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