Context is everything.  It gives us understanding and perspective.

During a recent session with a client, we were discussing how to best communicate their substantial business and leadership experience in an impactful manner that reflected and illuminated their accomplishments.

I told them that their first sentence in that communication is the frame that holds all the details of the painting.  The details are the how and perhaps, the chronology.

What makes up the frame?

• Results
• Numbers
• Strategic impact at an organizational level

For example, you could say that you have led and overseen key initiatives at your organization, assembling large teams, and meeting important deadlines.

Or, you could say that you led and designed one of the largest high stakes strategic initiatives in the organization, its size and scope requiring you to weave together a coalition of key stakeholders across 5 different silos, while simultaneously building a team of hundreds capable of meeting crucial deadlines ahead of schedule, resulting in advancing the organization’s objective of (fill in the blank: rolling out product for a new line of business/grabbing a percentage of market share/being first to market) and generating xyz in top line revenue.

You get the idea.

If you were to elaborate on either the first or second statement above, the how and chronology of both might be the same.

But the frame is entirely different.

It provides context.

For your leadership.