As a leader, you are constantly striving to improve yourself, your skills, competencies, and awareness. I know I am.
And while there are a ton of resources, influencers, and gurus out there trying to guide us, usually to buy their stuff, sometimes the most significant lessons seemingly hit us out of the blue.
Here is something that clicked with me recently that I wish I had really gotten my head around earlier.
The Power of Clarity
It’s easy to assume others know what we want and what we expect. Chances are you’ve been “disappointed” by someone somewhere in the past. It’s possible that you’ve “fallen short” of expectations when you didn’t even know what, exactly, the other person expected.
Nobody’s a Mind-Reader. But this happens all the time, primarily because we assume too much. And you know what assuming does…
Yet we still do this in virtually all our relationships, work included. But being crystal clear is essential, whether it’s about expectations, objectives, goals, process, due dates (and times), or any of the other myriad things we are delivering for others or asking them to deliver for us.
And yet creating clarity is seldom done well, even we are trying not to assume too much. It’s still common to leave out details. We are seemingly expected to read minds. And sometimes we expect this of others. This is not a path to success. It’s a quick path to frustration. It’s a quick path to disappointment, missed deadlines, a deficient work product, a wasted meeting, or a hundred other “miscommunications” and annoyances.
And it’s not just the little things. Part of being a great leader is painting a picture of a future that doesn’t yet exist. You see it. You see this future. The challenge is to get what’s in your head into the heads of others. They have to see your Vision to buy in to it. And you have to be clear and detailed about it.
How clear are you being with your Vision? How clear are you being about what you are currently working on and could use help with? How clear are you being with your expectations? Can you be clearer? And what would it change if you did?
If this resonates with you and you want to go further with it in your business, check out Nobody’s a Mind-Reader: the power of clarity for business leaders and entrepreneurs now on Amazon.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
