As a team leader, one of your most important roles is to give people the clarity to understand what is expected and how they are progressing.
Research confirms that when a person understands their tasks, responsibilities and processes at work, their performance can improve by up to 25%. Yet, according to the same study, almost half of the people working in teams today are unclear about what’s expected of them.
How would your team rate the clarity they have over expectations?
A Harvard Business Review report on the Power of Hidden Teams highlighted that one of the strongest indicators of a person’s trust in their team leader was: “At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me.”
The report indicates trust is more easily built when a leader creates clarity around expectations. Although clarity may be only one of the contributing factors, the people working in teams who strongly agree that they trust their team leader are eight times as likely to be fully engaged than those who don’t — which, as we know, positively contributes to overall workplace performance.
The idea of providing clarity may not be that surprising. Yet, the data suggests that almost half of the team leaders working in organisations today overestimate the clarity they provide for their people.
The need for clarity between what is expected and what is understood by the individuals working in a team means that people draw on experience and their biases and assumptions to work towards organisational goals. This lack of clarity has a negative impact on team members in several ways. It may lead to engaging in lengthy and unnecessary side conversations, trying to make sense of what is expected of them, or focusing on low-value output.
Some team members may even duplicate tasks, and conflict can arise when people need to work together to get the job done. To deal with these challenges, a team leader may compensate by holding unnecessarily long status meetings to understand better what is required by whom and how best to work together to complete tasks.
Therefore, looking to the future, leaders have an opportunity to be clarity creators for their team. Being intentional about creating clarity has never been more important with the complexity surrounding many industries and roles. To do this, leaders can facilitate conversations that create shared meaning and a deeper understanding of what is expected.
Clarity also requires a leader’s attention as organisational goals change, team members come and go, and projects evolve.
How can you be a clarity creator? Here are four ways to get started.
Clarify Direction.
A team needs a compelling purpose. People need to care about achieving organisational goals. Although extrinsic rewards like incentives are important, team members also need the intrinsic reward that comes with adding a sense of meaning to their work. The intention in defining a team’s purpose is to inspire people to do great work by expressing the impact they have on the people they serve.
In providing this sense of purpose, leaders need to clarify the connection between the purpose and the strategies, plans, and goals of each team member. In doing so, they’ll also make the purpose a part of daily interactions by providing regular updates on each person’s contribution to the team’s collective goals.
Clarify Behaviours.
Creating clarity around the desired behaviours in teams can help reduce the risk of conflict and demotivation when team members observe different standards. Leaders can help by clarifying what behaviours team members should demonstrate, such as always being punctual to meetings and those that interfere with the team’s performance, like interrupting or speaking over someone in a group discussion.
Defining these performance-enhancing behaviours is important given greater diversity in teams, people working remotely, and the accelerating pace of work in many organisations. Otherwise, when these behavioural norms are not overtly expressed, people will make assumptions based on experience or by observing the behaviour of others in the team.
Clarify Responsibilities.
People need to understand what they are accountable for in their role. A lack of clarity creates uncertainty, which can be stressful and undermine people’s cognitive ability. It also creates confusion over decision-making authority, which wastes valuable time. Job descriptions do play a part, of course, but they go beyond this to define what Apple described as the ‘directly responsible individual’, where specific decision-making responsibility is nominated to each team member.
Clarifying what a person is directly responsible for strengthens communication, productivity, and team accountability. Providing clarity applies not only to someone’s overall role but also to the delegation of any project, task, or agenda item—it should be part of the culture and apply to every aspect of a team’s operations.
Clarify through Feedback.
Timely feedback can help people improve their performance, yet it remains one of the most underused development tools. Leaders should take this opportunity to become more comfortable giving feedback at the moment and overcome any discomfort driven by a need for acceptance and belonging.
A benefit of giving feedback at the moment is that it facilitates a conversation with greater clarity, as the leader can be more descriptive about what they just experienced. The team member can more easily reflect on their comments. Furthermore, when a leader also gives a person time to reflect and get clear themselves on what they just heard, there is a stronger likelihood they will act.
As a leader, a commitment to providing clarity will help create an environment where each member of the team can thrive with increased trust, job satisfaction and overall performance. But to get clear on what’s expected, leaders first need to be clear themselves on what they are looking for.
Embracing clarity as a leadership behaviour requires mindfulness to slow down and the openness to engage in dialogue from which clarity can emerge.