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Speaking with clarity is a habit.
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Just like lacking that clarity is a habit, too.
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If a team tolerates lack of clarity, it trickles into every corner of the team.
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It becomes okay to use complex and confusing language, even
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though that slows everything down.
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And it leads to a lot of time being wasted as the team fights over what
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was actually being said or meant.
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Turning that habit around and making speaking with clarity the
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habit is among the most valuable investments a team can make.
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It starts with you as the leader.
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If you don't settle with confusing communication, your team won't, either.
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Try pushing your team for one week to use simpler words whenever you
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don't understand something; to design, simpler graphs, that show exactly
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what they want it to show; to find anecdotes that we all can relate
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to rather than only the speaker.
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And even force them sometimes to go back to the drawing board and find
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those simpler words instead of having the team figure it out together.
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As Wolf Schneider, the famous German journalist once said: “Someone's got
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to suffer, either the reader or the writer.” If you want my perspective on
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that, I'd suggest that it's the writer.
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Yes, it might slow things down in the beginning when you need to
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go looking for the simpler words.
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But the acceleration you'll experience down the road will
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overcompensate for it manyfold.
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Clarity really is a habit.
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Start looking for it and you'll discover it, or even the lack of it, everywhere.
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Start speaking with clarity and you'll gradually transform the
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entire way you communicate – and of course that of your team.
