a workshop or seminar, something that can be taught to me from someone else. So that's explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge are the things that you know are true, but don't know how or why you know it, right? And again, there's a whole thing. Michael Pagliani talked a lot about this. It was his research area and really a vanguard leader in that space. But what we're beginning to realize is most of the decisions that we make are based on tacit knowledge, right? So when you ask somebody, well, why did you do that? But their response really is, I don't know. And they struggle with that. It's like, so what do we know? I mean, can we really step back a little bit and learn why we think the way we do? And that's what I was referring to when we talk about our understanding our biases. And this is where CI really starts. It starts with, you know, I think it was Seneca that said, first know thyself, or maybe it was Aristotle, or I'm going to get in trouble for that one. I'm pretty sure it's Mobius. We'll go with Mobius, yes. I know he said it too. Mobius is another Marvel comic guy. That's Dr. Mobius. At any rate, so... Okay, there you go. So we've got, you know, and that's really where CI begins because I think that's what we skip because we just assume... Well, I know what I'm about. And I know that, like I said, I'm the only one thinking clearly on the situation here. And that's really the farthest thing from the truth. When you look at studies on confirmation bias, for example, we, being the greater scientific community, knows that the person most subject to confirmation bias are the more educated people in a society or group. Because for a lot of, I think, obvious reasons, but we think we know. So, of course, that I'm going to see what confirms what I already think and believe. And that's a big part of CI as well is just being honest enough and maybe, you know, to take a term from Brene Brown, vulnerable, to be vulnerable enough to recognize that, okay, I know some stuff and it's okay to know that you know some stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 14:40

I love how people insert sometimes like, well, research says. Yeah. What research?

SPEAKER_00: 14:46

Right, yeah. You guys also went through the pandemic as well. Right, exactly. You're all on Facebook in

SPEAKER_03: 14:52

the pandemic. Right, yeah. So, and I think it's just a place of vulnerability, a place of honesty, a place of authenticity when we recognize, okay, yeah, I do know some stuff, but there's way more that I don't know. And when we start there, we can actually be more, because that in and of itself, bringing that mindset to any environment makes you more alert, right? more open, more receptive. So you're seeing things and hearing things that you might not have before because you're just looking for what confirms what you already believe and feel. So that's the tacit piece. And that's how we form this tacit knowledge core at who we are is all these things that have went in to shape who we are and we're not recognizing what those were. So somebody who can develop, intentionally back up and focus on what I think I know, it requires again, what I call then 3D thinking, which is the other big part of the book. Hindsight, insight, and foresight. And then understanding how the past has contributed to who I am, which is where most of us only go. And understanding how the present environment is influencing who I am. And also understanding how my future identity, the anticipated memories that I have, the future, affect who I am. And so all that then feeds into those three metaskills and you have a nice little, it works out into a very pretty little nice

SPEAKER_01: 16:17

graph. So I was just curious. I know we talked about it in your class and everything, but what's the difference between emotional intelligence and contextual intelligence?

SPEAKER_03: 16:27

So also a great question. And this comes up a lot. Actually, the first time I actually submitted this for review in a journal, they came back with, ah, it's too like EI and you've changed some things. So we've done some work on that. And the big part is the self piece. I know emotional intelligence deals with understanding your own frame and emotional state as well. But you add to it, so it's EI plus context.

SPEAKER_00: 16:52

And it's

SPEAKER_03: 16:52

understanding that context dictates more of your personality than we think. I'm sorry, I said that wrong. More of our behavior. More of our behavior than we think. And we like to assign things to our personality. Well, I behave that way because I'm this way. And from what we found is context actually dictates more of that. And so we have to have this. So we've learned to assess the emotional states of ourselves, of the people, but we haven't affected or really studied the effect of how the environment, the situation, the context affects me. And so that's what, that's what kind of separates. It takes it a step higher is adding. I need to learn to diagnose the environment that I am, that I'm in knowing that when we meet here in this scenario, we behave a certain way and there's an expectation, but if we ran into the same people later on, on tonight at drinks after the bar or whatever and we're talking it's a different context and our interaction is going to be different the experiences we draw from are going to be different what's even appropriate conversation is going to be different

