The One Thing Your Team Needs From You: Clarity
As part of an initial walk-through for a new client, I asked an assembly employee I'd just met a simple question: “How do you know if it's a good day?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I like to walk in knowing what I'm supposed to work on that day. Then, at the end of the day, I want to know if I've finished it. And I'd sure love to know what I'll be working on tomorrow.”
I was glad his boss was standing right next to me when he said it.
A few weeks earlier on different project, a similar theme surfaced one level up the org chart. A director had been struggling with a newly promoted manager. “He's just not acting like a manager,” she told me. He was doing hands-on production work his team should have owned. He wasn't calling customers, something that was now supposed to be his job. She had a litany of other examples where he wasn’t living up to the new role.
“What did he say when you asked him how he thinks he's doing against your expectations?” I asked.
This made her pause. It turned out that while she'd told him what she wanted, it was quite awhile ago and only verbally. She'd never written out the new responsibilities in specific terms, or talked through with him how to apply these responsibilities in any given day or week. He was still running on his old priority: ship the product himself, on time. Not: build a team that can do it without him jumping in to help.
She started weekly coaching sessions built around the new role's expectations, asking what he planned to do that day to carry out the new responsibilities, and where he was struggling to work at a manager level. She helped him through several hang-ups, and choices about how to best use his time. His performance turned around within weeks. He hadn't needed a talking-to. He'd needed clarity.
Last week, one level higher still: a board and executive director had called me in to help clarify decision rights for their growing organization. We were about to start working through a RACI chart (which spells out who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed on a given decision) when one of the founders got visibly uneasy. She’d been quiet the whole meeting, and there was clearly a great deal of historic tension around this topic.
The board president gently asked her to share what she was thinking. She reluctantly admitted it felt like the organization was being taken away from her, her voice starting to shake.
The ED stopped the room. “I'm not hung up on what authority you actually give me. I just want to know when you'd like to be involved, and how. What should the board formally approve, and how would you like us to present those decisions to you? What else would you like to be consulted on?”
Tension defused, we dug into defining exactly how each party was supposed to show up in a variety of different decisions.
The Common Thread
A floor employee. A newly promoted manager. An executive director. While these positions and the projects I was supporting them on were wildly different, all three people were craving the exact same thing: clarity from their boss.
Not more freedom. Not less oversight. Just this: tell me plainly what's expected, and I'll run with it.
None of them minded hard work. None of them even minded someone else deciding the terms. What wore them down was having to guess.
And unclear direction doesn't just frustrate people. It wastes real effort. People work hard, just on the wrong thing, then wonder why nobody noticed. It’s a recipe for burnout.
Giving Direction Without Micromanaging
Clear direction isn't drill-sergeant order-giving. It's a skill, and it comes down to a few reliable moves:
State the goal. What's the big-picture outcome this person or team should be working toward? If you get pushback, be ready to explain your reasoning. What's making you believe this is necessary, urgent, and possible?
Say why it matters. Help them see, in an actual conversation, what gets better once it's true. You don't have to oversell it.
Check for understanding. Ask them to tell you back what you just said. It feels strange the first time you try it. Do it with real curiosity, and you'll see how much more clarity it produces.
Ask how they'll get there. Once the destination is clear, let them choose the route, as long as they can explain why it gets you both where you're going.
Here's roughly how that might sound in the room. Say you're checking in with someone on your team about a goal with real stakes: cutting lead time, clearing a backlog, hitting a delivery date.
“This quarter, I need us to cut lead time by 10 percent. I think it's possible, based on everything your team flagged about rework in the assessment. This matters because it's how we keep our promises to customers, and it means less scrambling for everyone, including you. Given that direction, what’s your focus this week?” [Pause. Actually listen to the answer.] “Good. Now, how do you think we should go about that, exactly?”
Do this briefly on a regular cadence, and three things happen:
People spend their energy on what actually matters.
They stop second-guessing whether they're focused on the right thing, which reduces anxiety.
You build a natural way to check in later that doesn't feel like micromanaging, because you're both already speaking the same language.
We skip these conversations for all the usual reasons. We think we've already said it. We're too busy. We assume people should just know. But creating clarity, over and over, in small and unglamorous ways, is one of the real secrets of good leadership.
Ponder this: If you asked everyone on your team right now what they think their top focus should be, would they have an answer? Would it match yours?
Contact Growing Wild today to talk about how to create more clarity with your team.