Jan Richards

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Leadership excellence: How to use clarity to cut confusion

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Clarity is one of the top characteristics of leaders who excel.

These are the leaders about whom inspiring stories are told for years, long after they’ve led their organizations through extreme circumstances or uncertainty, and met great challenges honorably.

Why is leadership clarity so important? It’s because people can’t follow what they don’t understand.

And because circumstances are constantly changing, ensuring clarity, as a leader, is a never-ending job.

Think of leadership clarity this way. Trying to follow a person who’s not clear about where he or she is leading a group is like trying to follow someone while driving in thick fog.

People on a team, in such a case, don’t know where the road is, or if there’s one at all. They don’t know where the dangers are, or how to handle them. They don’t know if, in that fog, they’re still traveling as a team, or eventually, on their own.

Teams immersed in uncertainty proceed nervously, slowly, trying to move as safely as they can. Or, metaphorically speaking, they may pull over to the side of the road, waiting for the fog to lift, the way to become clear, safety to be ensured.

In the meantime, time and opportunities are lost. Costs increase. Profits fall. Team cohesion falls apart.

Being clear, as a leader, may sound easy to achieve. It’s not.

It requires clear thinking in every circumstance – when the best way forward is apparent, as well as when the best path is not yet known and must be created, as you and the team move forward.

To reach this level of clarity, a leader and his or her team need good information, effective collaboration, clear and effective processes for prioritizing and decision-making. They also need a strong and accurate sense of who their customers are, and what those customers need and want.

Great leaders build strong organizations, which may include many people.

The work of everyone involved must be integrated and coordinated in some way. That may be done loosely, organically, or it may be accomplished in much more formal, structured ways.

The net effect, however it’s done, is that with the right direction, information, and other signposts along the way, individual employees can make the right decisions and choose the right actions in their daily flow of their work to create progress on shared company goals.

Combined with the other top characteristics of great leaders, leadership clarity turns good intentions, and precious limited resources into the best results possible for customers, and all company stakeholders.

Visioning: See and create the future together

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Visionary leadership is one of the top characteristics of great leaders.

Leaders who have this ability can see a better future for their teams and organizations. They’re very successful at engaging others in the process of creating that future together.

A shared, positive vision is far more powerful than many people would guess. In the absence of such a vision, individual members of a team – any team – are pulled toward their own visions of the future. Often these visions are poorly aligned. At worst, they directly conflict.

For example, some people are driven by great fear of the things they’re trying to avoid. They’re filled to the brim by graphic visions of the very things they dread. They may not realize how powerful these visions are, perhaps even leading them closer to the very things they wish to avoid. They need a compelling, positive vision to replace their fear.

Others, in their fervent desire to try to manage change, are motivated by visions of protecting the status quo, no matter what it costs. These visions can be helpful in the short-term, but in the long-term, they’re likely to freeze people, and organizations, in place – if that is even possible – as customers and competitors continue to move far ahead.

What happens if people in your company, or on your team, are drawn to, and working to implement, visions that conflict?

The result will be wasted effort, time, money and opportunities, as well as extreme distraction, and, in all likelihood, great conflict. 

It will be anything but a focus on customers, and the productive, shared effort that ensures that customers’ needs are well-met. Ultimately, of course, dissatisfied customers take their business to competitors, or decide to quit buying products and services like yours altogether.

Great leaders can gather and direct the full range of their team’s resources – time, talent, attention, energy, and budget – to create a strong and positive future for their companies, customers and team.

Top ten characteristics of great leaders

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When you think of great leaders, who’s the first person who comes to mind?

And what characteristics make (or made) them a great leader?

These are the top ten characteristics of great leaders identified by a group of colleagues and clients I surveyed. See how this list compares to what you believe is most important for a person to excel as a leader:

Vision

Great leaders see things as they can be, not just as they are. They work toward a clear and powerful picture of the future they’re trying to create, no matter what circumstances they find themselves, and the people they’re leading, in now.

Clarity

A clear understanding of present conditions is also part of the great leader’s repertoire. These leaders can face the facts, whatever they are. What’s more, they insist on finding and using the facts in order to see what the organization’s challenges really are – not just what they’d like to believe, or have the people they lead believe – are the challenges ahead.

