179 Clarity Creates Momentum: The One Leadership Shift Every Clinic Owner Needs

Welcome
Welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast. This is a short, sharp episode, because you do not always need 20 or 30 minutes of me talking to get a powerful takeaway. Sometimes you just need the right questions.

Episode summary
I have just come off the back of an annual strategy session with my leadership team, and the outcome I cared about most was not the numbers, the plan, or the targets. It was clarity. Absolute clarity on the vision for the next 12 months and what we stand for as a team.

In this episode, I talk about how a lack of clarity does not just show up as confusion. It shows up as hesitation, inconsistency, lack of ownership, and your team passing problems back to you so everything runs through you. Clarity is not your team’s responsibility, it is yours. Your job is to create the vision, communicate it, repeat it, embed it, and live it in every conversation and decision.

I leave you with a set of questions to help you check whether your team truly understands where the business is going, what you stand for, and how their role connects to the bigger picture.

Key takeaways

• Clarity is the real outcome that creates momentum, not just plans and targets.
• If I asked your team what the next 12 months looks like, would they all say the same thing? If not, the vision is not clear enough.
• Lack of clarity often looks like hesitation, inconsistency, and people not stepping up.
• Clarity is my responsibility as the leader. I need to communicate it, repeat it, and embed it consistently.
• Values are not useful if they are just words on a wall. They need to be defined in behaviours and lived day to day.
• If my team cannot connect their day-to-day work to where the business is going, they will default to “just doing my job” and waiting to be told.
• I do not need to hold all the “how” myself. A clear vision allows multiple brains to contribute to making it happen.
• A good self check is noticing where I am saying “they need to step up”, when what is actually missing is more clarity from me.

If this episode hit a nerve, that is usually where the opportunity is. If you know your business lacks clarity right now, that is probably the place to start. Thanks for listening, and I will be back next week.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: Welcome back to the podcast. This is gonna be a super short one for me this week, mainly because I'm really short on time, but also because I think that you know what some of the most powerful conversations and some of the. Biggest takeaways. Don't actually need 20 minutes or 30 minutes of you listening to my voice.

[00:00:18] You just need the right questions.

[00:00:21] Welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast, the show for clinic owners who want real, honest advice and tried and tested ways of doing things. I'm Katie Bell, [00:00:30] and this is the new era of bigger insights and bolder conversations to help you grow a clinic and a life you love. Let's dive in.

[00:00:39] So I have just come off the back of delivering a annual strategy session with my leadership team in my clinic, and there was one outcome that I cared about more than anything else. It wasn't necessarily the numbers, it wasn't the plan, it wasn't the targets, it was clarity.

[00:00:56] It was absolute clarity on the vision [00:01:00] and what we stand for as a team. And it got me thinking. I wonder how many of your therapist, your team members, are super clear. Or not the long-term vision as such? 'cause I, I'm gonna guess most of you aren't clear on your long-term vision, but on like maybe the where you wanna be in 12 months time, like what the whole clinic is aiming for, working towards moving towards.

[00:01:27] How many clinic [00:01:30] owners think that you've communicated the vision, but their team are left still guessing and . I want you to think about if you were to walk into your clinic today, or I was to walk into your clinic today and I asked your team, what's the vision for the next 12 months? What are we actually trying to achieve here?

[00:01:50] What is it that we stand for as a business or you stand for as a business? Would they all say the same thing? And I remember, I think it was one of [00:02:00] my coaches years ago who said to me that we were talking about vision and clarity, vision and mission and values and all those kind of buzzwords that, you hear all the time.

[00:02:08] And he said that he'd been in a big company in America that make the individual parts for defibrillators that like go in people's hearts. And this is a massive company. But basically were like an electrical company for of a better word. They made the parts that went in the, and he [00:02:30] walked around the organization and he asked people, what is it that you do here? And he bumped into, and he called it the janitor. So it, this was an American thing that they were talking about at the time, American company. And he bump into the janitor. The janitor was cleaning, was mopping at the time. And he said to the janitor, what is it that you do here?

[00:02:47] And the janitor turned to him and he said, we save lives and. The guy was blown away 'cause he thought that the janitor was gonna say I'm a cleaner and I try and keep things clean for all the staff members. [00:03:00] But he said, we save lives here. And he, that was like that moment when he told me like the story as well, I was like, wow, that is super powerful that the company had a bigger mission.

[00:03:13] And everybody, no matter what level you were at, what job you did, were bought into what the company were there to do. And so would all your team say the same thing, or would you get slightly different answers? Would you get vague answers? Would you, or worse, would you get answers that are, I'm not really [00:03:30] sure.

[00:03:31] And here's the thing, lack of clarity doesn't just show up as confusion. It often shows up as hesitation. It shows up as inconsistency. It really shows up of lack of ownership. It really shows up in people not stepping up. It really shows up in people passing you, their monkeys, and you having to just do all the shit and everything have to run through you.

