Speaking with clarity is a habit

Speaking with clarity is a habit.

As is the lack of clarity. If a team tolerates lack of clarity it trickles into every corner of the team. It becomes ok to use complex and confusing language. Even though that slows everything down. And leads to a lot of time being wasted as the team fights over what was actually being said or meant.

Turning that habit around and making speaking with clarity the habit is among the most valuable investments a team can make. And it starts with you, as the leader.

If you don’t settle with confusing communication, your team won’t, either. Try pushing your team for one week:

• to use simpler words whenever you don’t understand something
• to design simpler graphs that show exactly what they want it to show
• to find anecdotes that we all can relate to rather than only the speaker

And even force them sometimes to go back to the drawing board and find those simpler words instead of having the team figure it out together. As Wolf Schneider famously said: “Someone’s got to suffer, either the reader or the writer.”

Yes, it might slow things down in the beginning. But the acceleration you’ll experience down the road overcompensates for it manifold.

Clarity really is a habit. Start looking for it and you’ll discover it – or the lack of it – everywhere. Start speaking with clarity and you’ll gradually transform the way you communicate.

And that of your team.