Courage

Fearlessness without brashness, foolishness or rashness is a hallmark of the excellent leader. He or she is not afraid of the gap they must close, leading an often fearful group across it. In fact, highly effective leaders are very motivated by the disparity between “what is” and “what can be, what will be.” They convey a sense of mission powerfully to the people who must close the gap with them.

Strategic

Of the many paths open to the organization – if many paths are available – great leaders can see and choose the actions that are most likely to succeed. They can envision and anticipate what is likely to happen in the future, often as a result of the course of action they choose now.

Decisive when the time is right

Great leaders ensure that they have the best information possible to guide them through the decisions they must make. Their decision-making processes are well-tuned, and highly effective, the result of continuous improvement of the decision-making process, itself.

Action-oriented

Highly effective leaders have a bias for action. They work in a focused, purposeful way, changing the organization, step by step, leading it steadily to far better circumstances and results in times ahead.

Strong

Plans are an organization’s intended path of action, its desired use of available resources directed toward reaching a goal. But if circumstances require change while the work is underway, effective leaders have the strength to move their organization to a better course of action instead.

Resilient

Great leaders are driven by their vision, yet it is their ability to rise above great uncertainty and to lead in the face of uncertainty, that creates legendary tales of leadership. Their greatness may not always be fully appreciated until long after the work is done, and the battles are fully won.

Inspires respect

Excellent leaders lead with integrity, and lead by example, as well as by inspiration. They expect the same of themselves as they do of their followers.  They’re not “above the law” just because they create the rules and work structures in the organization. The rules they advocate for others also apply to them – and everyone sees and knows it.

Great communicator

Powerful, effective leaders know when and how to communicate, no matter what’s going on with their followers, and what pressure they are under. Such leaders know when to observe, when to listen, when to talk. They use all the vital communication skills of leadership well. They also know that the most powerful communication of all is their attitude and their action – far more than what they say in any circumstance.

Seven ways to delegate well

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I’ll explain this photo in a moment.

Before I do, consider this common burden for many managers:

“What’s the hardest thing for me, at work? Delegation, definitely!”

Does that sound familiar?

I’ve heard this same frustration from entrepreneurs and managers at many companies during my career as a business consultant. It came up again at lunch with a couple of friends this past week.

How about you? Do you need to improve your ability – and comfort – with delegation, too?

Start with these ideas:

1. Be clear about the goal

Often, when you ask people what their goal is for a particular piece of work, or a project, they’re not exactly sure.

What they usually know with great certainty, however, is what they DON’T want.

You’ll improve the quality of work you delegate when you provide clear goals to the person who’s doing the work.

Make sure you know, too, whether you plan to delegate this work temporarily or permanently.

This may affect how you hand off the task.

For example, if you’re delegating the work permanently, you may need to do more training and followup than if you’re delegating the work for a one-time project.

2. Be selective about who you delegate the work to 

The friend who was frustrated by recent attempts to delegate, even though she’s very experienced with delegation, believes she’s been trying to give them work that they don’t have the right skills to do.

She’s leading a team hired by a prior manager for jobs that have since changed.

“I give up! I’ve tried EVERYTHING!” she said as she described the situation.

Her team’s customers now require financial advice on business decisions they’re trying to make, in addition to the solid accounting support the team has always provided.

My friend has been trying to train and coach her employees to fill the expanded roles.

Coaching simply hasn’t worked.

If she were hiring now, she would screen for the skills her team currently needs, and skills they’re likely to need as their customers’ needs continue to change.

3. Set measures that focus attention and action

Decide how you’ll monitor the quality of the work you’re delegating. Then be ready to communicate those measures, and how you’ll use them, to the people doing the work.

In a simple, low-risk example of why this is important, our daughter, now a young adult, was about ten when she was helping organize the many colors of paper I needed for gift notepads I was creating for clients.

Anne normally works very carefully, and takes pride in doing very high quality work. I understood that she wanted to do the (frankly) boring task while she watched a TV show she liked.

When I checked the quality of her work soon after she started, I was surprised. Somehow, she was accidentally creasing some of the paper.

Before I corrected her approach, I asked myself if I’d given her the right instructions, resources, time and space to do the job right?

I had.

The one thing I had not done, I realized, was to let her know the quality standards for the work.

