Leading on the Forward Edge – At Work · Weekend Reflections for Leaders · Reflection: “Clarity Is a Kindness”
Key takeaways
- When things are uncertain, share what you know, what you do not know, and when the next update comes.
- Rank priorities in strict order, publish it, and name what falls below the line.
- Deliver partial bad news early, with the unknowns clearly labeled.
Softening a message is one of the few things in leadership that feels generous in the moment and turns out to be cruel over six months.
We have all done it. We know the direction needs to change, or the performance is not where it needs to be, or the plan we announced in January is not going to hold. And rather than say it plainly, we round the edges. We say the priorities are "roughly balanced." We say the work has been "solid, with room to grow." We say we are "evaluating options." Everyone leaves the room comfortable, we avoided a difficult conversation, and we tell ourselves we handled it with care.
Here is what actually happened. Ambiguity does not stay ambiguous. People cannot function inside a blank, so they fill it in privately, differently from one another, and in the direction of their own incentives. The engineer resolves it toward the technical work she finds interesting. The sales leader resolves it toward the accounts he was already going to chase. The person whose performance is in question resolves it toward the reading that lets him sleep. Six months later we are surprised to find three teams executing three different plans with total conviction, and every one of them can quote something we said.
The confusion between clarity and certainty is worth untangling, because it is the excuse most of us reach for. We tell ourselves we cannot be clear because we do not yet know. But those are different things entirely. Certainty is about the world and is often unavailable to us. Clarity is about our own communication and is always available.
A leader who does not know can still be entirely clear by saying three things: here is what we know, here is what we do not know, and here is when you will hear from me next. That is all of it, and it is worth making it a standing format; Known, Not Known, Next Update for any communication issued while a situation is still moving. In having led organizations through periods where I genuinely did not know how things would land, I have experienced that teams handle "we do not know yet, and I will come back to you on the fifteenth" far better than any confident answer that later turns out to be wrong. What corrodes trust is not uncertainty. It is discovering that the leader was managing our feelings rather than telling us where things stood.
Outlined below are three places clarity is most often withheld, in roughly the order they hurt most:
- The priority list. Nearly every senior team I have worked with claims to have three to five priorities and is in fact running a list two or three times that long. When we decline to rank them, we have not avoided the decision; we have delegated it downward to people with less information, and they will resolve it according to whatever their manager rewards. The practice is uncomfortable and simple: force the list into a strict order, publish the order, and name what falls below the line this quarter. The relief in a team that finally knows what is first is the clearest evidence I know that vagueness was never kindness.
- The performance conversation. A person who is falling short and has not been told plainly is being denied the one thing they need to fix it and the longer we wait, the more expensive the eventual conversation becomes for them, not for us. The test I use is whether the person could accurately repeat back what I said to someone at home that night. If the honest answer is that they would report "the review went fine," we did not have the conversation. We rehearsed it.
- Bad news. Reorganizations, missed numbers, a customer we are losing, a plan being pulled. Our instinct is to wait until we have the complete picture and can deliver it cleanly. The organization, meanwhile, has already noticed the closed-door meetings and is writing a worse story than the truth in the absence of one from us. Partial bad news delivered early, with what we do not yet know clearly labeled, is almost always better than complete bad news delivered late.
None of this requires being blunt for its own sake, and the hardest part is not finding the words. It is accepting that clarity moves the discomfort from the team's next six months into our next ten minutes.
That is the trade. As the marketplace continues to grow in complexity and uncertainty, the organizations that move fastest are not the ones with the most information. They are the ones where people are not spending their energy decoding what leadership actually meant.
If I were to ask you, "What is the most difficult leadership challenge you are facing today?" what would you say?
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This reflection builds on two earlier Weekend Reflections for Leaders posts: Clarity and Leading Through Uncertainty (Part VII – Communication).
Questions this reflection answers
How can a leader be clear when they don't have all the answers?
Separate clarity from certainty. Certainty is about the world and is often unavailable. Clarity is about your own communication and is always available. Say three things: here is what we know, here is what we do not know, and here is when you will hear from me next.
How do I know if a performance conversation was clear enough?
Ask whether the person could accurately repeat what you said to someone at home that night. If they would report that the review went fine, the conversation did not happen. You rehearsed it. Waiting only makes the eventual conversation more expensive for them.