SPEAKER_02: 17:55

it's all going to be different you know and that's all and

SPEAKER_03: 17:57

being and some people it still surprises me to this day aren't aware that that's how it really works

SPEAKER_02: 18:03

it's kind of back to Kurt Lewin right the father of our sales there's a function of the person and the environment you put it together in a model for everyone right fantastic so I could go with that all day long and my background in psychology. I mean, like we can talk about that all day long. There's so many interesting things there. I want to know if I guess if I'm listening, I want to know. So how do you first of all, how do you teach that? Just just in a very basic sense. But how do you teach that? And what's the incentive for someone to learn that?

SPEAKER_03: 18:33

So the so the incentive is influence. I think, you know, everybody wants Well, I suppose not everybody. Most people like to have influence.

SPEAKER_02: 18:43

Want to have influence. Right.

SPEAKER_03: 18:43

Want to have influence. They want to be liked. They want to be recognized, accepted. So that's the big takeaway. That's the buy-in for me is if I can do this, people will, I don't know what the right word is, respect me more, listen to me more. I mean, I suppose that depends, but people will at least recognize I've got something to offer, which everybody loves. So that's the big takeaway. How you teach it is just expose the ideas to them is a big part of it because it resonates and that this is this is also another great question because this has been the hardest thing for me in in being an evangelist for contextual intelligence is bridging that gap between you know the academic how much you know do we talk about all the research and things like that that make it a valid instrument because I developed an instrument that assesses these you know that's there in the psychometrics and all that stuff that is certain

SPEAKER_02: 19:33

certain matters to start with it matters

SPEAKER_03: 19:35

to certain people but I'm learning it matters a lot you know that's a much smaller number of people who it matters to. Once you got it, you don't really have to sell that part anymore. But then you've got the practitioners out there, the clinicians in the world who are actually doing the work, who see it and be like, yeah, no, I don't care what the research says. That's real. That speaks to me. I know what it is. And I've had many senior level executives pull me aside after a workshop or a training and say exactly that. I don't care about all the research and stat stuff, but what I know is you gave me I always, what you said, and one guy actually said it this way. He goes, I don't mean to offend you, but this isn't rocket science. And I'm like, well, it's not. I would agree it's not. He goes, but everything you said, he actually pointed to his gut. He's like, it resonated right here. I know you're right. And what you gave me, was something I didn't have before. And that's a language to communicate this to my people. And now that I have a language for this, it's going to be easy. And that's his words. I don't know if it ever was easy, but they hired me back and we did it again. So they really liked it. It's really easy when you do it. the connections and sometimes just introducing the language it's like I always knew this was true but I never could articulate

SPEAKER_01: 21:03

it yeah

SPEAKER_03: 21:04

and so that's what I find is the neatest thing is you give them these kind of moments and these kind of ideas and thinking and just watch different people put things together it's like yeah I see how this works and then they have the language then they can pass it on and pass it on and

SPEAKER_01: 21:18

I actually will absolutely affirm that so when I took Dr. Kutz's class when I was in my doctorate program and he pulled And he had the actual segment. We went through the assessment and it was the light bulb. It was that something that I'd been looking for as a leadership professional, trying to train others. And we had talked about him coming to the company that I was at prior to me leaving and coming here. So when we pulled the Lancaster series and the speaker series, I'm like, I know exactly who I want to bring because it'll feed through from an academic perspective. And, you know, being an academic institution, obviously we want to have that research and that good validity from it. But from me being a practitioner, it's absolutely spot on and something that we've even talked about. I said, okay, how can I get certified in this? And he's like, well, I haven't gotten there yet.

SPEAKER_03: 22:09

We're working on it. We talked

SPEAKER_01: 22:12

about that.