My customers, used to high quality work, would expect the same quality in gifts I gave them. That meant the paper…and soon, the notepads…needed to be crisp, the paper unbent, the work of gift quality.

And that meant that Anne needed to work more attentively.

She wasn’t happy, of course, that I needed her to start again, and to do the work more attentively. But we’d caught it early, and that was good.

Once she knew the quality standards and paid more attention, her work improved, as did her speed.

And, yes, it all worked with TV.

4. Communicate clearly

Communicating clearly is easy to advise, but can be deceptively hard to do.

Provide the following information, at a minimum, to the people doing the work for you:

  • Goals for the work (deadline, budget, and any other constraints)
  • Customers for the work
  • What successful completion of the work looks like to these customers
  • How you’ll monitor and assess the quality of the work
  • Instructions for doing the work, as necessary
  • Where people can get more information, if needed, while they work

Clarity and focus upfront helps prevent wasted time and rework – incorrect work that has to be done again – and hard feelings about it later.

5. Train as needed

If the person, or people, who will be doing the work have prior experience with it, they may need little training or supervision from you.

If they’re inexperienced, however, they may need detailed instructions, as well as regular feedback and coaching as they learn to do the work well, and build confidence with it.

And this leads me to the story about the photo I included with this post.

The photographer in this case was our son, Matt (who does photography and film work as part of his job and career). Now a young adult, he was about about four when he took this picture.

I’m the person who’s stretching and trying to reach Matt…and the camera. I was laughing as I tried to catch him, but also nervous that he might fall off the wall where he was running, snapping pictures as he ran.

(Anne and my husband, Gary, watch in the background with amusement and curiosity as they wait to see how this interaction will play out).

The picture makes me laugh now when I recall the moment.

Matt didn’t fall. He didn’t drop the camera. He got this amusing shot.

And in fact, letting him use my camera in the future…with training, and AFTER asking permission to do so…and then encouraging him to learn more through experiments and projects with a camera we bought for him when he was ready for it, turned out to be a good move.

It was a gradual process of delegated and self-directed learning and growth. We encouraged both our kids to learn by doing, and through experimentation and projects, in their own areas of interest.

It can be a very successful way to delegate work, as well.

Learning by doing, and through self-directed experiments, can be very successful, if the work you’re delegating is compatible with that approach.

6. Keep your team focused on your customers’ needs

In case there’s uncertainty or a debate about the quality standards for work you’ve delegated, use your customers’ requirements to find the answer.

In the example of my friend’s frustration with recent delegation attempts, her employees are proficient with what their customers used to need: timely and accurate accounting.

Their customers’ business requires more of them now, so the quality standards for their work continue to change, too.

7. Check in, follow up

Make time to check in periodically to see how the work you’ve delegated is going.

Be prepared to check in more frequently than you expect will be necessary, at least initially.

You may find that the people to whom you’ve delegated work have questions you did not expect.

Or there may be skills, knowledge, or confidence that they do not have yet, and which you need to help them grow.

That’s enough delegation advice for now.

These seven ideas give you plenty to work with if you’re trying to improve your delegation skills and confidence.

Practice, pay attention to what you’re learning, continue to improve.

You’ll find that delegation, once mastered, is an invaluable skill.

Harness the powerful emotions of change to move forward

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Change brings many emotions, often strong ones. Each one packs its own kind of power.

If you’re facing, or working through change, use whatever emotions you have. Harness and put that strong energy to work for you.

These are some of the emotions you may experience during change, and ways you can use them to move you forward:

– Excitement

Use excitement to drive you ahead, ever closer to the future you desire and imagine…and to propel you through the sometimes unnerving, sometimes exhilarating process of not quite knowing how something new will work out.

Focus on the benefits of the new circumstances to pull you most powerfully forward.

– Fear

Use fear to help you anticipate things that could go wrong with the change process. Then plan and take actions to prevent those circumstances from occurring.

Fear can direct you to a safer path through change than you might take if you did not heed its cautionary call.

– Patience

Use the power of patience to summon your ability to attend to planning and the details of implementation.

Use it, also, to increase the confidence and focus of those around you who aren’t seeing the change process as charitably as you are, at the moment. (You may need them to return the favor later).

