In the ideal world, communication should be simple.

I should be able to speak or write whatever I want. Everyone else should just understand what I said, what I meant to say, what I really want, what they are supposed to do with this information. (And when it should be done by.)

And how I mean all of that in the nicest of ways.

But it doesn’t always happen that way.

For leaders, most of our job is about creating and ensuring clarity. Whether this is clarity about vision, the future, expectations, directions, explaining what just happened, interpreting meaning, delineating roles and responsibilities…

It’s not possible to lead well and be content with unclear communication.

Communication should never be assumed.

It can nearly always be improved. The best communicators I know continue to practice communicating better.

The Three Primary Reasons Why Communication Is Difficult

We Aren’t Clear to Ourselves: The primary, fundamental, core reason why people seem confused about what we said is that we aren’t sure what we meant either. We aren’t clear, even to ourselves.

Excellent leaders will take the time to get very clear on what they want, what they are trying to accomplish, what makes that important to them, how they want it done, the parameters within which it can be done and so on.

Don’t confuse this with micro-managing. Clear communication (and the clear thinking that precedes it) empowers employees. It allows for far less management and oversight because everyone knows what is expected and how to perform.

A micro-managing leader, very often, hasn’t taken the time to figure out what he or she wants. They often opt to figure it out as they go.

And so, even if they seem exacting, they really aren’t.

We Haven’t Separated Our Signal from Our Own Noise: Sometimes, as leaders, we send out so many messages that no one knows the one they are supposed to tune into.

This might look like:

• A meeting with two dozen agenda items (or no agenda)– with no clear focus or priority.
• An inability to be disciplined in our own priorities.
• Trying to be “nice” but not saying what needs to be said.

When we allow additional noise in our communication, it consumes additional bandwidth. It requires that much more effort for others to understand us. Why not make it easier?

We Aren’t Using the Right Signal: Sometimes we insistently send out an analog signal to a digital audience. Or the reverse.

There is value in our teams learning how to listen and adapt to other methods of communication. But a master communicator and leader takes ownership for communicating with his or her audience.

• They don’t make assumptions about what is understood. In fact, they’ll confirm that there is a shared understanding.
• They don’t require that others “read between the lines.”
• They speak the language of the audience that are addressing.
• If it is a mixed audience, they learn how to communicate so that everyone can understand.

Lack of Clarity Is A Primary Cause for Organizational Issues

I recently published an article entitled The 15 Top Issues That Explain Almost All Organizational Challenges. Five of those issues have to do with clarity. Here are those five issues and what to do about them.

1. Value Confusion: Get clear and honest about what really drives your organization and what drives your customers.

Supervisors will often ask, “How do I motivate employees?”

You can’t motivate an employee. What you can do is connect what is valuable to that employee to what is valuable to your organization. When the employee sees how their desires are met by pursuing the organizational goals – you tap into whatever motivation they already have.

Someone in business development will ask, “How do I get more sales?”

You don’t really make a sale. You offer value. You solve a problem or meet a desire. To do that – you have to know what is important to someone else.

You get repeat business when what you offer and what they receive are the same.

2. Purpose or Outcome Confusion: Many leaders and teams focus on actions and tasks – and lose track of what those actions or tasks are supposed to accomplish.

Similarly, some want to focus on a particular methodology. This can become almost ideological to the point of resisting any effort to determine outcomes or track accountability.

The ends don’t justify the means. But the means don’t mean anything without a clear end in mind.

3. Strategic Confusion: Many teams misidentify tactics, tasks or planning as a strategy. They aren’t.

A strategy is a framework for identifying priorities and making decisions. That’s it. Keep it simple. I’m a fan of putting it on one page.

Your strategy should be simple. It should describe the desired future. Then it provides guidance on how your values and priorities guide your decisions and actions between where you are and where you want to be.

Using this framework, leaders can determine ideal tactics and tasks. These are the shorter-range actions that are needed to move towards the desired future.

The strategy should be clear and resilient. Whereas new situations, information, and data might require changes to tactics or tasks – your strategy should guide you through those changes. It’ll make those decisions easier.

What most people experience in strategic planning is work on everything at once – strategy, tactics, assigning tasks and plan writing. There is nothing wrong with this. The problem is the most tangible product of strategic planning is a written document. That creates false confidence.

Sometimes more time is spent on the graphic design and printing of that document then will ever be spent reading it or using it for decision making.

A plan is just a written record for the purpose of guiding future decisions. A plan, on its own, accomplishes nothing. It just sits in someone’s drawer.

No tactic will always work. No situation is static. So, develop a clear strategy. A strategy helps you navigate changing circumstances without having to change your overall focus.

4. Alignment Confusion: This happens when we state a purpose, vision or values but don’t act or organize according to that purpose, vision or values.

• Our decisions and behaviors need to be in line with our values.
• Our promises (the expectations we set) need to be with what we deliver.
• Our policies and processes need to be in line with all the above.
• Leadership and employee character, ability and behavior need to be in line with all the above.

Strong alignment creates resonance. It’s attractive. It’s confident. Things feel right – without even needing to be explained. The system is strengthened. Credibility grows.

5. Success Confusion: Similar to not being clear about outcomes, teams are often not clear about what is considered success. This often falls into two kinds of errors:

• Not being clear about what it is we want: I once worked with a client who was trying to hit a high revenue goal. He had very detailed plans about how he would get there. But I knew the revenue number was only symbolic. On its own, it meant nothing.

When I asked him, “What does making $X mean to you?” He almost broke into tears. It took a little work, but he was able to finally explain what he was trying to accomplish.

Once we knew that, we knew what the real target was. The revenue number was no longer a goal – it was now a method. Perhaps not even the best method. This gave us more options for pursuing success.

• Using someone else’s definition of success: This is the most common success problem.

There is a strong tendency to import success definitions from somewhere or someone else. Regardless of how well they do or don’t fit our situation.

It’s fine to explore how other people interpret and experience success.

But in every area that we are hoping to succeed – we should have our own definitions for success, that make sense and are valuable in our context.

Conclusion: As a leader and a team, the time that you take to create clarity is well invested time. It helps everything else operate more smoothly, reduces conflict and the management load. It increases your team’s ability to accomplish more.

Take good care,

Christian

Need quick clarity on next steps? Contact me to set up a call. Together we’ll look at the issue you are facings and identify the top 2 or 3 strategies you need to lead your organization successfully.

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