Your team can not achieve groundbreaking results if you do not have a common understanding of what success looks like. Creating clarity is one of the most important skills we teach in our person-focused leadership development programs.
So today, we’ve put together some of our basic clarity tools and techniques to give you four practical and strategic activities you can do with your team right away.
If creating clarity is a challenge for you, we encourage you to use these strategic activities in the order we offer them here.
Alternatively, if there is one aspect of creating clarity that is the biggest challenge for you, start there.
What does it mean to create clarity?
Creating clarity means that everyone on your team has a solid and shared understanding of what success looks like.
They know what is most important and why.
High-performance teams are not only clear about their strategic direction, but they also know the short-term and long-term strategic initiatives that will help them get there.
They also spent time identifying the strategic behaviors that lead to success.
This way you will know if you have a solid foundation of clarity in your team.
- Set your 3-4 MIT strategic priorities (the most important thing).
- Managers consistently convey these MIT priorities, and why they are important.
- Your team initiatives align with these strategic priorities of MIT.
- Employees are familiar with the behaviors that contribute directly to MIT’s priorities.
- You follow, report, and regularly track our progress toward these MIT priorities.
These come from our free strategic planning appraisal which you can download here.
Why creating clarity is so important
Creating clarity prevents your team from spinning the wheels and wasting time on less relevant tasks. If you’ve never heard of Karin’s “guitar” story (below), this is a great example of how clear expectations are important.
Creating clarity also means helping your team understand why their work is important and how it fits into the bigger picture.
Clarity is Motivational Because it helps people see the greater impact of their work.
Creating clarity helps Accelerate performance Because people focus their time and energy on what matters most.
clarity Leads to innovation Because it helps team members feel more confident talking and sharing their ideas.
And creating clarity makes it easier Celebrate, Because it is easier to recognize the victory.
Creating clarity: Four practical strategic activities and related resources
In this article, we’ve outlined four of our favorite practical strategic activities for creating better clarity in your team.
- Submit your strategic priorities at MIT five times, five different ways.
- Check understanding.
- Identify the critical strategic activities and behaviors for success.
- Ask brave questions based on clarity to get deeper insights.
1. Communicate your strategic priorities five times, in five different ways.
Once you have identified your strategic priorities, it is not enough to communicate them once. When creating clarity, you want to be like a band drummer. Keep pace by constantly strengthening your strategic priorities. In this leadership activity, we encourage you to communicate your MIT five times, in five different ways.
Your First Strategic Leadership Activity To create clarity: (1) Choose one of your most important strategic priorities. (2) Build a five-on-five communication plan. You can use the 5 × 5 communication planner to document your plan.
Communicate your leadership challenge resources at MIT
2. Check understanding. Does your team really understand what is most important and why?
Once you have delivered your expectations, make sure your team accepts it. Your next strategic leadership activity: Check understanding. Go ask each of your team members what success looks like for him this year.
The second, your strategy for creating clarity: Ask them to tell you their strategic priorities and why they are important.
In your 5 × 5 communication program, you told them. In this leadership activity, you test understanding and hear it back from them.
Check understanding resources
3. Identify the strategic initiatives and behaviors that are critical to success.
Your third strategic activity for creating clarity is to use the MIT Planner. Help your team identify the most critical strategic initiatives and behaviors for success. (Click on the planner to get the free tool).
Resources to help you align with strategic initiatives and behaviors
Ask brave questions based on clarity to get deeper insights.
Your most recent activity to create clarity is to ask your team some brave questions.
- What is the biggest obstacle that endangers our MIT?
- If you had Another hour a day, What can you do to make the most of your results?
- What is one task you would like to be able to cancel that will give you more time to focus on your MIT?
we’ll be glad to hear from you.
What is your favorite technique for creating clarity?
Which of the following activities for creating clarity work best for you? Leave a comment, or leave us a note at [email protected]