– Impatience

Impatience is going to be there at some points in the change process, so when it is, use it.

The power of impatience can help you delegate or sweep away low priority tasks, so you can focus on what is most essential.

Impatience carries a lot of power…which can be destructive if turned on yourself or the people around you. Just as powerfully, used positively, it can propel you forward, often rapidly.

– Discouragement

Discouragement often means that plans were too aggressive, or that not enough time was factored in for periodically recharging, regathering energy, and renewing focus.

Or maybe plans for the change process assumed that everything would go perfectly…and that’s not happening (frankly, things usually don’t go “like clockwork.” There’s going to be at least one surprise somewhere in the process).

Use discouragement to pause and step away for a bit, if you can. Refresh, renew, even if briefly.

Then remind yourself why the change is being made, and how you may benefit from it in some way.

– Confusion

This can occur if the purpose or path through change is obscured, or was never spelled out well in the first place.

Sometimes uncertainty can’t be completely cleared away, of course…it’s just part of the change process…yet there are things that can be done to reduce it.

Focus on the goal, set interim milestones and concentrate on reaching each one. And celebrate in some appropriate way when you do.

– Bargaining

The desire to bargain (and before that, maybe, the desire to emote or complain) can occur if you feel you’re not being heard.

It can also occur if you’re concerned that plans are not realistic, or the resources needed for change are not being provided.

Express openly, honestly – and respectfully – what your fears and concerns are. Listen with an open mind. Negotiate or renegotiate agreements, if need be, and if possible.

– The desire to give up

Don’t fight it. This feeling may occur at some point, and maybe at multiple points, in the change process.

Just knowing that quitting is an option can take the pressure off. Usually, though, you realize that you’ve come too far, made more progress than you realized, and really don’t want to turn back, after all.

The uncertainty and energy required for change will clear eventually.

You may even find you’re bored when certainty does return, believe it or not. There’s a lot to be said for the growth that occurs for almost everyone during a change process, whether sought, or forced by circumstances on you.

– The drive to keep going, no matter what

Use this drive to push over, around, or through barriers that appear as if they could prevent you from reaching your goal.

And use this powerful energy, if need be, to prove that it’s possible to do what naysayers said couldn’t be done.

This short list has covered just a few of the emotions that are likely to occur at some point during the change process.

Did I cover the emotions you experience most during change?

If not, add to, or adapt this list.

Notice, also, the ways in which you already use emotions well to help you move forward.

Consider how you can use each emotion – whether it’s one you like experiencing or not – when it arises during the change process.

Just by anticipating what may occur as you go through the ups and downs, highs and lows, successes and failures that accompany change helps you to prepare for, and to make the best of it.

Harness the energy of change to help you move forward.

If you’ve found this post valuable, please share it with others. If you’d like more information of this type, join my email list at Jan-Richards.com.

Are you really change-ready?

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You may think you’re ready for change — until you get up to the starting line and the action is about to start.

And when you do – much like standing at the starting line of an important race – that’s no time to find out you’re unprepared, or that you really don’t want to make the change, at all.

Change isn’t easy, no matter what type of change you’re making (or being asked to make), and no matter who else is involved.

But change works out far better if you’re ready for it – and all the twists and turns it can bring.

It works better, too, if you seek change, rather than to be caught reluctantly by it.

Better still is change you yearn for.

And best of all is if you’re driven enough to accomplish the change you seek to make and are so driven that you can unquestionably move over, around, or through any barriers you find that could stand in the way of the success you’re trying to create with that change.

Change, of course, comes in many forms.

We all know from experience that not all change is change we welcome.

Here are just a few of the types of major change that you may face at some time, and ways that you can adapt to them:

1. Change can be thrust upon us by life circumstances.

A lot of the process of change requires acceptance (which is, by the way, far from a passive state and sometimes a state that not easily arrived at). Adaptability is also essential. And sometimes figuring out ways to “make do” for a while is required, too.

These are not experiences that dreams are made of. They are, however, sometimes the stuff that heroic stories are made of.

And like it or not, these experiences can be some of the ones that toughen us up most and make us strong, ready for even greater challenges of other types, later in life.

2. Great change may happen serendipitously.

For example, let’s say you have an interesting opportunity, and decide to take it. An interesting experience occurs, as a result.