SPEAKER_03: 22:12

I still have a day job

SPEAKER_01: 22:16

that I love. I'll help you figure it out so that I can be certified so that I can actually do this as well. Because I think it's really a cutting edge discussion that we can have and putting the language to it is the most beneficial part. I just want to leave with

SPEAKER_02: 22:30

one question. You're so passionate about this. I can see it in your eyes. I can see you just light up and you talk about it. What is your hope and dream for this? It seems much bigger than teaching it to specific organizations. What is this? This

SPEAKER_03: 22:44

is something that just me and my wife talk about. That's what I want to hear. What could this be? I get the image of pinky in the brain Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, it's time to take over the world. You know, kind of a thing. So that is what it is then. You want to take over the world. No, I just want to... Sincerely, you know, I actually do believe this helps people. Yes, it does. So my objective is to get it in front of as many people as possible, you know, and I mean that around the world. I mean, so I do travel quite a bit. As a matter of fact, I just booked yesterday a four-month tour, four-month, sorry, four-week tour in Australia where I'm going to go around and do this and keynote and do different sessions. And I just want to expose as many people to it as possible. Jen mentioned You mentioned, you know, there's a profile and assessment you can take and possible certifications and things like that. And so that would be a lot of fun for me. Cool. Just to just to get it out in front of as many people as I can. But as I said, is I also have a day job that I love, you know, and it's not just I'm doing this until this. So I'm really torn because I still absolutely love teaching, love being a faculty and and mentoring students and all those kinds of things. And it's still my favorite thing to do is. But this other thing on the side is like so much fun and a lot and a lot of things so so it is going slow because everybody's like you know you could do this and you could do that and and hold

SPEAKER_00: 24:15

on I know I could but it's a bandwidth but

SPEAKER_03: 24:17

yeah it's a bandwidth thing too and so I guess the next thing for the to handle the bandwidth is try to train other people to do this as well but but like you said the passion is mine it's still my so it's still I'm still afraid to give it away to somebody else to say there's a lot there you know And so, cause I really have to believe that whoever, you know, wants to pick up the evangelist role for this with me, you know, kind of thing I think is important. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 24:45

Well, this has been just so great. So exciting talking to you today and hearing about this and hearing about contextual intelligence, how we can use it, how we can kind of use it in everyday life. The academic part is great. I love knowing that there's the rigor behind it. That's just personally exciting to me, but then that we can actually use it to change, to change lives, right? I I mean, that really matters. And that's the academic's

SPEAKER_03: 25:06

dream, right? I mean, that's our dream is I actually discovered something. That was what was so neat to me about that three beer story I was telling you about while we were off air, you know, is this idea that it's just actually people thought this could be useful. Here, I'm just doing it to get tenure. It's going to go in a file somewhere in a library. No one's going to see it. No one's going to read it. Right, exactly. Get cited a handful of times. But when people actually be like, no, I think we can use this in our company. It's like, really?

SPEAKER_00: 25:34

Well, what? Let's do this. Yeah, absolutely. And anecdotally, I know we're wrapping up on time and everything too, but so I train a lot of salespeople. And we did an analysis with my company to analyze what does it look like from that sales profile? Is it a personality? Is it a skill set? And what we found is 87% personality or those intrinsic meta, sorry, meta. Meta skills. Meta skills, right? It's the meta skills. It's can you walk in and read a room and have those conversations, understand what it is. So it's like we're spending so much time on 13%. How do we train the heart? skills, when in reality, let's be talking about those meta skills. So I've written on that. Those are an academic, that's another thing.

SPEAKER_03: 26:12

That's a different podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 26:13

All right, cool. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Is there any other comments or questions?

SPEAKER_02: 26:17

It was phenomenal. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. It's been blessed for me. Have you back at some point. I'd love it. Kind of here we are with certification and getting everybody involved. So thank you. And thank you listeners for tuning in to this episode of The Leader Lounge. See you next time.

UNKNOWN: 26:34

Thank you.