Have you asked yourself that question this week? Has that little voice inside your head said: “Why haven’t they done this?”; “why have they done it like that?”; or “if only they would?”
As a senior leader, your words and deeds are important. They don’t just communicate, they cascade. A lot of senior leaders that I work with think they have been clear, but they haven’t. When direction is vague, teams fill in the gaps differently, slowing execution and diluting impact. When leaders are clear and specific, alignment accelerates and accountability strengthens.
You might fear that clarity will be over-explaining or patronising. It doesn’t have to be. It’s simply about removing friction so people can proceed with confidence. It turns broad ambition into focused action so teams can get on with delivering the work not debating it.
Great leaders don’t assume shared understanding. They make expectations explicit, define success in measurable terms, and check alignment early, not after things go off track.
With that in mind, take time to think:
- If you did pose yourself one of the questions above this week, how clear had you been?
- Where might your teams be interpreting your direction instead of acting on it?
- What outcome could you define more accurately to accelerate progress?
- What feels “obvious” to you that on reflection may not be obvious to others?
- If your team repeated back what they heard, would it match what you meant?
As leaders, we can show our people that we are role modelling the changes that all of us want to see. Let’s be better and be the change – contact [email protected] if you would like help to do so.
For more articles, encouraging you to think and be the change – visit here.