What Your Team Needs To Be Clear On

If your team is constantly sending decisions back up to your desk, it’s rarely a lack of ability - it’s usually a lack of clarity.

As leaders, we often suffer from the curse of knowledge. Once you know something clearly, you can’t “unknow” it. Because you see the strategy and the impact of every decision, it’s easy to assume your team sees it, too. But that’s rarely the case. While you’re inspired by the big picture, your team can often feel like they’re just coming in to do the same old job day in and day out. When we assume they “just get it,” we end up with apathy and a lack of drive, simply because people can’t connect what they are doing to the bigger picture.

This is why teams hesitate. When people aren't clear on the “North Star” or how they are expected to behave, they become afraid to make a decision. They would rather ask for permission than risk making a mistake and being reprimanded. They end up taking the safest route rather than the fastest, or even the smartest route, because they’re just doing what they know based on their position.

Clarity equals action. To move a team from hesitation to confidence, leaders need to be clear on three specific areas. First, you have to embrace the role of Chief Repeating Officer. Your job is to repeat the mission, the vision, and the values over and over until they are the team’s DNA. Second, they need to be truly empowered - given the authority, the resources, and the data they can trust so they aren't forced into "workarounds." Finally, you have to define what success looks like. Every team member should be able to end their day knowing they’ve won.

A classic example of where this goes wrong is when a team has clear targets but still fails because people focus too much on a single figure, like a sales or output target. If people become overly obsessed with the figures, they tend to do the work without the heart behind it. We see this often with teams getting heavily KPI’d to do outbound calling - they focus on getting the call numbers up without making them meaningful. We get around this by defining the activity properly: we call it a meaningful connected call. By adding that clarity, people stop just chasing the figure and focus on the intended outcome: a call that adds value and moves the relationship forward.

A great way to check if your team actually has this clarity is in your weekly 1-on-1s. Instead of just checking tasks, ask them: “Are you winning?” Listen to their perspective on what success looks like for their current activities. When you do this, you can identify the gaps in their learning and fill them in.

To keep it simple, I’m a big fan of the Rally Cry. Unify your people around a single statement or phrase so they know exactly what they are aiming for in the short term - ideally the next 90 days. Being clear yourself, checking in with the team, and having that short-term focus helps everyone understand the value they are bringing.

My challenge to you is to check how clear you are within yourself. Can you articulate exactly how each role in your business contributes to the mission? If you aren't confident in that, you can't expect your team to be. Once you can articulate the importance of their role, you give them the confidence to stop asking for permission and start moving the business forward.