[00:03:53] And you still being the lead decision maker and the one driving everything. [00:04:00] Yes, your job is to come up with a vision, but you don't need to have all of the nitty gritty parts of how you're gonna make that happen. That's where you need multiple brains at something. So if the vision isn't crystal clear, like from the top down, they can't step up

[00:04:17] and this is where it gets a bit uncomfortable because clarity is not your team's responsibility, it's actually yours. So no, it's not just to have the vision, but it's to communicate it, it's to repeat it, [00:04:30] it's to embed it, it's to live it. It's to live and breathe. The vision and the values in every conversation.

[00:04:38] And this is something that we are really working hard on in our clinic at the moment. And again, comes from a place of my team, were not able to, . clearly and effectively communicate our key values. When I asked them, this was many months ago now because, and I was like, why? I've upset them.

[00:04:59] [00:05:00] They know what they are. We were all in a session together when we did this several years ago. What? Why? And it's because I wasn't talking about it enough. It wasn't. At the start of every email, at the end of every email, it wasn't a formed as part of every communication that I had within the clinic.

[00:05:17] So most of us share the vision once in a meeting, maybe in a slide deck, maybe at the start of the year, and then we assume that it's landed and it hasn't, like you need to say things seven times for people to [00:05:30] hear it for the first time. So once you've said it six times. Congratulations, you've only got one more time to say it before they actually start hearing you.

[00:05:37] So clarity doesn't come from saying it was. It comes from being consistent. Your team should be able to hear it regularly, see it in the decisions that you are making, feel it in the standards that you are setting, and understand how their role connects into it. If they can't link the day. To where the business is going.

[00:05:56] They just default right to, I'm just gonna do my job. [00:06:00] I'm just getting through the day. I'm just waiting to be told. So while sometimes this can be a team problem, it can be a performance problem, it can be an individual problem, quite often it's a clarity problem. And the same applies to our values, right?

[00:06:14] Every clinic has them written somewhere. Maybe on a wall. We have them as you walk in the clinic. They've, where we've got this bespoke like wallpaper for want of a better word. It's like a big montagey thing that sits behind the reception desk. Like they were there and my reception team [00:06:30] still couldn't tell me what they were.

[00:06:31] And I'm like, honey, this fucking right behind you. But. It made me realize that it needs more than that. We might have them on the website, it might be in a handbook, right? But the real question is, are they lived? Because values without clarity, they're just words. So we can't just list values. We need to look like, we need to ask, what does this look like day to day?

[00:06:53] When do we not live this value? When are we, or where are we tolerating behavior that [00:07:00] goes against this? Because your values should guide your decisions. They should set your standards, they should create accountability. So if you are, if someone in your team can't tell you, like one of our values is exceptional is this is what exceptional looks like here.

[00:07:16] This is how we show up with patients. Then again, it's not clear enough. I want to leave you with a few questions on today's episode because we are running a masterclass this week on being the bottleneck in the [00:07:30] clinic where we are bottlenecking a lot of stuff, and this is one of those things again, where the ceo, you are all CEOs, you are visionaries, you are business owners.

[00:07:40] You are not clinicians, you are not clinic owners. You are a CEO of your company. And whether you are one person or 50 people. We have to get clearer and we have to communicate that better to our team. So I'd really like you to, I'd really encourage you to not just listen to these questions, but actually [00:08:00] pause and think about them, or even better write them down.

[00:08:03] If I asked your team what the next 12 months looks like, would they all say the same thing? Does each person in your team. Know how their role contributes to that vision. When was the last time you clearly communicated the vision, and how often are you reinforcing it?

[00:08:25] Are your values clearly defined in behavior or are they [00:08:30] just words on a wall? Where are you currently saying, I just need to step up, but actually you need to provide more clarity. If you take nothing else from this episode today, clarity is what creates momentum. Like without it, your team hesitate. They start going off down a fucking road of other shit that is nothing to do with what you actually want 'em to be doing.

[00:08:54] Or they go down a rabbit hole or they start being distracted around other stuff and [00:09:00]growth feels harder than it should. When we've got clarity, people take ownership. Decisions get made faster, and this is the business that starts to move without you pushing everything. This is exactly why.

[00:09:15] Inside our foundations program, we focus and actually in our elevate and ascend even more, we heavily focus on the CEO identity and the strategy behind that because this isn't about just working harder, can't just keep doing the same shit and [00:09:30] expecting different results. It's about leading better. So if this has hit a nerve a little bit, then good.

[00:09:36] That's usually where the opportunity is. And if you know your business lacks that clarity right now, then that's probably the place to start. Thank you for listening to this very short, sharp episode. I'll be back next week. Love you all. 

[00:09:51] Thanks for listening to the Treat Your Business podcast. Hit subscribe now and keep joining me for bigger insights, older conversations to [00:10:00] help you build a clinic and a life you [00:10:30]love.