“It’s a system failure … we have not provided our front-line supervisors and managers with the proper tools, policies and procedures that allow them to use their common sense,” said United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz. He went on to say, “To put a law-enforcement official on (an airplane) to remove a booked, paid, seated passenger … we can’t do that.”

Like most of you, I’m still a little shaky after watching the video of the passenger, Dr. David Dao, being dragged off the airplane, kicking and screaming, and reportedly incurring a concussion, broken nose, and two missing teeth.

Those of you who have attended my leadership seminars know that this was not a system failure. Come on - you know what it really is. That’s right. It’s a leadership failure. It’s not about tools, policies and procedures. It’s about front line employees getting the wrong messages from the most senior levels of the company. For a company with a slogan, “Fly the Friendly Skies,” something got lost in translation at the Chicago O’Hare Airport.

In leadership-speak, we call it a breakdown in message congruency – a concept created by leadership guru Margaret Wheatley. When message congruency exists in an organization, behavior is positive and self-managing at all levels. When it does not exist, employees make bad decisions, arguments arise, power plays occur, and all of that internal junk exists that makes work unpleasant and companies fail.

The CEO of United Airlines can’t anticipate every situation that the company’s 86,000 employees might incur in 54 countries with 339 destinations, 4523 daily departures, and involving 143 million passengers. However, he can create what we call the “Space to Deliver,” a space where employees discern what’s truly valuable and shape their behavior accordingly.

A visual might help explain this. Imagine an atom with a nucleus in the center, and protons and neutrons in a defined orbit around it. All matter is made up of atoms, and 99.99% of an atom is empty space. Within this space is a field, magnetism, which holds the nucleus, protons, and electrons in place. The magnetic field is invisible to the eye, but its effects are clearly discernible.

Within an organization is vast empty space between people, buildings, plants, and everything else that makes it an organization. This is particularly true for a company as far flung as United Airlines. Leaders fill that space with messages that include uniform content, like policies and procedures, and context that translates the content to fit whatever situation might occur. A lion’s share of the message employees receive is defined not by the content, but rather the context within which it is perceived. Therefore, leaders must give employees context.

You see, we as humans do not take things out of context – we take things into our context. The problem at the gate in Chicago was not about content (policies and procedures) it was about context – and the gate agents had the wrong context. The right context is – Always keep the company’s reputation paramount: when in a position of power over customers never do anything that could be perceived as profoundly immoral. In Mr. Munoz words, that’s “common sense.”

Context comes from the space that a CEO creates for employees to deliver products or services to customers. The key word is “creates” and here is how a CEO does it:

• By setting direction for the organization and constantly challenging his or her version of reality.
• Engaging the organization in a cascading interrogation of internal and external environments, and proactively managing risks.
• Building high-performing teams through diversity, listening, understanding others, and tackling his or her toughest challenges each day.
• “Owning” performance management and reward processes – knowing that the organization will become what is measures.
• Using subtle changes in structure to tweak culture and ensure effectiveness.
• Managing his or her behaviors, nurturing the behaviors of others, and creating a coaching culture that has enduring impacts on positive behavior.
• Shifting out of past-domain conversations and into conversations that create and sustain a viable future where context abounds.
• Looking for opportunities to insert the future into every conversation “in the moment.”
• Building relationships within the organization necessary to provide support through which continuous learning is encouraged.
• And, lastly, by ensuring that boundaries are in place to define, and provide protection for, right and wrong.

It might be that the messages existent throughout the United Airlines organization are being shaped by context unfit for the company’s situation. To his credit, Mr. Munoz has accepted that he owns the problem, and he has to fix it. He must look beyond the rule books, manuals, and policies, to more holistically understand the space that he has created for his organization to deliver. From a leadership perspective, he is the problem, and he can be the solution.