You notice that you liked the experience, and decide to repeat the experience or experiment.

An interesting path starts to unfold.

Through these types of gradual change experiences, career interests or passions are sometimes discovered, new skills are developed, opportunities emerge, and rewarding relationships often emerge, too.

3. Change that you yearn for is the change that dreams are often made of.

If these changes are really big ones, they often take hard work and careful planning, skill development, and coordination with other people.

These changes are often driven by a very powerful and compelling vision you hold of the outcome you seek.

Whatever the change you face, to the degree you can be, it’s best if you’re ready for the race and challenge of change.

But that’s not possible in every case.

And no matter what happens, or why change occurs, you can’t anticipate and plan for all twists and turns, opportunities, challenges, and differences ahead that will emerge, no matter what type of change has arrived.

Change doesn’t have to buckle you to your knees, nor does it have to overwhelm you, even if it is the type you didn’t seek.

Change is a fact of life. Being change-ready and change-responsive — if it’s not yet one of your strengths — is a skill you’ll be glad to have when you have achieved it.

What’s the first step to success? (It’s probably not what you think it is…)

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Imagine you’re starting the work to meet a big, compelling goal.

You’re eager to move RIGHT NOW beyond the way things are to the much better circumstance you wish you had.

You strategize, plan and get ready to dive right in.

But have you already skipped the very first step?

That’s the step of understanding your starting point, as it really is.

All too often I see companies and teams who want to get to work, assuming away challenges they don’t want to think about fully.

They jump into action, ready to move forward from a point far beyond where they really are.

Ultimately, they have to go back and lay the foundation they didn’t really have in place yet.

The cautionary advice from their experience is that if you don’t:

– Diagnose your situation correctly

– Make sure you and your team are pointed in the same direction

– Know how you’ll work together as a group to reach your mutual goal

Then, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll:

– Waste precious resources (money, time, attention, energy and goodwill, to name just a few)

– Find that those precious resources, once gone, may be impossible to get again

Try these four key steps to understand your real starting point:

1. Be clear about what you really want.

Sometimes people (and companies and teams) know full well what they don’t want.

They already have some version of that.

But they’re not so sure what they DO want, instead.

Get the picture of your destination as clear as you can.

Describe it in detail, in a way that everyone will recognize it as you work toward it, and will also recognize it when you get there.

Otherwise?

Well, you’d be surprised how different the destination may be that each person…despite everyone’s best intentions…may be driving to reach.

Do you doubt that that’s possible?

Just think, then, how many variations there are of the concept of “The Perfect Vacation,” even in one family or group of friends.

One person could envision a lazy, sunny beach vacation with plenty of umbrella drinks, while another may be thinking that the perfect way to spend time off is to scale Mt. Everest.

Big disagreements can occur on the basis of important assumptions that have not been aired, and then verified or clarified.

Get clear on your shared destination.

2. If it’s a problem you’re solving, be clear about what the problem is.

Describe the situation.

Then gather the facts.

This may confirm your impression about what’s going on. Or, it may adjust it…making the problem bigger, or smaller, than you initially expected.

In some circumstances, it may show you that there’s really no problem to solve, at all, if you’ve been operating under false impressions.

In other words, facts matter. Gather and assess them.

3. Be clear about where you really are, before the work begins.

As mentioned, sometimes a leader assumes that the people on his or her team have more — or less — knowledge, skill, or confidence than it turns out that they really do.

Other circumstances may be far different from what you expect, as well, as work begins.

Know what your starting point really is to understand the gap you have to close between aspirations (yours, and/or your customers’ aspirations) and reality.

Fully understand the resources you have or can get, and the contraints within which you must try to achieve success.

Know, for example, what other high-priority projects are underway, and are competing for the same resources that you hope to steer your team’s way.

4. Make and communicate your action plan to close the gap.

Create an action plan that makes best use of the resources you have, and can get for this team or project.

Plan the most logical, strategic, and realistic series of actions likely to take you from where you are to the situation you desire.

Plan, also, how you will monitor and measure progress.

Follow up regularly to ensure that you’re moving ahead.

Whatever your starting point is, whatever gap you have to fill, know that fully understanding and accepting the current situation is an essential first step to success.