Leadership Requires Clarity

As leaders, our job is to enable the people we lead to make good decisions. The primary way that we can do that is to give them the clarity they need to make those decisions.

If we don’t give our people the information they may need to make the best decision for them, we have failed them as leaders.

People we lead need to know:

• what success looks like
• what failure looks like
• the boundaries of operation (what’s not ok)
• the consequences of stepping over those boundaries (if we know or can guess at them)
• our recommendation
• that if they make a mistake, we will support them and correct them
• that they can and should ask questions
• that if we didn’t cover something clearly, or we chose to withhold information, we will accept whatever consequences arise
• that we will defend their ability to execute within these guidelines

This is not a small list, or a simple list. It’s definitely not an easy list. It requires us as leaders to stick our necks far far out, because we might be wrong the information we impart in any of these categories. And if we’re wrong, it might cause someone to make a mistake that affects their career.

But the alternative – to say nothing when we know something – is guaranteed to make us a bad leader because it means that we’re letting people fail through our inaction. Or, worse, if we choose to withhold information, we’re removing people’s choices about their careers by attempting to manipulate them into making the decisions we think they should make.

If we help people by clearly communicating what we know, they are more enabled both as employees and as adults. If we’re wrong, we can apologize, take the consequences that result, and work together as a team to get better.

Without clarity, everything is muddled and confused.

Without clarity, we can’t grow as leaders, and the people we lead can’t make informed choices and learn from the results of those choices.

Clarity is Success

Let’s say you work hard on a project, you put your all into it, and then someone shuts it down. Do you consider that a failure? Or a success?

If, in the process of your work on that project or the process of it being shut down, you learned anything that helped clarify your past, present, or future, we would say that both the project and its shut down were resounding successes – because clarity is the most important measure of success.

Clarity about the project, or the political environment surrounding the project, or corporate priorities, or the priorities of the hierarchy above you – all of this information leads to a more clear and informed future as well as more understanding now.

Clarity is significantly more helpful than getting a specific result out of a single effort.

As an example – let’s say the project was shut down because the business division realized that it wouldn’t meet the needs of your customers. If you can find out why it didn’t meet those needs, you can understand more about your customers, and more about how a project that would not serve them came to be.

Or, let’s say the project was shut down because you royally screwed up in some vital way. This is also a thing you should know so that you can either choose to improve or…choose not to improve. Either way, you have the right to choose, and you can’t do that without understanding your choices.

You can’t understand your choices without clarity.

If no one explains why the project was shut down, you’ve learned to suspect that perhaps where you are is not a safe place to try to execute – because random, unexplained badness may happen to things you care about. You are now warned of that possibility, and you should ask what went wrong. If no one will tell you what went wrong, then…again, more clarity. Now you know for sure that where you are may not be a safe place to execute, and also that asking why something happened may go unanswered, or worse, is unwelcome entirely.

Clarity about the specific project is helpful in obvious ways – “how to avoid this problem in the future.” However, it’s also valuable to know about a lack of clarity – “no one explained anything – and when I asked for an explanation, I was told no.”

Clarity is success, because it allows you to understand the reality of the situation – and the reality of the situation is the only thing that allows you to make accurate, informed decisions going forward.

Reality is Unstoppably Real

Sometimes as leaders, we have to tell people things that will be hard for them to hear. And sometimes as the led, we have to hear those same difficult things – that despite being as clear as you know how to be, someone grossly misinterpreted something to the point of reputation or relationship damage. Or that you really screwed something up. Or that the overall perception of you is of incompetence, or arrogance, or…whatever. People often avoid clarity because if clarity is done correctly, it’s a reflection of reality – and reality can really hurt, actually. We don’t want to hurt the people we care about, or the people we’ve taken responsibility for.

But the thing is…you can’t prevent hurt for people. That isn’t how life works. If we’re going to take responsibility for people, we owe them the ability to make their own choices – with as much information as we can give them, so those choices are as informed as possible.

It’s good to love the people you lead (we would say that it’s necessary, actually), and it’s good to want to protect the people you love – except when that “protection” slides into something that removes or obscures their choices. Attempted protection from reality does them a disservice, and it ultimately does them more harm than good.

Reality is Beautiful

The other problem with protecting people from reality is that actually…reality is beautiful. Think about if one of your people does something amazing, and you get that feedback for them. If you can pass that along and they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you do your best to always be clear and accurate with them, they will know that that feedback is real.

In addition to positive feedback, clarity in leadership gives your people a safety net – and there is immense relief in working with a safety net. If your people can stretch to the outer limits of their abilities because you will tell them quickly and accurately if they step into a risky place, they only have to think about…well, execution. They don’t have to think about their overall job safety, or if their opinions or implementations will be at odds with Secret Political Things, or if making a mistake will mean that they lose the ability to make their own choices later. They can just… do their jobs.

“I Will Fight for You”

Clarity in leadership comes down to a simple statement – I will fight for you. I will fight for your ability to execute. I will take the damage if I’m wrong about something (I will defend you).  I will tell you if you mess something up – clearly, and as soon as I know (I will even fight you for you). And, most of all, I will do the hard thing and I will be clear even when I know that reality will hurt you – I will fight myself for you.