Leaders live in a world of ambiguity. A primary leader responsibility is to translate ambiguity into clear direction for teams to act.
“What the heck is he talking about? Could this be any more convoluted? Why won’t he just answer the question?” Statements like these are unfortunate reality checks that your message is not clear. The purpose of leader communications is to convey a message to create understanding or establish alignment and drive action. A leader’s message can quickly be lost if communications are not clear, especially verbal communications.
Appreciating how people learn can help with understanding approaches for being clear in our communications. Notably, people learn and create understanding through questions and answers, not mandates, statements, or edicts. Speaking with people rather than at people and having a conversation rather than a monologue, is more natural and provides team members the opportunity to participate in creating understanding through questions. Making time for conversations, parsing the direction being set, and letting team members ask questions will create deeper understanding and, therefore, alignment that leads to quicker action.
Often, by the time leaders set direction with their teams, they have already spent a great deal of time thinking it through and have had reaffirming discussions with other leaders. Just because they understand the direction doesn’t mean others will if they don’t have the opportunity to ask questions and the time to absorb responses. Our brains are an amazing thing. They have a great capacity for understanding and learning. But they have little capacity for acting on what we do not understand. Each of us processes information in our own way. The time leaders take up front to answer their teams’ questions will save rework later due to misunderstanding. Investing quality time in conversation and answering questions may seem obvious, but due to time pressure and other commitments a leader may shortchange this very important step.
As you discuss your plans and work through questions, be sure to emphasize why you are setting the direction you are. Ensuring people understand the why and not just the what leads to deeper understanding and buy-in. People need to know why they are being asked or directed to do something, or the likelihood of getting the desired results drops significantly. Think of a time you were asked to do something, but you didn’t really understand why. Were you enthusiastic, energetic, and efficient in performing the work? Or did you spend time asking around why the work was important or possibly wasting time with your peers complaining about the work, and how the request never should have been made as it interrupts your planned work. Consistently focusing on the why eliminates these problems. While this is generally well known, this critical step remains easier said than done and elusive for many of us.
As noted in a prior post, words matter. Your choice of words can create absolute clarity, absolute confusion, or anything in between. For example, don’t say efficiency when you mean layoffs. Don’t say you expect the team to be data driven, and then never ask for data to back up your decisions. Don’t tell a person during her year-end review she had an outstanding year while you are giving her a “good” rating. And don’t qualify things with words like “kind of” or “believe” when they actually are or you know (e.g., it’s kind of problematic or I believe we need to make this change). These unclear words can lead to mixed messages and misunderstandings. Mixed messages and information gaps are open to interpretation, and holes are not often filled with positive thoughts. Using qualifying or “squishy” words often occurs when there is difficult information to share. When the news is good, it is easy to be clear and direct. When the news is bad, we tend to soften our language and can speak circuitously. Use the most direct, clear words you can in the most difficult situations and your associates will view you as an honest, trustworthy leader worth following.
Further, how you say things matters as much as what you say. To the examples above, you may state things very clearly with unambiguous words. But if you do not say them with empathy, you can lose the trust of your associates. For example, you may have to let someone know he is not performing well, and you are going to begin the performance management process. Being unclear with your words and unempathetic to the person’s situation will cause that person to tell his friends how he felt treated by you, which can undermine other efforts. You may not believe that is how you treated the person, but he gets to decide how he feels and how he shares your conversation with his friends.
Here are a few additional considerations regarding clarity:
- Leaders live in a world of ambiguity. A primary responsibility is to translate ambiguity into direction for teams to act. Doing this well is critical to your success.
- There is virtually nothing more important than clarity … of expectations, of outcomes, of guardrails, of yourself so team members truly understand the context in which they are supposed to operate successfully.
- Be plain spoken. Lack of clarity occurs when we use words that do not resonate with the team, or we fill our direction with jargon. Have you ever played the Word Bingo game at work? If so, you know what I am talking about. Too much “consulting speak” is not conducive to getting work done.
- Watch out for overused words like strategy and transformation that can cause confusion as they have been diluted over time. Tell people what you really mean.
Share your thoughts below.
Do you consider yourself a clear communicator? If so, what do you focus on to ensure you create clarity? If not, why do you believe you are not?
Leave a Reply