Clarity

Clarity is among a few key factors in employee engagement. Leaders can confuse clarity  with a perfect vision of the future and the path that leads there, a vision which doesn’t exist. The real purpose of clarity is to help everyone understand the WHY behind the current direction, to recognize the immediate obstacles ahead, and most importantly to understand their personal contribution to success. With a little help, leaders can learn how to provide clarity for themselves and others.

Your business probably has at least a vision, a mission statement, a purpose, or maybe all of the above (if not, let’s talk about that). Clarity is a deeper dive that takes high level statements and shows specifically how an individual’s or team’s actions are expected to contribute to those goals. Clarity is supported by task and job descriptions, communicated frequently, and most importantly reinforced continuously with feedback.

Changing direction has become a normal and even celebrated part of many business models, so much so that “pivot” is part of the common vernacular. By all means change direction if your business needs to, and understand that clarity will suffer if your pivot is not accompanied by a strong effort to help everyone (including yourself) understand the why of the change, how the framework of the new direction is supported by their actions, and how their contributions need to change. If you hope to move your business in a new direction without your team changing what it does, you are destined for failure.

When people understand not only what is expected, but why the direction was chosen and how their actions are important and valuable contributions to the overall mission, they develop a strong sense of engagement that is driven through a lens of purpose.